By Wen Huang

Ronald Kasule caught polio when he was 3 years old. The disease left him paralyzed. Seeing that the boy could neither walk nor feed himself, his father intended to end his son’s life before he became a burden to the family. “My parents had fierce arguments over me,” he recalls. “In the end, my mother prevailed. She made the tough decision of divorcing my father to save my life.”

The family lived in Kisubi, a village about 60 miles southwest of Uganda’s capital, Kampala. His mother sold practically everything the family owned to search for a cure. When treatment failed, she came up with many creative ways to train her son at home so he could live independently. But when Kasule reached school age, he had no means of attending the distant school. One day, he pleaded with his mother until she relented and allowed him to go.

“With a book in my hand, I went with my siblings,” Kasule says. “But they ran very fast, and I could only crawl slowly on a gravel road. Before long, a rain came down. I had to turn around and go home. The rain had damaged my book. From then on, I voluntarily gave up the idea of schooling.”

By Doug Lee, Rotary Club of Dixon, Illinois, USA

“Pajama Day?”

Since I’d “met” her in mid-October, Oksana had sent me hundreds of e-mails through Facebook Messenger. I’m pretty sure this was the first one that made me laugh out loud.

We’d just enrolled Oksana’s daughter Nastya in first grade at Washington School in Dixon, Illinois, and Nastya’s teacher had excitedly shared the schedule for the week ahead. When Oksana read Friday was Pajama Day, she was beyond perplexed.

In Ukraine, you see, schools don’t celebrate Pajama Day.

Just three weeks prior, on 22 November, Oksana, her husband Oleg, daughter Nastya, and twin three-year-olds Bohdan and Roman landed at O’Hare airport in Chicago. After the few hours it took us to navigate customs and drive to Dixon, they opened the door to their new apartment. It had been graciously donated by Katherine Shaw Bethea Hospital and beautifully furnished and decorated by part of the team that formed to save two Ukrainian families from Russia’s brutal invasion.

Although I’m technically the family’s sponsor, there are 16 of us who have made this project possible. We call ourselves “Welcoming Ukrainians to Dixon,” and one of the younger members created a Facebook page under that name so the community can follow our work and offer support. So far, that support – in cash and in-kind donations – totals close to $50,000.

By Brad Webber

Members of the Rotary Club of Kaka‘ako Eco, Hawaii, tossed 5,000 mud balls filled with beneficial organisms into the Ala Wai Canal in Waikiki as part of a rehabilitation effort to make the waterway fishable and swimmable. The healthy bacteria in the genki balls — made with soil, molasses, rice bran, and water — digest and oxygenate sludge at the bottom of the canal (genki means healthy in Japanese). 

In March 2022, more than 200 volunteers, including club members and friends, made the balls, advised by the Genki Ala Wai Project. Three weeks later, they threw the fermented genki balls into the waterway. Donors paid $5 per ball to defray some of the cost. “A lot of kids came out and we had canoes come through the canal to help throw the balls,” says Club President Jenny Do. “We blew the air horn and then hundreds of balls just went into the Ala Wai Canal.”