Ndagira Sarah is obviously not well. She is 41 years old, statuesque, and very soft spoken, often coughing - possibly from the several bouts she has had with TB.

She has been living with her four children and the brother of her late husband in a drafty one-room mud house with a wooden door. "When you look from inside, you see someone outside," Sarah says, describing the condition of the house.

The floor is damp, and the roof leaks. With six people in a house the size of one-and-a-half picnic tables, Sarah says "it is squeezed."

In 2004, Sarah's husband died, leaving her with nothing. "It is my dream in my life to get a house, and God brought it to me," she says softly. When she saved 10,000 or 20,000 shillings (about $7 or $12) from bead sales, she put it in the savings account set up for her by BeadforLife. "I was struggling to get my own house."

 

Sarah chose Design F, a house with two bedrooms, a storage space, and a veranda. She wants to have space to put her chicks, since she raises poultry. She is also looking forward to having new friends and maybe even learning other languages. She would like someday to have a place in the village for football and netball - and to sing. "My children would like that!"

While Sarah is excited about the new house, she is startlingly realistic about it. "I wanted to be in a beautiful house so that when I die my children will have someplace. When I got HIV and my husband died, I had no hope. I did not know where I would leave my children and now I have a place to leave them. I had no hope, and now I have hope."