It's two years since Guardian readers began funding the project in rural Uganda. Progress has been made – but setbacks threaten to undermine it
There was no moon when Mary Kokoi was woken at 1am by a hammering on the door of her mud hut. When a voice in the pitch black demanded money, Kokoi, the elderly treasurer of the Emorikikinos savings and loans association, stuffed her own notes through cracks in the door. No, the man in the darkness said, he knew that she guarded a locked cash box and he wanted all 4.2m shillings (£1,400) that it contained, the savings of 30 subsistence farmers in Olochoi village in rural Uganda. When she cried out in alarm, two other men appeared, their faces concealed with leaves, and Kokoi was brutally beaten with a machete until she handed over the money.
Two weeks on, and Kokoi is still in hiding, too traumatised to return to her home. Her neighbour, Desta Agudo, sits in the immaculately swept dirt yard between their huts, and traces a figure in the dust: 132,000 shillings (£44) – her year's savings, painstakingly accumulated by toi