"I'm on your veranda."
That's the text Prossy Muyingo would get each night for years, sent by a 28-year-old standing outside her home in central Uganda.
Immediately, Muyingo would pour a glass of water and, from the sideboard in her living room, fetch a birth control pill and bring it outside.
"She was swallowing [the pill] from my house," explains Muyingo, who served as a community health worker in Mityana District for 12 years. The woman had told Muyingo that she feared her husband would beat her if he knew about the birth control. "The man is ever asking for a child," the woman said to Muyingo. She already had three children and didn't want another one, at least not right now. So she used Muyingo's home as a place to store and take her pills. Muyingo has similar arrangements with many neighbors.
Now all of that has changed.
In September 2025, Muyingo lost her job. Her stipend had been paid for by U.S. foreign aid. Now, she says, instead of providing contraception, she's informally counseling neighbors through unintended pregnancies.