Our work with SALVE International

By the time you read this it will be the end of May and we will have completed a ¼ of our time here in Uganda! It seems to have flown by and we’ve already had such a lot of experiences as you have read in the previous 3 blogs. Esther filled you in on all the news from last week so you are reading Caitlin’s entry once again – thank you for returning! We hope we’re keeping our readers both entertained and informed with our tales from Africa’s friendliest (we assume) nation.

Before tales of work in the week that has just passed I’d like to make all of you a tiny bit jealous at the amazing Saturday we had last week. We decided to venture a bit further than our usual swimming pool in pursuit of a relaxing day after a hard weeks work. We’d heard tales of a resort overlooking the Nile that the SALVE family were lucky enough to go to as a Christmas treat last year. So we had an extremely bumpy ride aseat a boda boda (motorbike taxi) with the driver, myself and Esther all on board which was interesting to say the least! But it was totally worth it when we arrived at what seemed like tropical paradise. The swimming pool was incredible but what was most amazing was the garden next to it. There were palm-trees and lush greenery galore, all overlooking the gorgeous view of the Nile in all its splendour. We took our towels down to the river side and lay there for most of the afternoon.

We then ventured back to the Market in Jinja and treated ourselves to ingredients for a really big salad which we tucked into back at the home. You may not be jealous of this aspect of our day but we were incredibly happy to have such healthy food!

So anyway, what’s been happening in week 4 of our internship? The biggest news so far is that the children sadly (for us) returned to school on Monday. We had a fun evening all ready on Sunday night so that we could send them off to school relaxed and happy – we had hired Madagascar on DVD to watch on the laptop that we’ve been kindly lent for a short time by one of Mike’s friends and we bought a hoard of pineapples, bananas and mangos for a healthy feast. However, much as we have come to realise in Uganda, the plan didn’t exactly work out the way we hoped and the DVD didn’t work. They were all disappointed, as were we (!), but the fruit was still good. So anyway – time for school. We knew the time was coming and we had prepared ourselves but when the morning came for them to get themselves ready, trunks packed and uniforms on, our maternal instincts kicked in and we felt the need for many hugs and ‘good-luck’s. I’m not sure the children were so sad – they were much too excited about going back to school. The heavens opened just as they were about to leave, however, and they spent the morning waiting for their lift sheltering from the rain. This did not dampen their spirits – there was an almost camp-like feel with lots of drumming on Jerry-cans, singing and general merriment under the porch. Their lift finally arrived and they all piled in with all of their belongings ready for a term at boarding school. What struck both myself and Esther most after they left was the deafening silence; there’s nothing like having ten Ugandan children running around the house to make you forget what silence is.

Emma, who we hadn’t seen during the whole of our stay here (he’d been staying with his family during the holidays) came home and left again for school without us seeing him at all so we went to school the next morning to meet him. We were a bit naughty and took him out of

his lesson which I don’t think he was too pleased with and sat with him while he wrote his letter to his sponsor. I would say we helped him but he’s so bright he didn’t need much assistance at all. School had a really nice feel to it – we could hear lots of singing from inside the classrooms and the children all looked really intent on what they were learning. It made me really excited to start my work there in the classrooms. This week I’d been making a lot of teaching aids which took me quite a while with limited resources so I was looking forward to putting them to good use. Starting teaching on Thursday showed me that they were very worthwhile and I really enjoyed my first week at school. I was also able to meet with Mary, the director of the school, and find out lots of information that I’m going to need to make a brochure and a website for Joy school.

I have completed the first monthly newsletter and sent it off to our Trustees, Nicola and Helen, to cast a knowledgeable eye on so hopefully they will approve and it will be sent out to our supporters asap. I think it must be really exciting for them to see how much their organisation is growing, so much so that it is necessary that we send out a monthly newsletter rather than one only three times a year. They have put so much hard work into SALVE already and we feel like we’re bombarding them slightly with inf

ormation and questions from here in Uganda but they seem to be taking it on the chin and putting so much effort and time into responding to and helping us so we are very grateful!

Esther has been hard at work making questionnaires for the Community Education project in order to evaluate opinions of the Police and the general public on Street Children. As you read last week the Police especially seem to have a naïve and biased opinion on why children have resorted to the cruel life on the street. When she gets the results of these she will have a much better understanding of how to move forward with educating people on the harsh reality of the situation. She has also been making Tags for the beads project and it seems to be coming on really well. All the tourist shops in town are interested so hopefully it’s going to make a lot of money!

The Street Clinic has unfortunately taken a back seat this week what with the disruption of the children leaving and tidying the house etc but we are looking forward to getting back to it next week. There is a lot to be done and we think it will be really worthwhile when we have it up and running. The children will feel like somebody actually cares rather than constantly living in fear of when their next beating from the Police will be. Our dream is to be able to help just a few so that we can see the excited looks on their faces

when they get to go to school, just as we saw this week on the nine children’s faces that SALVE has already helped.

Another event this week, although slightly unrelated to work, we are staying at Guest House in Jinja instead of at the SALVE home. We have loved staying there so much but what with the nature of our work changing and the laptop no longer being there we thought it would be much more convenient to be in town. We’re trying it out for a couple of nights and if it’s good then we’ll stay until the children get home

from school. It feels strange having a real shower (albeit a cold one) and a normal toilet!! But we’ll have to see how it all pans out, we shall keep you all updated with the developments.

So I think that is about everything that I have for you. We’ve had another exciting week, although it was ended with a rather annoying visit to the Immigration Office to renew our visas – they seem to make up their policy every time you go back so no doubt it will change when we have to return in 2 months time! But other than that: another successful and enjoyable week in Uganda. We hope you can come back and read next week’s installment.

Lots of love,

Caitlin

…and hello from Esther! Here I am again after a whole week (almost) since you heard from Caitlin and getting on for a month since we arrived - well three weeks to be exact – wow! Time is going very fast indeed and as clichéd as it may sound a lot has happened even since last week. It’s going to be difficult to give you the tiniest glimpse into it all!

So here I am sitting in the sitting room with a thankfully overcast sky today ahead of me and a faint breeze flowing through the open window with Ronald sitting beside me busily writing up a thank you letter to his sponsors. Laughs and clatters are coming from all directions as everyone else runs around and gossips enthusiastically (something the girls are very good at) over washing the dishes after a late lunch of fried potatoes and greens.

But how can I be writing from the SALVE home some of you may be wondering after what happened earlier this week? Well, after some sneaky thief managed to find the laptop opportunely sitting beside the window (curtained and closed from the inside) and cleverly managed to open the latch, reach through impossibly close-together bars and lift the laptop through plus cable which was firmly attached to it’s socket, we have suffered a couple of days or so using the internet cafe up the track and yesterday a friend of Mike’s turned up to kindly drop off his laptop for us to use for the next few days until we get more sorted.

The kids coped amazingly well, grouping together the following day with excited chatter about the happenings of the night and thought it very funny that the burglar took my toiletry bag containing toothpaste and a few other mazungu oddities I cant imagine he’ll find much of a use for through my open window where I’d stupidly left it very opportunely placed… I’d loved to have seen his face when he discovered it wasn’t stuffed with the cash and valuables as he’s presumably imagined.

Anyway, that all feels a while ago now and life continues as normal. We’ve moved everything of consequence away from the windows and are being extra specially careful to keep the borrowed laptop locked away so I’m sure nothing of the sort could happen again. The house is so securely bared and locked at night it would take a lot of sawing to do much harm…

Moving on… the following day got better with a swim in a beautiful pool that overlooks the Nile (this is fast becoming a Saturday routine) and lunch also overlooking the Nile where we came close to a baby crocodile who hurried away into the undergrowth as we arrived.

The week has been a busy one and I feel that we have achieved a lot, if only the beginnings of many things which are yet to become. Amongst the most exciting was a journey by boda boda (motorbike taxi) over the Nile to a remote village some distance into banana plantations. Our mission was to find the aunt of an eighteen year old boy, Moses, who we discovered was living on the streets and we felt was unsuitable to support directly through the SALVE home but knew of this aunt with whom he may be reunited.

We were greeted by hoards of children of all sizes, stunned and excited to see mazungus on motorbikes. Needless to say, the aunt who we had no means of contacting was away working in the fields but one of her relatives kindly went off in search of her and shortly (in which time we were ushered into a round, mud and thatch hut and shown proudly to the only piece of furniture, a plank bench) returned with the aunt. The children by this time had surrounded the hut to the extent that the ventilation was all but blocked off and it became a little stuffy as Mike explained the situation to the aunt who listened solemnly along with the older male relatives who had turned up and sat watching on from a discreet distance.

Sadly, the feeling was that they feared for their safety and that of the neighborhood in taking in someone who had lived on the streets for some period of time. Moses was sure to have picked up thieving behavior, they believed, and they felt they could not take this risk. We hope that we may find another source of help or that in time their attitudes may change.

For the meantime we resolved to find Moses and discuss his own thoughts with him. Our problem was solved with a phone call from the police as we returned to Jinja, explaining that Moses had been rounded up with all the other street children that the police could handle the night before and had been taken into jail.

After waiting some time in an office crowded with women and babies who were presumably visiting inmates, we were shown into an officer’s office where we were informed that the police didn’t have the resources to contain the street children and had shepherded them to the local large-scale street child rescue centre. Unsurprisingly Moses had already returned to the streets and we didn’t manage to find him that day but we did have an interesting conversation with a jovial police officer.

How he was jovial I can’t imagine or perhaps this is how he copes with the daily stress he must be living through. Or perhaps not. I’m sure I shouldn’t be saying this but I am thoroughly appalled at Ugandan police’s ignorance and short sightedness, or at least that which we witnessed. Who could appoint someone to deal with street children, someone with such responsibility and influence in the local community, and yet with no idea about the reality of the situation at hand? I am yet to discover.

The jovial police officer assumed that the children were free to return home to their families and that their pestilence in the streets could be controlled solely by their eradication, if not from periodical roundups into the prison, by some other equally immediate measure.

What I imagine accounts for the vast majority of children living on the streets coming from backgrounds of poverty, neglect and abuse, searching for their only chance of a livelihood, was entirely overlooked. Evidently the idea of providing opportunities to help the children out of their situation had not been considered as a plausible option.

This along with the children’s horrific reenactments of the police’s and other violent people’s behaviour towards them on the streets has given me the idea of collecting info on all the children we can reach on the streets on why they are there and how they are making a living, that we can use to educate and challenge misconceptions about their situation.

The idea is to create links with other community based organizations with whom we can share ideas, gain more info and strengthen our efforts to this end.

After some rather frustrating attempts to organise a meeting with the local street child centre that I mentioned earlier with which we hope to partner, we are none the wiser but hope that this will eventually happen sometime next week.

More optimistically we have begun the process of registering SALVE locally as a community based organisation on top of it’s UK registration status. This will give us the recognition required at the local level to create the links and partnerships that will be so important in expanding our work as an organisation.

Quickly the rest of our endeavors this week… Caitlin has at last managed to make contact with the Joy school in which she will be giving a lot of her time and energies. Yesterday she met some of her fellow teachers at a resource-making session before term starts on Monday and was able to discuss arrangements for Drama and English teaching which she is now well underway with planning.

The beads making project is doing great – had a wonderful reaction from everyone I spoke to in the tourist crafts shops in town, all of whom were interested in potentially selling the products and many of whom were very willing to give me private tutorials in bead making techniques – for which they wouldn’t allow me to pay!

Although it has been quite literally heartbreaking to come so close to the hardship and abuse of those on the streets, devastating to witness the cruelty of those who instigate it and frustrating to say the least to find those who are unwilling to help - the generosity of others and the open smiles that greet us everyday are enough to make it all worth it.

I think we’ve both learned a lot this week and are looking forward to seeing what the next one holds… we hope you’ll be back for Caitlin’s account!

Esther xxx

PS It's been lovely to hear that so many of you are enjoying this! :)

Hi and welcome to the second instalment of our blog! I cannot believe how fast a week has gone by since Esther was filling you in on the events of our first week in Uganda. I’m going to fill you in on the news from the last week, I hope you enjoy it!

We’ve been quite busy so thank goodness the heat seems to have subsided a little, although I’m not sure we were quite so positive during the various nighttimes where the thunder storms seemed to be shaking the whole house! I’ve never heard anything like it. The rain starts which is initially quite calming but then it increases at such a rate that you feel like you’re going to be washed away! Then the lightening lights up the whole room and the deafening thunder follows about a second later. I’m yet to enquire what the roof is made of…I’m not sure I want to know!

As far as the projects that we’re both getting involved with this week we’ve been creating action plans and timelines for our 4 months here. This has really helped to see whether we’ll be able to achieve everything and to think about the various ways that we’re going to carry out our proposals. I think we’re both a little overwhelmed with the scope for work that needs to be done but we’re trying to focus and realise that we don’t have to complete everything by the time we leave – that is what the following interns are coming for. It’s really good to know

that our work is going to go towards so much; everything that we are planning will really make a difference.

I’m really looking forward to getting quite heavily involved with the school as it looks like they need all the help they can get. The director of the school, Mary, seemed so excited that they were going to have a real English person teaching English! Apart from the teaching I’m hoping to set up a Young Enterprise scheme which should really help the children develop their business acumen and also give them a bit of fun making various products with the materials I’ll be giving them. As well as this I’ll be creating a brochure and hopefully a website to be able to create relationships for opportunities for fundraising both in Uganda and in the UK. As I said above – there’s so much to do so hopefully I’ll be able to complete at least a portion of it.

Esther has gone into Jinja today to start some market research for the Arts and Crafts jewellery project that she mentioned in last week’s blog. I think, again, this is a massive project and something that she can get really involved with. It will be so brilliant if it turns into an income generating project and they can contribute to their own school resources. She is aiming to market the jewellery in Jinja which could prove to be quite a challenge as there are already a few shops selling a similar type of product but she is the type of person who relishes a challenge so I’m sure she’ll be able to pull it off. There is also considerable potential to create a market in the UK so it seems like a really exciting project.

The street clinic aspect of our work seems to have also turned into quite an overwhelming assignment but something that will tie in really well with the Community Education Project - one of the main problems facing street children are people’s attitudes to them. We went on to the streets of Jinja this week and started talking to a few children who are facing this discrimination every minute of their lives. It was awful to see the ones who were quite obviously affected by drugs and the sleeping conditions that they have to en

dure every night. It was a really interesting process, however, and one that we’ll do every week in order to try and build relationships with these children before we can take them in to the S.A.L.V.E home.

We are still really enjoying living at the home and are getting on really well with everyone here. The children are all so fantastic and we’re really going to miss them when they go back to school. We’ve been making friendship bracelets, playing copious amounts of ‘Pick-Up Sticks’ which they seem to love, writing to their sponsors, and doing general reading/improving their English. Last night they all seemed in an incredibly hyper mood, singing and dancing for us after dinner in a style I can only describe as Michael Jackson meets Eminem. Once they eventually settled down talk turned to their lives on the street and we felt really privileged that they felt able to tell us all about their horrific experiences, even though it was quite disturbing to listen to. At first they were laughing about the ways the Police used to pick them up in the sacks they used to sleep in and beat them, and the various times that residents of Jin

ja would take all of their clothes and throw them in the lake. But when they started speaking about how the Police can put nails in the bottom of their shoes and stamp on their friends, killing a number of them, the mood wasn’t so jovial. This is why the Community Education Project is going to be so key – if we can begin to change people’s attitudes towards these children then it is going to make such a difference to the lives of these street kids, their situations having evolved through no fault of their own.

I’m sorry if this is totally depressing! I just think it’s important for everyone to know the horrors that these kids experience so that you can understand what brilliant work S.A.L.V.E does. The children that they have helped so far are so hard-working, happy and bright; they’re eating nutritious food and they have a safe, loving environment to live in.

Speaking of nutritious food we are still enjoying the food that we are being given here although the amount of carbohydrates that Ugandans eat isn’t really agreeing with us! So we decided to cook another English meal during the week and we were craving a massive amount of vegetables so much that we chose to make Chicken and Vegetable stew. We were so happy buying the huge amounts of vegeta

bles from the most amazing market in Jinja. It’s so vibrant and busy that you can get lost in the various alleys within it. Cries of “Muzungu!” follow you wherever you go and it’s diff

icult to decide which stall to buy veg from as there are so many that are pretty much exactly the same! But anyway, we bought our veg and eventually found the direction to the chicken. What we’d failed to remember when planning this meal is that in Uganda you can’t buy dead chickens cut up into nice lean breast meat. We found the huge cages of live chickens ready for us to take home and to kill ourselves! The kind men said that they’d do it for us so we quickly agreed and waited round to corner so as not to hear any of it in action! We were

given a feather-free dead chicken in all it’s entirety to take home and cut up. I urge people next time they are eating a chicken in England – appreciate the convenience please!! Anyway, the meal was a success with everyone here and it was lovely to have some good old English food!

I think I’ve rambled on for much too long already so I’ll sign off here. I’ve just been outside playing peek-a-boo behind the washing-line with the cutest little boy from next door who is permanently attached to the wooden stick he insists on carrying – he giggles at everything I do, probably thinking silly white girl! He is grinning at me through the window so I’m going to go and try and entertain him with my stupidity a bit further! Thanks for reading, and please come back next week for further news and events from Esther.

Caitlin xx

Hi everyone and welcome to the first blog! Caitlin will be writing next week so come back for a different point of view… and we’ll keep you updated for the next four months so hope you enjoy hearing what we’ve been up to!

I think we would both agree that the one week we’ve been here seems like a small eternity as we have fitted in so much! It has been really hot so part of the experience has really just been trying to acclimatise to the heat. I have no idea what the temperature is but it can’t be far off 30 C and it doesn’t cool off much at night either! Mozzies aren’t too bad though or maybe that’s Caitlin’s mozzie spray which is so strong it seems to kill most for a good distance.

Anyway, apart from mozzies and heat, Uganda is an amazing place and we’re so glad to be here at the SALVE home. Although I (Esther) was here about ten years ago it’s amazing how much I have forgotten and being here with the kids and living so closely with those that live here is quite a different experience from any holiday could give.

We’re really excited about all the projects we’re going to get involved in. For Caitlin it will be teaching drama at the Joy primary school where the children study (I’m sure they will enjoy it as I get the impression most Ugandan teaching is quite un-interactive), helping with the children’s English reading and developing their admin and teaching resources. She is also looking into writing a brochure for the school and is aiming to find a link school in the UK.

The school is quite dilapidated, constructed from planks with great cracks in between and holes for windows (a good thing actually as it stops it from getting too hot) and small classrooms with the sweetest little wooden chairs I’ve ever seen.

Today we helped out at a craft workshop for poor children who are attending the school but cannot afford a uniform or stationary and school books. The idea is to create jewellery to sell to raise funds for this. The project is in its elementary stages and the children are still learning how to make beads from strips of rolled up magazine pages. They are quite impressive and have plans to make them very professional with several coats of varnish and proper clasps etc. The problem is that there is not yet a market for them so I have dedicated a couple of days a week looking into how to go about this and also possibly expanding their range of products.

The other main thing that we will be working on is the street clinic. The idea is to build relationships with children who are living on the streets so that when a space becomes available in the SALVE home, we will know who best should take it. The other reason for the street clinic is to provide help through suggesting possible sources of education, healthcare, and income generating projects to help the children that we are unable to directly support through SALVE.

I’m sure Caitlin will want to tell you more about all her plans but the other main thing we will both be involved in is a community education programme which aims to educate rural or underprivileged communities in the area about HIV, family planning, healthcare, etc. The project is just an idea at the moment but we hope it will spread through involvement in community institutions such as nurseries, schools and perhaps women’s groups.

We went to one of the most underprivileged communities in the Jinja district today to interview a potential child for the home. Referred to as a “slum” area, Masese is home to the Karamanjong tribe. They have very few rights and live a relatively nomadic lifestyle as it seems they are ousted out of their homes by local or government authorities before any length of time. The homes were made from dried mud and sticks, with cow dung smeared on the outside to keep the jiggers (burrowing insects) out and holes had been patched up with bin bags. Despite the obvious poverty and lack of educational / employment opportunities it was incredible and very inspiring seeing the people’s jubilance and their friendliness towards us. Shouts of “Muzungu! (white person) how are you?” Followed us everywhere with the crowds of children who followed and touched our skin presumably to check whether we were real.

I’m really looking forward to the opportunity to help create opportunities for such people who are so deserving and many of whom incredibly keen and yet so wrongly misunderstood and discriminated against for no reason of their own.

I hope you’re still with me! I just looked up and saw a huge, full orange moon which I wanted to share with you… The youngest girl is busy playing pick-up-sticks beside me and shouting her scores enthusiastically.

A bit about the home… basic by UK standards but I imagine very nice for by local standards and certainly a stage above the terracotta mud homes that line the maize of tracks that interlink through the sprawling village of Bugembe. It’s amazingly clean and the children are good at doing all the chores that need doing including cooking, and carrying water from the tap at the bottom of the garden that supplies all our washing/cooking etc needs.

The kids were very shy to start with and would hide their faces when we tried to speak with them! This soon wore off though and they are now busy trying to get us to read with them at every possible opportunity, or to join in their games, make friendship bracelets, etc – even work through such daunting things (in my mind) as maths!! They’re doing amazingly well at school considering many have only started relatively recently, and their enthusiasm to learn is a joy to see.

Tomorrow Caitlin and I are looking forward to a swim in the pool overlooking the Nile and our first western meal since arriving (apart from the spaghetti bolognese we made the other night for the whole family who I am still unsure quite what they made of it). Ugandan food is quite varied – all sorts of carbohydrates made from various flours, rice and green bananas called matoke. Lots of rice too and good bean stews. The children consider themselves to eat very well at the home and from what I gather really look forward to their meals here during the holidays.

Anyway enough for now. I smell charcoal smoke as our supper cooks outside and there are stories to be read…

I hope you’re all well and looking forward to letting you know what exciting adventures we have had next time I write.

Esther xx