The realisation that this is the 12^th blog comes as somewhat of a shock to me as I begin writing this! Not only does this mean we have had 12 weeks here already, something that I cannot fathom as time seems to have flown by so fast, but it means we only have 5 blogs and therefore 5 weeks left of work with SALVE in Uganda! Unfortunately it has felt with some of our projects that we have been walking up until now and have only just got to a jogging-pace, perhaps running by the time we leave, but that doesn’t mean that we have enjoyed our time any less and have put any less effort into all the work that SALVE deserves from us. With that in mind I shall give you an overview of the past week’s work from here in Jina, Uganda.

Our plans for Mbale this week were unfortunately changed at the last minute due to another flight of fear from Luca. It must be incredibly hard having lived almost half his life on the streets to then go to a family home where people actually care for him but it seems like his fear comes into play whenever going to his home region is mentioned. Mike, on top of an already busy schedule, spent Monday night doing a night patrol of the streets, searching for Luca to find out why he ran away. I offered to do the same on Tuesday in the light of day and just as I was desperately hoping I’d find him there he was wandering aimlessly down Main Street. I ran across the road to greet him and his face lit up when he saw his strange Mzungu friend so happy to see him. I took him to CRO to talk with Bosco, who is fast becoming an invaluable source of help and information, and to try and find out his fears behind going to Mbale. Luca didn’t offer much information but said he wanted to go home and if that meant going to Mbale then he would do it. We explained to him that whatever we find there we will still love him and support him and under no circumstances would we leave him there or let him come to any harm. He seemed happy with this explanation, although it had been explained to him before, and I telephoned Mike to ask his permission to take him home. He agreed and so I took Luca in a Matatu, his head sticking out of the window like an excited dog, all the way to Bugembe - back home. As I went back on Wednesday to sort out an issue with our brand new beautiful SALVE computer Luca beamed at me as I entered the compound, proudly showing me that he’d washed dishes, pots and pans and was just about to wash his own clothes. It’s so great when relationships develop with these children and I hope that Luca sees us now as people who will be there for him when he gets scared and will support him through anything. There has to be an element of discipline as well and an understanding that he can’t do whatever he pleases - SALVE has rules - but we are taking it one step at a time and Mike is so brilliant at playing both roles that we have every confidence that Luca will be just fine and be a fully-fledged SALVE recruit in no time.

We are also hoping that, come August 5^th, we will have found 2 more SALVE recruits in the form of 2 brand new members of staff! I have spent some time this week developing the Job Specifications sent from our Trustees into adverts for vacancies: one to live in and run the home once Mike moves out with his family and one to be based more on the streets for work in the clinic and on the community education plans. Mike will become much more of an overall Director on the ground and will be training staff, supporting adults and children, and over-viewing all the work completed here. It is so exciting to think that, after the interviews on the 5^th, SALVE will be growing enough to have three paid employees which will mean our work can develop so much more with the help of the interns being out here all of the time. We are hoping that the right candidates will see the notices all over Jinja and be inspired enough by SALVEs work to apply for either of these positions. We shall keep you all updated on our progress!

Esther has had a successful week with her community education work and has spent some useful time with members of the CRO staff. On Tuesday afternoon she went to Masese, the slum community just outside of Jinja town, to sit in on an afternoon of educating the women of Masese who were learning tailoring skills from an expert in this field. The women, from the photos that I’ve seen from the afternoon and from Esther’s testimonial, are so keen to learn and develop a sustainable skill which will mean they can provide for themselves and their families. It is fantastic to see that CRO are offering such an opportunity for these women, and have other workshops around the area to teach invaluable skills to the Ugandan people. The outcome of one agricultural workshop has been amazing – the keen learners took on exactly what they were taught and went back to their own homes to put the lesson into practice, installing irrigation systems in their own gardens with whatever they could find around their homes. We are hoping that SALVE will also be able to develop these educational workshops but with a slightly different edge – Esther has spent some more time working with CRO going through files of a large number of street children, finding out where they come from and what sent them to the streets. After discerning from Esther’s research where these areas are and the problems that have resulted from them, SALVE are hoping to go into these areas and educate people on things like agriculture, tailoring, parenting skills, marriage counseling, HIV/Aids awareness and other things that could change the street child situation in this area. It turns out that CRO’s involvement is being incredibly useful and maybe all that heartache with trying to arrange a meeting with Elizabeth was all worth it!

As last week’s blog mentioned I was anticipating a meeting with SoftPower Education and this week I had it. SoftPower are an organisation that work to improve the quality of life for Ugandan people through education – refurbishing primary schools, building education centres, and extending education to adult learning through these education centres. They involve the community in their builds, making sure the local community give the workers food and water and making it a real family project. My meeting was to determine whether they could get involved with the refurbishment of Joy School, something that I’m becoming more and more aware of the importance of! It rained fairly heavily last night and today I went to the classroomand was wading through mud all over the floor and noticed the pictures and charts were curling off the walls with the rain coming through the huge gaps in the wooden walls and holes in the tin roof. It really is no environment in which children can learn effectively. But anyway, I went with my brochure explaining all of this and the need for funding the building work and although they don’t fund construction themselves if we can find the funding then they will do it at cost-price for us, using their own workers and materials. I came away feeling more determined to find the money after having secured the involvement of a fantastic organisation like SoftPower Education. I am looking into raising the money through a number of schemes and I’m sure next week’s blog will let you all know the next stage in the development of Joy School.

Esther has also been greatly involved with expanding the range of products that will sell in the UK for the Joy Crafts project. This week she has been making coffee-bean necklaces, bracelets and earrings, and white-seed necklaces. Over the next few weeks she will be teaching the mothers of the Joy School students how to make these products. The students have continued with their paper-bead necklaces, all ready for next week when all the products will have been made and the brochure ready to hand out to prospective clients! Again, it’s great to see sustainable projects beginning and start developing so that they can provide for themselves and their children. There is a possibility that a Micro-finance grant can be given to the Mothers so that they can buy their own materials which will increase the profits for their labour wage but I’m sure as things develop we’ll let you know the status of it all.

I have continued with the Drama club and teaching English and Reading and things are still going well! As they are learning the two songs for Noah’s Ark which will be performed in the final production I am slowly introducing dance moves, something which they are extremely keen to learn! The costumes are becoming a bit of a topic for thought as I need to come up with an innovative way of making beards on a budget! Any ideas please email me!!! They continue to be great young people to teach and relish the chance of standing up in front of their classmates to show off their reading talents, as I made them do today. I wish I’d had the chance to work with other classes but I think P4 have been quite enough for these 4 months!

The existing SALVE children continue to be a delight to see every time I go to the school, even when they are in the midst of revision for end-of-term exams coming up in the next couple of weeks. They were incredibly excited to have been given the chance to use their pocket money from SALVE for a fun trip this week – an outing to the Agricultural and Trade show! I know it doesn’t sound very exciting but we can see the whole shenanigan from our guest house and it’s incredible, not least for the pounding music that continues until three in the morning every night! There are rides that look like they’d throw you off if you weren’t holding on and the crowd of people gathered outside makes it difficult to walk up the road without being mobbed by groups of school children or expectant Boda-Boda men hoping you’ll get them to give you a lift somewhere. It’s great to see the community coming together, though, and everyone seems to be talking about it. Esther made a quick visit there on Thursday and we are potentially planning a visit this weekend. She said it was a real experience, especially seeing the camel available for rides, and gave her some really good ideas for sustainable development for the community education plans – there were a number of amazing instruments for irrigation and a number of NGOs selling their crafts to visitors.

There have also been a number of street children hanging around outside watching in awe at the crowds and the death-defying rides. As we have been here for a while now and have frequented CRO where they seem to congregate, they all shake our hands and say hello as we pass and I’ve really come to treasure that and am sure I’ll really miss the friendliness of the people here compared to the stark, focused attitudes of people on the Tube in London or on the bus in Plymouth! But I have a few more weeks to soak up as much as I can and I’m sure I’ll go back with a much too friendly smile to greet England with!

I think that is the majority of things to report on this week. The weekend is grinning at me alluringly with a beckon of the finger, saying ‘come, relax, you deserve it!’ and I’m really looking forward to another weekend of recuperation. We have been trying to plan a safari but as with most things in Uganda it is taking an incredibly long time to arrange it. But I’m sure we’ll get there one weekend and have plenty of exciting photos to show you all.

Until next time, thanks for reading and for paying an interest in what we have been doing. It’s really encouraging to know that you are all interesting in our work and ultimately the work of SALVE.

Lots of love

Caitlin xxx

Hi everyone and welcome to the eleventh blog! I can't believe time has flown by so fast. I'm gong to keep it brief this week as it is already well into the afternoon, having spent literally the whole morning trying to do this on the computer in our room with everything possible going wrong. I'm in an internet cafe in town now with a dilapidated old keyboard that needs pressing with each finger like a hammer so before I get blisters and make a speedy retreat to the pool here's a bit about out last week's adventures...

After the usual swim and and a nice meal at a backpackers' resort where we met some other volunteers and swapped stories, we decided to wind down the weekend with a "Nile Special" beside the Nile...soon after we sat down (or sprawled across two chairs in my case after my 1/4 pint - it's surprisingly strong!), an American and Singaporean volunteer we'd met the previous weekend turned up for a boat trip and we joined in with half a dozen others. Caitlin and I managed to stagger in after our shared beer (but soon recovered) only to be joined by an overly friendly Ugandan who became friendlier with every bag of 40% alcohol (which smelled of jelly babies) he consumed. As the host "father" (although only 21) of our two friends there was no escape from him and we ended up hopping around for most of the trip trying to escape his over-friendliness and thinking up less and less polite replies to his insistent offers marry us. The fact he couldn't remember which of us was which and that we both, including him it turned out, had boyfriends (a girlfriend in his case) had no relevance to him!


Aside from this there were moments that we were able to enjoy the beautiful views from the boat and lots of birds, even a huge lizard the size of a crocodile sunbathing on a riverbed. We stopped at an island that was clearly a busy nesting site judging by the amount of bird poo that made the trees and rocks look white. As we came back the sun was setting and, one drunk man aside, a perfect way to spend a Sunday evening.


We started the week heavy-hearted after hearing the sad news from Mike that Luka had disappeared while he and his wife Robinah and baby Caren were at church. Luka had been left with the housemaid, Blessing, who when Mike returned thought Luka was still sleeping on the sofa next door. Mike had gone into town that night to search for him but hadn't seen him.


We didn't see him the next day and no news from Mike... we went ahead with our meeting with Mike to discuss all sorts of things which took the whole morning, and then spent the afternoon at Joy school, each having a meeting with Mary, who it turned out had travelled all the way back from Rwanda (where she also runs a school) just to speak with us! She was returning to Rwanda the following day so we were extremely grateful for her time. It was helpful to clear up various things with the beads project and hear more of her plans for its development. She was pleased to hear about current plans for the UK market and see the brochure. It's wonderful to share her enthusiasm for what we will be able to do for the project once things come off the ground. I'm just sad that I won't be here to see the effects of my work but glad that our next interns will be able to keep us updated and carry things on. I'm sure Caitlin will let you know the outcome of her meeting next week.

As I walked back along the main street at the end of the day I heard shouts of "hello!" "hello!" and there was Luka! He was all grubby and a little thinner than when we last saw him, but obviously happy to see me. I rung Mike and he said we would have to have a proper discussion with him, finding out why he ran away and if he was really willing to come back, before we could take him in again. It was so difficult leaving him there, I wanted to take him if not to SALVE to our guest house and give him a shower and food and somewhere safe to stay but obviously this was out of the question. Instead I got the friendly staff of a nearby internet cafe to translate for me and to ask Luka if he could come to CRO the following day to meet Mike, Stephen (who understands his language better), Caitlin and myself and discuss the possibility of taking him back.


The following day we turned up to CRO to find no one there, not even David or Richard (the boy we met last week) who we had also arranged to see. Soon Stephen turned up and as Mike was stuck in traffic we decided to walk up and down the main street to see if we could find Luka. In the meantime Caitlin waited at CRO and the other two boys turned up. Mike eventually arrived and we had no success finding Luka, so returned to CRO.

A lovely and helpful staff member, "Uncle" Bosco, spoke with us about all three boys we hoped to help. CRO has so much information on almost every child on the street, it's so immensely helpful to have their support with our project now.


We showed David a photo of his long-estranged brother, Patrick, who he still remembered and was overjoyed to see! He asked us to take him to see Patrick right then and we hope we will be able to do this soon.


We also discussed with Bosco the ways in which I will be able to work with them and gain research and experience in their community education initiatives. It was all so useful but a little frustrating we have had to wait until over half our time here to get to this point. I feel as though we will be only just getting things started with community education by the time I leave, but will be great to have the involvement with CRO until then.

As we were deep in discussion Bosco suddenly noticed Luka in the yard outside and hurried out to bring him in. Luka looked worried, as though he expected us to beat him or tell him off for running away. Straightaway we made it clear to him that we weren't angry but just wanted to know what happened.

Stephen took him somewhere quiet and Luka made a heart-felt confession. He had wanted to wash his sandals on Sunday afternoon, while Blessing had been doing her washing. Luka had asked to use the water and before Blessing had finished, he dumped his dirty sandals in. The two had an argument and he ran away, taking his spare clothes with him to donate to friends.

I wonder how he returned to the streets as it is quite a distance from Bugembe and I doubt he had done the journey by foot before.

He was very sad about what happened and was ready to come back and apologise to Blessing. We were relieved that this was the reason, as we couldn't think before what it could have been except that he might be missing his friends. We hope very much that David or Richard will be joining him soon and this should not be a problem. His argument with Blessing is a very understandable reason and it may have been a misunderstanding on his part because of the language barrier. It must be difficult speaking so little of the local language but I'm sure he will improve quickly with so much attention.

Here's some pictures of him now he's settled in... the change is amazing and incredibly rewarding to see!



For Caitlin, the rest of the week as spent looking into banks for SALVE and also re-writing the constitution ready for CBO registration. Also teaching English at Joy School and teaching "The Animals Went in Two by Two" and another song to her drama group for the much anticipated "Noah's Ark" production!

For me it was my first day's work with CRO on Thursday. I have been paired with Noah, who, although late because he was getting malaria medication and taking his sick father to hospital for which he apologised profusely, was useful in finding files, directing me to sources of info and other staff members who would (embarrassingly) stop what they were doing and give me as much time as I dared take. We spoke with Rose, who carries out their community education workshops, and have arranged to attend her tailoring workshop in Massese slum community next Tuesday. It's going to be great to see what they are doing and also the work of the more specialist organisations they partner with before putting together our own community education plans. It will also be good to compliment what they are doing and therefore extend what we are able to accomplish.

Discovered two huge filing cabinets stuffed with CRO children's profiles so for the next few weeks Noah and I will be going through these to build up some data on where the children living on the streets are coming from and what led them there. This will provide the info needed to then make plans as to what to provide in specific communities. Also hope to do lots of interviewing at CRO with Stephen to discover more personal things like whether the children would be prepared to go home if given the opportunity.


Also found a wee bit of time to work on samples of the beads project to put photos in the UK sales brochure. Here's this week's white seeds earring and bracelet design. Also went to the workshop which needs heavy supervision so the teachers remember to keep to the UK market designs and maintain the quality the children are easily capable of but it seems only if told every week!


Right, this is much longer than I anticipated and I'm off for a much needed swim. Bye for now and next week you'll be hearing about our trip to Mbale which didn't happen this week because of Mike's unexpectedly busy schedule.

Love Esther xxx

In this strange and far off land, where the moon is the wrong way round, the most destitute are sometimes adverse to help, and you never really get a straight answer from anybody, I have come to realise that nothing is certain. Except, that is, for one very definite fact that has transpired this week – one less child is on the streets thanks to S.A.L.V.E. International.

At the end of last week’s blog Esther mentioned a young boy named Duka who she had briefly met and attempted to persuade to come to the street clinic. When Monday came around once again we were both desperately hoping that Duka, among others, would show up at our usual spot at the Post Office. Much to our dismay we had no visitors and began our walk along Main Street in search of some street children to interview. As luck, or some would say fate or divine intervention would have it there was Luca (as it turned out his name actually was) wandering along aimlessly, perhaps waiting for the two strange mzungus who would happen upon him that morning. His smile told us everything we needed to know about his intentions with SALVE and we sat him down to give him the formal interview that we needed in order to progress. At first we heard that Luca was abandoned by his father at the Police station after his mother had taken the rest of his siblings when they divorced. He had come to the streets 4 years earlier, at the tender age of 5, and had been sleeping in doorways and in boxes ever since. His scars were testimony to the difficult life he had been leading and I think all of us fell in love with him during this short time of knowing him. We later met with Mike who asked him a few more questions and it came to light that he didn’t remember much of his parents or where they came from (except that they were from somewhere near Mbale) and this proved to be a bit of a bump in the road in our quest to help him – as an organisation we really need consent from a parent or guardian to be able to take him from the streets and into our care. Mike suggested that we go to CRO and find out if they had any more information on Luca’s background and we all agreed that this would be a good idea. They had heard a few different stories about Luca’s parents and established that he couldn’t really remember much about them. As such, we decided that in this desperate case we would spend that day trying to make the time he spent on the streets as short as possible. Waiting for the UK Team’s approval on this, via text message, was agonising and once they agreed that we could go ahead with our rescue mission we celebrated by taking him for an HIV test – not the usual way to celebrate success, I know. The wait for the result was also torture but it turned out Luca got a clean bill of health and we could continue on to the market to buy him some much needed new clothes, shoes and toiletries and have his head shaved until the time came when we could get him a real sponsor from the UK and begin his SALVE transformation. I can’t tell you the difference in looks that we got walking along the street with a dirty, bare-footed street child and a fresh, happy, clean-shaven young man.

Taking him back to the home in Bugembe was an experience both for him and for us. He was fascinated going on the bus and spent the whole time looking out the window as it’s likely he hadn’t ventured outside of Jinja central for 4 years. It must have been incredibly overwhelming seeing greenery and then being taken into a clean, warm, loving environment where Ronald, one of the oldest of our boys, took masterful charge of him and helped him find the shower to have his first decent wash in a very long time. We spent some time playing with him, showing him books and puzzles and settling him in and then sadly the time came to leave. We returned the next day and his massive grin met us when we found him lying on his comfortable mattress after a much-needed safe environment to sleep in. This time we brought Steven along with us so that we could communicate with him a bit more. He read Luca the rules of SALVE and we generally chatted with him about his life. We returned to visit Luca today and he has put on a bit of weight thanks to regular meals and he was happy to play a few games and do some drawings. Unfortunately until we can go to Mbale in search of his parents or a guardian (we are hoping to go next week) and get their consent we cannot give him a sponsor and therefore cannot send him to school. If we cannot find anyone to give their consent then the last resort will be the local councel and hopefully they can agree to let us have him. Anyway, the life of a street child is very active and they don’t spend much time sat around so we are trying to keep him as occupied as possible for the time being. I’m just so happy that he is doing well and seems to be enjoying his new life and think it’s incredible that in just 5 days he has changed so much.

Whilst meeting Luca on Monday we were also introduced to his friend, Richard, who is 12. We interviewed him and discovered that his parents had divorced and his new stepmother, who came with a number of children, beat Richard because she didn’t want him around. We are currently unsure of what has happened to his mother, but Richard has been on the streets for 2 years. He was carrying a huge bag of scrap metal to sell and in my generous, some would say stupid, nature I decided to relieve him of his heavy burden. Little did I know that it was dripping with oil and I got it all over me! As we went round to the places he slept (below) and ate and Esther did the same with Luca, Steven helped me carry one side of the bag and the three of us must have been a real sight – two (semi) well dressed adults carrying a dirty, heavy bag and a street child wandering happily along next to us sucking on an ice-lolly! We also took him to CRO to find our a bit of background information (they seem to know every street child and their life stories) and whilst we were discussing it Richard sadly ran away. Luckily I got a phone call from Mike on Tuesday saying that he’d heard Richard was at CRO and I rushed there to explain to him that we still wanted to help him. He’d thought that we were discussing that we couldn’t help him and he felt abandoned and alone. I was greeted with a huge hug when he saw that I had come back to see him and David, the boy we were trying to help last week, also did the same. I enlisted the help of a CRO staff member to translate and explain to them both that we would see them again next week on Monday morning and discuss the way forward with the two of them. I am really hoping that things work out with both of them. It has been hard since meeting and developing relationships with all three of these boys not to think of them at night on the streets whilst we are in comfortable beds and eating good food but I think that makes me want to work harder to try and do everything we can to help them and all the other children living a life of such hardship on the streets.

After an incredibly busy two days (the above happened only on Monday and Tuesday along with various other SALVE tasks) Wednesday proved to be no different. The day started with a breakfast meeting, very official sounding I know, with a couple that we’d met through CRO called Harry and Hen as I think has already been mentioned in a previous blog. They sponsor street children through school and have worked with CRO to re-house these children with their families. They have rented a house in Masese, the slum community just outside of Jinja, for the few who don’t have families. The meeting was to find out a bit about each other’s organisations and discuss how they could help us meet with a guy called Bosco in CRO who they work with regularly. We are hoping to join them at their weekly football match next Tuesday to discuss with Bosco the way forward for SALVE and CRO’s networking.

The rest of Wednesday, for me, was spent making various animal masks for those without speaking parts in the drama club’s production of Noah’s Ark. Luckily I’d already decided that these masks would have the ‘child’ effect and not be incredible works of art, or that turned out to my excuse for the bad drawings anyway! The students of P4 didn’t seem to mind and coloured them beautifully ready to wear in the final play. We read through the script and it has made me really excited about continuing with it and working with these gifted actors! The one thing I’m going to have to work out is how to turn a boy into Noah’s wife but that is a small price to pay for the acting I’m getting out of them all! Teaching is still going well and I will be sad to see the end of our lessons together. I have been so lucky with the class and am astounded every week by their commitment to learning and amazing effort that they put in throughout every lesson.

Unfortunately Mary, the school’s director, has been away for some time in Rwanda where she has another school, and it has proved incredibly difficult trying to get hold of her. I have been thinking a lot about link schools and how to progress with the school in terms of funding and improving the learning environment for all of its students. Hopefully once Mary is back next week I can move forward with the brochure and find support for the school both in Uganda and the UK. There is a strong possibility that we can begin a ‘buy-a-brick’ scheme for the school and this will really help them to build much needed classrooms and boarder’s lodgings. I’m sure next week’s blog will detail the way forward for Joy School.

I returned to CRO the next day, Thursday, to remind Richard and David of our impending meeting next Monday and they seemed to understand and be excited about the prospect of seeing us all again. The main thing with street children seems to be developing relationships with them and letting them know that they can trust you. It has been a real shock being here that some of these street children don’t have the strong desire to be helped that I’m sure many of you expect. Unfortunately drugs, one reason for not wishing to make a change in their lives, make the experience easier to deal with and they become dependent on them, unwilling to come off them in exchange for support. This means that not getting your hopes up, something I am regularly guilty of, becomes something you really need to learn. I am trying but still have hope that the way forward with Richard and David is in front of us.

We also went with Mike to buy a new desktop computer for the SALVE home, thanks to an incredible donation from the UK This is something that will be so useful in Mike’s and possibly the next intern’s work here.

Esther has been busy this week doing research into vaccinations for the SALVE children by going to clinics and hospitals around Jinja. She has also been creating a record for these immunisations. Unfortunately she has been given some conflicting information on prices but it looks like most are free apart from Typhoid which is really good news as we are keen to see the children ready to fight off any infection that may come their way – something sadly quite likely to occur in Uganda. She has also started some initial research into other organisations that SALVE can link with in the future.

Her Community Education project is going well and she ventured out on to the streets once again with Steven to interview many other street children. They found some potential children to be helped by SALVE and arranged with them to meet us on Monday at the street clinic so once again we are keeping our fingers crossed for them. They found many more children from Masese and Esther has decided not to include these children in her research as our main priority at the moment has to be looking into the reasons behind children living on the streets full time. Our meeting with CRO’s elusive manager, Elizabeth, today, proved to be a success (shocking, I know!) and she has agreed to let Esther come into CRO with a member of her staff to interview many more children and thus collect a lot more data for her report. This is such good news as she will gather a much wider range of information and have a lot more to back up her findings ready to present to the Police and to use in the wider Community Education plans.

So this week has been incredibly busy and next week is looking likely to be even busier – our visit to Mbale; meetings with the Mary to discuss huge amounts of things from the beads project to link schools; meetings with Mike to discuss recruitment of new staff and Community Education plans; amongst many other weekly tasks. It is all challenging but exciting and on this Friday night I am feeling incredibly satisfied with how this week has turned out. As I said before, one less child is on the streets and I couldn’t ask for a better result than that (except for maybe all of them safe and happy but I think that’s maybe asking a bit too much from a week’s work…maybe we can add that to next week’s schedule!).

Thanks again for coming back and reading all about our work here in Uganda. I am looking forward to a relaxing, slow weekend and I hope that this is a prospect for all of you as well. Please come back next week to read all about the next stage in our internship.

Lots of love,

Caitlin xxx

(sorry about all the different fonts and sizes but the blog has a mind of it's own and I can't do anything about it. At least this week it's not green.)

The Friday night thudding of stereos determinedly turned up to full volume is just starting up from all directions, all but drowning out the bleats of goats tethered by the roadside and the last birds of the evening… Later it’ll provide some competition for our local orchestra of baritone frogs and soprano cicadas, with perhaps the early morning accompaniment of our resident carpenter: “Ahiya-maa-aihya-yee-ah-aihya-ouuu.”

The faint glow of the sinking sun is just enough to illuminate the keyboard through the evening haze and our room smells of citronella to frighten off the first of the evening’s mosquitoes.

We’re off down to the Nile for a well-earned end-of-the-week meal soon with our next door neighbour, Ted, a fisheries researcher and some fellow PHD fish experts, but before things get overly academic and fishy here’s an update on our time with SALVE – now half way through but still with plenty of new and exciting experiences to discover each week…

So after another relaxing weekend (largely spent lying under a palm tree in a tropical paradise of dragonflies, weaver birds and black-and-white kingfishers hovering over the river Nile, brightly coloured flowers and a shimmering swimming pool), we were ready to jump into what rivals our busiest and most productive week yet.

Monday started early with the street clinic. Before Stephen arrived we already had two candidates lined up for interview. We couldn’t believe it – whereas last time we had searched high and low and felt we were fishing in a pool of shy fish, now they were already flocking to us without any prompt!

Hassan was the first. He was unmissable as he crossed the road towards us in his mud-coloured coat that reached down to his feet. He held out a skinny hand and muttered a well-practiced, heart-braking “I’m hungry”. We couldn’t fail to feel the pity he was so good at engendering and gave him half a loaf of bread. He sat with us eating it carefully and savoring the almost-moldy flavor while we waited for Stephen to come and find out more about him.

In the meantime we glimpsed a smaller boy (who we later learned was nine), who was hovering unsurely in the distance but watching the bread-eating with hungry interest. Initially we thought he must already be cared for, as despite his bare feet, he was clean and well dressed. We called him over and talked as much as we could, finding out his name was David and that he lived on the streets.

By this time Stephen had arrived and we began to collect more information on both the boys.

It turned out that both had lost their parents – David five years ago through HIV (after his father had abandoned his mother she had turned to a busy life of prostitution to gain a living. David’s youngest sibling had died through her neglect, or perhaps through being born with the virus.) After her death David had found his grandfather selling peanuts in the street, and had gone to live with him along with his younger brother, Patrick. The grandfather had come down from Northern Uganda to escape the political conflict and was penniless but was being homed and supported by a local church enough to survive. He looked after the boys as best he could but both were malnourished and were not receiving a proper education.

David had turned to the streets where he could beg for food and at least escape the teasing from neighboring school children for being supported. With the money he received he was able to buy himself clothes and enough food to live on yet he told us he felt hungry most of the time and had to sustain himself with regular trips to skips where he could find scraps of rotten food.

Hassan’s parents had both been killed in a car accident just four months ago. With no known relatives, he came to the streets to also beg for food. However he would not agree to take us to the area that he had lived with his parents for the required checking of information and to find a possible relative or guardian who could give their consent for SALVE to give their support.

There was nothing more we could do for Hassan for the moment but schedule another meeting and hope he would warm to us attempting to re-connect him with a relative.

In the meantime we asked David to lead us to his grandfather’s home for the required consultation. It was some distance from Jinja along the main road so we got boda-bodas – much to David’s delight!

We got off at a green area leading away from the busy road. David led us past the church to a square concrete building with a flaking door. Inside the room something stirred and a grey head poked out to see two mazungus with his estranged grandson. The grandfather exchanged some brisk words with David, who suddenly became quiet and wouldn’t look anyone in the face.

We explained who we were and that we had come to offer some help and he promptly found the pastor and disappeared back into his hole. We spoke for a while with the pastor and confirmed the information from David, finding out that in David’s absence, his younger brother had been taken to a children’s home. The brothers had not seen each other in three years.

We knocked on the flaking door again and eventually the grey head surfaced. He seemed a bit surprised when we explained that we wanted to talk to him but once he got talking he became very open and told us firmly that he loved David and wouldn’t say anything bad about him. He gave his unofficial blessing on us helping David and was pleased to hear that he could be taken from the streets and given an education.

We left it at that for the day and said a friendly goodbye, anticipating meeting in a couple of days time with Mike.

-o-

Good morning, I got a bit carried away last night and didn’t manage even to get half way through before dinner. (The researchers didn’t turn up but we met an orphan home volunteer and micro-finance worker and ate fajitas with yummy mince and guacamole and sour cream while the fire flies glimmered over the river and danced to all the lanterns and candles casting shadows over the lawn with its frog-orchestra in full swing).

Now I write to the sound of cockerels crowing to each other and the busy splashing of sheets and towels being washed and hung outside my window.

-o-

The following day Hassan did not turn up as scheduled but David came in his place. We were impressed by his persistence. So we asked him to take us to his local haunts so we could gather photos of his eating (above) and sleeping places. It was my most moving experience yet hearing this sweet and intelligent young man give us the practical details of his every day life.

If he was lucky he might find a discarded box left at one of the tips or down a back-alley. This meant that he could lie inside it, with less likelihood of being found and beaten by the police or an older street child perhaps on drugs; worst of all he feared the “thugs”, who would wonder the streets at night, searching for heads to cut off and sell for witchcraft. Otherwise, he would wait until the streets were deserted and sit outside a shop on the main street, pulling his t-shirt over his legs and tucking his head into his knees. He’d awake as soon as it started getting light to avoid abuse from passers-by.

We gave him more bread for his time (in which he could have been begging or searching for scraps), which he stuffed into all his pockets with a grin that wouldn’t fade for a while, and we hoped to be seeing him with Mike the next day at his grandfather’s.

Next we took a bus and a long walk up dirt tracks through forest and fields, escorted by helpful locals when we didn’t know the way, to the home where we were told we could find David’s brother Patrick.

We were welcomed by hoards of small children, some no older than toddlers, who clung to us like limpets as a couple of staff led us to the manager’s office. The manager was very welcoming and happy to see us and gave us a little more information on David’s circumstances. Then he bought Patrick to us; a very quiet little boy who politely answered our questions and gazed in bewilderment until we showed him photos of his brother and grandfather, whom he still recognized even though he hadn’t seen them since he was three.

It was such a privilege to connect them together and give the assurance to each that their brother was still alive and well. We left promising to bring David to visit if and when we were able to take him into our care.

Next was our visit to the grandfather with Mike. Unfortunately David had just left when we arrived (I doubt he has any way of telling the time and he was clearly wary of being there as a neighbour claimed to have seen him hiding behind the toiled block). The grandfather was fast asleep and without David there was little point in waking him so we spoke with a small group of interested neighbours and teachers.

They were aghast when they saw my pictures of David collecting rubbish and sleeping rough. It was difficult for them to associate the grandchild of their respected neighbour to one of the vagrant tramps they were accustomed to seeing in town.

Mike counseled their negative attitudes, encouraging a more positive outlook which would be open to the possibility of acceptance and change. We left hoping to find David once more in town to arrange the awaited meeting.

We set off back into town with Mike, to discuss, amongst other things, the recruitment of new staff and a recent donation to SALVE, which Mike was keen to put towards our big plans for community education.

We are currently planning the recruitment of two new workers: one to live in the home in Bugembe to give extra support, counseling and care. The other worker will be based more in town, helping particularly with the street clinic and community education project. There are always numerous other jobs that need doing, and once we are registered as a Community Based Organisation (very soon we hope! The constitution is just being finalised) there should be plenty of working alongside and learning from neighbouring institutions too.

In terms of community education plans, it’s going to make a huge difference having extra funding to increase our educational resources, particularly in the employment of a small team of professional counselors and other possible social/health-related professionals in training local communities in the varying issues which are leading children to the streets. We may also instigate various vocational projects, such as crafts-making, and perhaps things such as tailoring or carpentry, in order to provide a livelihood amongst families who are currently unable to support their children (or relatives’ orphaned children), or mothers who are turning to prostitution and exposing themselves to inevitable HIV infection.

Mike is currently working on the plans and I look forward to discussing further in the near future. In the meantime I am looking into the reasons for children coming to the streets, and from which communities they come. Once we have correlated the two and discover the reasons for particular communities falling short in certain areas, we will know which resources to focus where.

I got the first chance to do this, this past week and it has been immensely useful already. Stephen (my interpreter) and I were literally swamped by interested children, most of whom were more than happy to answer my interviews and give useful comments and opinions. On hearing that we were also running the street clinic, a group of older boys even offered to find and bring younger boys (more fitting to SALVE’s age requirements of being under 16 before we begin to help) to our clinic next week.

In fact we have quite a number of appointments arranged for next weeks clinics already, mounting up from all the interested children Caitlin and I have been meeting outside clinic hours this week. I just hope we won’t be inundated!

Sadly I have found that almost all children are reporting being beaten by the police. This is something I am still keen to work on, and once I have gained enough claims I intend to go to the Officer in Charge (who is apparently unaware of the situation) and perhaps with the support of other organisations (once we are a CBO), present the statistics.

Already I’m also finding that there is a great deal of interest in vocational courses, and I think it would be fantastic to provide some sort of training for the children we are unable to directly support through the SALVE home. We’re just thinking through the practicalities at the moment but perhaps we could start small, maybe with one of the mothers of poor children at the Joy School teaching paper beads-making (which can be done from recycled leaflets etc and is reasonably self-sustaining) and see how it is received. Obviously if the children spend every penny they earn from selling their wares locally, on food then it can’t keep going but if they plough it back into the project with new materials etc it has the potential to go really well.

The other thing the research will provide is a general overview on the circumstances of those on the streets – data on where they are from, how they make a living (surprisingly diverse - from selling scrap metal to carrying water and washing for others); how many are on drugs (sadly most so far); problems on the streets and their hopes and aspirations (all say education in some capacity). At least it’s reassuring to know that SALVE stands for what literally 100% of the children have their main hope in.

I hope you’re still with me! There’s something very exciting to say… we actually had a call from CRO this week. Elizabeth, the manager, had read our letter asking for her cooperation with scheduling the long-awaited meeting we had hoped for, and had signed her approval, arranging a meeting for next Friday.

(Hopefully a signature means something here…)

In any case just after her call an English guy called Harry randomly started talking with me and it turned out that he and his wife are partnering with CRO and have some useful contacts amongst the staff… so hopefully something will come of this if not with Elizabeth.

Something less encouraging was that as we dropped in to CRO to pick up the letter, we saw David running around with all the other kids, wearing the yellow t-shirt! He ran up to us excitedly and threw off the t-shirt as soon as he realized its implications. We spoke with a motherly looking staff member who told us that they had just come across him in the streets the previous day (after having apparently supported him some six months back before he returned to the streets) and he had told them that he was in the process of being supported by SALVE but that he would come along to CRO for the meantime. The lady, now joined by Elizabeth, affirmed that David was free to choose from whom to gain his support.

We will meet with David and Mike on Monday.

JOY SCHOOL:

Caitlin has also seen some big developments this week. She has moved on from assisting in the English class to taking it on herself. She says the kids are great, making a wonderful class and are getting on famously.

She has also taken auditions for her drama class’s play of “Noah’s Ark”. They have chosen the parts, SALVE’s Ronald being Noah! She is now busy making masks (which the children will colour in) and costumes.

My search for seeds has so far yielded little success and I have decided on a self-holed white seed (you pull out the insides which makes a natural hole for threading) which can be bought cheaply from local villages. It’s nice to think that the project will be benefiting rural villagers too.

So this week has been a lot of trying to reproduce a fairly intricate necklace design we saw at the extreme sports camp last week and creating an earrings design.

Finally, one more thing I want to share. As I was coming back from the beads workshop yesterday I came across one of the children Stephen and I had met earlier on and had arranged to meet on Monday. Duka, who was now sitting along the main street propped against one of the cement pillars that hold up the shops and was wrapping his toes in rubber bands, had been carrying a heavy jerry can of water to earn money when we first met him. He must be about eight and is one of the sweetest boys I have ever met. In his hurry to get the water to its owner we hadn’t had long to arrange the meeting and I just wanted to check that he would be coming.

I managed to get a passer-by to deem to speak with him, and translate for me. As the man was speaking (and making a bit of a show of his openness to speak with a street child), a small crowd developed around us, looking in surprise and horror at us for getting so close to their imagined contamination with an untouchable. One lady, standing well back, even held a handkerchief to her nose and mouth.

Once I felt fairly sure that Duka knew when Monday and 9:30 am was and it transpired that he didn’t know where our meeting place of the post office was, I took his hand and guided him through the quickly dispersing crowd and along the street where the usual friendly greetings and shouts of “mazungu”! became looks of astonishment or disgust. I couldn’t resist taking Duka into a shop and buying some bread (the equivalent of cake and even used as a substitute for wedding cake in many cases) on the way.

We reached the post office and I left him with a note reminding him of the time and place which if he can’t read hopefully someone else will. I hope so much we will see him next week.

Until then bye from me and I hope you’ll still have some energy to come back and hear Caitlin’s account next week!

Lots of love,

Esther xxx

PS I forgot to say – our nice guesthouse worker Hassan has just had his first baby (well his wife did) – all went well and it’s a boy apparently with the same head as Hassan (we can well imagine this as he has a very sweet baby-face!). He promises to bring it around for us to see soon – I’m sure we’ll be putting pictures up when he does : )