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