Saturday, 25 July 2009

The realisation that this is the 12th 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 5th, 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 5th, 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

No comments:

Post a Comment