Before I begin a short account of another busy week here’s something unusual from our weekend – no photo I’m afraid as it was totally unexpected! As we were sitting by the Nile drinking tea (very English I know) a noisy little jet ski was scudding up and down in front of us (obviously showing off) throwing out huge jets of spray and creating waves that sent the little fishing boats rocking precariously. The “strapping” spandex-and-sunglasses-clad driver had a definite look of Captain Jack Sparrow and as he roared at high speed towards us and turned off at the last moment just as we thought he would run into us and managed to miss us with spray, we couldn’t help feeling a little envious. Three big body guard-looking friends came along and when he tired of his antics he left the boat right in front of us and went off with them. We managed to curb the temptation to get into it in his absence but he unexpectedly returned a few moments later and asked us if we wanted a go! We couldn’t believe he was serious and when it turned out he honestly wanted nothing in return we decided we would take him up on the offer… It turned out to be very easy, just pulling a switch more of less to make it go faster or slower and turning the wheel to make it turn surprisingly responsively. Like a water-motorbike and so fun jumping over all the waves!
No harm done apart from a minor mishap as I seated myself back into my large wicker chair – this time on the top so as to get a better view of Caitlin setting off. To my embarrassment I felt the whole thing toppling backwards as she thundered off at alarmingly high speed and missed the next few moments as I crashed to the ground with arms and legs flailing! No injuries but just some extra mud to add to the wetness and our excitement at the second unexpected boat trip.
Sadly the week started with some tragic news about Luka. It turned out that he had run away over the weekend, making this his third time since coming to the SALVE home. No one knew why he has left and it being his third time, it looked unlikely that we would be able to take him in again unless he had a good reason.
Caitlin and I met him on Monday morning during the street clinic. Under Mike’s instruction we took him along to CRO to speak with Bosco and find out why he had left and to discuss how to proceed. As always Bosco was welcoming and helpful (I had a lovely picture of him gently coaxing Luka to speak but sadly this somehow deleted itself) and we discovered that Luka had wanted to join his friends at the Jinja Show which Caitlin mentioned last week. It is popular with street children and the loud music carrying on well into the early/late hours of the morning must have been too bigger a temptation for him. It is just difficult to understand how he could favour nights on the streets to his comfortable and loving home in Bugembe. Maybe he was getting used to the idea that he could leave when it suited him and return whenever we found him, always welcoming him with smiles and open arms. In any case we didn’t want to encourage this way of thinking and it was becoming clear that the children at CRO, some of whom we are hoping to help (David and Richard in particular) were confused about how we were supporting Luka when they sometimes saw him there and at other times knew he was with us. The last thing we want is to put potential and interested children off, giving them the impression that our home is not worth staying in or that we beat our children or however else they imagine we would treat them to make them run back to the streets.
We asked Bosco to translate to Luka that we love him very much and only want the best for him, but that we want him to choose which way he goes, and seeing that he isn’t committed to us we would let him go. It was more than heartbreaking for us all to see how forlorn Luka looked at this and for all the world that he was ready to return and regret leaving us at all. But as I say, we know this would not be the best option, and in all likelihood he would return to the streets in yet another week.
I have given Bosco a photo of Luka to put up in their linking organisation in Luka’s original community, Mbale. We hope that someone may remember him (although we are unsure how long ago Luka lived there, it may be anything up to four years) and be able to link us up with some possible relatives. We will wait to see if this is productive and if not we hope it will still be possible to take Luka to Mbale and see what we can find. It would be fantastic to find the family support that he so desperately needs. At least this would be so far from the streets it would be difficult to return so readily. I have heard from so many sources that once a child has been on the streets anything over just a couple of months, it is difficult to re-assimilate him or her back into any kind of normal, stable family environment. Yet this is exactly what he needs, and it must be the hardest thing for both us and him to accept that this is what he must begin to understand before he can start to help himself.
For the moment CRO has offered their help – which is something and may provide the loose kind of link that we need to slowly get him used to the idea of being supported. Whilst CRO primarily focuses on those children with whom it can reunite with their families or relatives, it does provide one meal a day and limited education and counseling for those whom it is “rehabilitating” and in the process of finding full-time shelter for.
This is why it is so useful to have its input into SALVE’s work – whilst we can provide the long term love, attention and support through quality counseling, education and care that CRO cannot, they act as a wonderful mediator between streets and home – providing the information we need about almost every child’s past, relatives if known etc and guide us in how, according to their knowledge and understanding of the child’s previous conduct, to proceed in a helpful and constructive way. It is also great to have them there as a back-up, so that if all else fails and the child chooses not to receive our help, they will help us through finding a suitable alternative avenue of support.
Our dismay over Luka was somewhat balanced with the progress we have made with Richard this week. As I got down to serious business with my beads, Caitlin made the journey with Mike and Richard to Kaliro, where Richard believed his mother to be living. It was a long and cramped journey by bus, taxi and boda-boda and when they got to the place Richard expected to find her, they discovered she no longer lived there. They were told she has moved to somewhere outside Jinja but there is no way of telling where unless we find another relative. They returned to Bugembe, where they learned they might find an aunt, but to no avail. Whilst this along with the realisation that Richard’s father apparently lives somewhere in Jinja but that noone knows where, seemed discouraging, Mike believes that this is the first hurdle of not many more. It has proved to us that it would be futile to continue to search for a caring relative, and the next step is to receive CRO or a local counsel’s consent in us taking him in. Caitlin thanked Richard for his time with a typically Ugandan, huge meal of many kinds of carbohydrate that weighed Caitlin down for several days and made Richard so happy he was still beaming over his extended tummy when I met him on his way back along the main street.
We hope we’ll be able to update you on this next week along with, hopefully, some news on David.
Next are our plans for new staff members – Caitlin has been busy printing out the info on the application process and requirements etc and sticking them around town. Her trip to Teen Missions, a community development organisation from whom we gained Stephen (our interpreter) turned out to be more eventful than expected. She discovered that it was about half way to Bugembe and then bodaboda down a long road from there, so far she was wondering whether she was in the right place. She eventually got there and accomplished what she set out to do. We all look forward to lots of applications for the interviews this coming Wednesday.
Mid-week we took the day off for Caitlin’s 23rd birthday! It was a lovely day at Mabira Forest Reserve, a large stretch of both well preserved and less preserved (after some massacring during Amin’s time) rainforest. We joined up with two Dutch girls for a guided tour which showed us a lot more than our untrained eyes would have noticed - various weird and wonderful species such as the “Sausage Tree” dangling green sausages, “Elephant Ear Tree” sprouting green elephant ears, and coco bean pods. Also the “Strangler” tree, a frightening skeletal looking thing which takes hundreds of years to slowly grow up the outside of a normal, healthy tree and suck out all its nutrients and suffocate it until the tree inside dies and the Strangler is left standing all around the original as its own hollow and eerie copy. Amongst these were some impressively huge trees with giant roots.
Caitlin glimpsed a particularly poisonous variety of snake just a couple of feet away, the Black Momba, which is luckily shy and slithered away quickly. Then at the end of the walk we saw red-tailed monkeys! We’d been looking out for these all the way and had almost given up hope of seeing any but as we watched one from a distance a whole big family came along and jumped around above our heads, waiting for the biscuits that previous groups had obviously fed them.
Later we met up with a couple of volunteers, Jan from Germany who is working with CRO (opposite me) and Brian (behind him), a friend of Aran and Sinke’s who came with us on the first boat trip. Sadly no one else was able to make it with a host-family commitment popping up at the last minute and a lesson to prepare for the next day, but it was good to catch up properly with a select few and we all enjoyed some western chatter and amazing western but also sufficiently exotic food under lantern light.
For me, the rest of the week as with the first part, has largely been taken up with the beads project. This required me to get together or make all the remaining samples and photograph them (which had to be done twice as my camera decided to delete these too) for the brochure, so it could at last be completed and sent off to the uk ready to find a market. Very exciting. We’re really thankful to our trustee Helen for looking into this for us as it is clear that, as the project currently operates without any grant, it can only be self-sustaining through a foreign market.
Helen is based in Oxford and when I return there in September I’ll be able to take all the products with me to the interested shops and transfer the money across. It all sounds amazing and will be so satisfying to see!
This meant making various things to send off with the brochure such as a sales sheet for Helen to fill in with prospective buyers, their orders and the prices they would be prepared to pay. Also a list of minimum and asking prices based on a detailed budget of material and labour costs. My poor little head wasn’t designed to do maths and the complicatedness of this along with all the currency conversions has stretched it to the limits but also very rewarding to see that it is in fact possible and will be so useful in explaining how surprisingly small profits will be used to achieve the project’s objectives. Any extra, which shouldn’t be too hard to get, will be a bonus.
Apart from the wages the children and mothers will be receiving for their work, it’s wonderful seeing the skills they are learning and will continue to be able to use, and their enthusiasm to learn. It’s all been well worth the work.
Other than this, community education research wasn’t able to take place this week as Noah who I am responsible for working with through CRO, hasn’t been able to come all week. Instead I was able to speak with CRO “Education Officer” Fred, who helpfully went through their vocational education plan for some of the children in their care. We hope to provide this opportunity for some of SALVE children in the future, once they have completed their primary education. Even a primary education hugely increases chances for employment but for those who are less academic or have a passion for a particular, more vocational profession, we thought it would be good to provide a few alternatives to secondary school.
Fred was able to give me a run down of the pro’s and con’s of apprenticeships and colleges, including costs and the types of subject available. He has given the details of some colleges in the area for me to look into, and also a source of funding which looks hopeful. Sadly there’s not going to be time to look into all the institutions he mentioned but it’s going to be interesting finding out a little more.
Caitlin has been busy with various things, including planning the “Link School” programme she has mentioned in previous blogs and finalising her plans for raising money for the school building. Creating a link with a school in the UK has required her to think through what exactly Joy School can offer, and in return what they hope to receive. I’m sure she would like to tell you more about this in the next blog. Her plans to raise money for the new school building mean that she needs to account for all the donations, and has been devising a system for this.
Caitlin’s “Noah’s Ark” production has unexpectedly been shifted forwards, as she just discovered that the children will be beginning their holidays at the end of next week! The play will therefore be this Thursday which means everyone is going to be very busy! It sounds like they are well on the way there and Caitlin has been so organised with it all I’m sure they will get along famously. It’s amazing to think that by next week it will all be over and we’ll have some pictures to show you : )
That’s all for now. We’re looking forward to a BBQ this afternoon with Jan and his friends and watching (not doing!) bungee jumping tomorrow. Aran and Brian are going to be jumping from an unthinkable distance above the Nile and perhaps dangling their heads in…
Hope you have a lovely weekend and I look forward to updating you in two weeks time!
Esther xx
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