Hi everyone,

I know you’re not going to believe me when I say that I’m going to keep this brief (particularly after another very busy week!) but the sun-filled garden and a cold beer are beckoning… Caitlin is already sitting there reading her book and I can’t help feeling just a little envious as I sit in front of this old monstrosity of a flickering computer. Don’t worry, I do love writing to you really...

So if I can remember as far back as last weekend, which strangely doesn’t seem long ago at all yet thinking back it seems a long time indeed as so much has happened, I’ll quickly fill you in on our trip to Kampala before running through our chaotic yet as always interesting week.

We had a lovely time at Caitlin’s friend Wim’s wedding, for Caitlin to see him again after so long (she’ll be embarrassed for me to tell you this but she mistook his brother (who she had never met) to be him!!) and I felt very privileged to be there having never met him at all. Having never been to a Ugandan wedding it was difficult to tell how much of it was European and how much from Wim’s Ugandan bride, but the whole thing was beautiful with rose petals scattered all down the aisle, a Ugandan band with enthusiastic dancing and an excellent sermon by a Ugandan pastor. It was strange to get so caught up in the experience having just met the couple for the first time.

Afterwards we had some time in Kampala before the reception and wandered around a little being amazed at its multicultural feel and making the most of the variety of European food on offer. We shouldn’t have filled ourselves up so much as another huge meal awaited us at the reception, with African dancing I can only explain as enthusiastic hip-shaking with grass skirts. Also some drumming and a sweet troop of HIV orphans with whom Wim has worked sang a moving song for the couple.

Then Idris, who works with my Dad in the Dream Scheme network (I’ll tell you more later) really kindly came to pick us up to take us to his home just a little way outside the city where we had arranged to stay the night. I couldn’t believe it when he turned up in the biggest car I’ve ever been in with a TV in the front and a chauffeur! It turned out to belong to his millionaire boss who owns a spice business.

Having had Idris to stay back home in the UK it was fascinating to see his life in here in Uganda and meet his family and see his home. Still in a state of renovation, they were living in two rooms and had somehow managed to find two spare mattresses for Caitlin and myself to take up one of the rooms while they all slept in the other. I guess this is normal in Ugandan homes though and I think they count themselves very lucky to be expanding soon. Needless to say, we were given another huge meal. I was glad that the chicken turned out not to be one of their only two.

The next day Idris took us to see the projects that he is running in the area with Dream Scheme – a tailoring project teaching women and children enough for them to become self-employed or sell their products in the Dream Scheme’s local shop, a crafts project teaching children to make bowls from dried grass, IT training to teach twenty children each year, community well-building and football coaching. We met one of the teams of local lads who were obviously very dedicated and had their hearts set on becoming part of the national league. The most talented had already received scholarships to attend school, and the best of them are routinely taken on to high-paying teams. It was all very interesting to see – not only to fully understand what my Dad spends part of his time working on from the UK but also I hope it will be of use to SALVE’s community education programmes. Seeing the tailoring working so well in this community as well as in Massese is very encouraging to see. It’s nice to see crafts projects like the one running in Joy school getting going elsewhere, and to know that it has the potential to have great effects. I also wonder if it might be possible to do something like the football – it was wonderful to see the enthusiasm for this. Above all, Idris explained to us, the aim is to provide opportunities which involve young people in the community in a constructive way and provide something to do as an alternative to drugs and unemployment.

As we came to the end of our tour Idris informed us that his boss wished to see us and we wondered why. Still none the wiser we found ourselves seated round his table eating another huge meal and drinking sodas with him and his large family asking us all about life in the UK. He showed us around his factory just behind his back yard and gave us a bag of spices to sample as well as a lift in another enormous car back into Kampala!

It was amazing to see the contrast between rich and poor, but encouraging to see this millionaire’s concern for those less fortunate than himself and interest in our work. On the long journey back to Jinja the whole weekend seemed a bit surreal, and whilst looking forward to getting “home” it was refreshing to have got away properly for the first time in over three months.

I realise I have taken a whole page and a half just to tell you about the weekend so things will be getting a little more concise:

We went straight into interviews for SALVE’s new staff members – very interesting to be on the other side of the table for the first time! We interviewed two for each position, including Stephen with whom we have been working with as a temporary volunteer to translate for us on the street clinic and during community education research. The choice of whom to interview from the dozen who applied had been fairly straightforward as many just didn’t have the level of experience we were looking for (but not quite so easy to let them know after they had all so obviously spent time on their applications and had a lot of hopes hanging on them).

Choosing Stephen for our three-days-a-week street clinic and community education worker with various other responsibilities was an easy decision for us all; I think our hearts went out to him when he humbly explained that he had grown up like a street child himself and had grown to want to help those living in a similar situation, to give them the support he had never received. He asked for so little money to do it that it was clear it is entirely a passion and not just a means of gaining money as we got the impression from some of the others.

For the full-time staff worker the choice was more difficult as both candidates were well experienced and passionate but sadly we had to turn down the school master as he had a family of five whom we just couldn’t support to live in the SALVE home. This left Harriet, who came across extremely well according to all our criteria and really seems to have her heart in helping children. All her past experience shows this too.

We’re excited to welcome both Stephen and Harriet to the SALVE home next Thursday to give a proper introduction to their new roles and to meet all the children!

Caitlin met Stephen the following day to do the street clinic who was overjoyed at hearing the good news. The clinic went well after finding a large group of boys, comprising of David and Luka’s friends. Caitlin and Stephen decided it would be useful to do some counseling and discuss with the boys their ideas about how they might take things forward to help themselves. As we have said before, Luka appears to be very confused about what he wants and with so little support in deciding how to deal with this, it seems the majority of boys just carry on with life as they know it, not really expecting for more. Caitlin feels that this all went well and is an important step in getting Jinja’s street children to begin to move on.

Sadly I didn’t get to take part in this as things are really mounting up as time gets scarce. I can hardly believe we only have two weeks left! I decided to tie up the vocational education research by visiting two medical colleges to look into nursing courses and also a catering college. SALVE’s Moreen would like to become a nurse when she is older so we thought it would be useful to have some idea of the types of courses available and the qualifications they require as well as course fees. The town’s hospital training centre turned out to offer a government funded scheme for those that qualify, needing some A Level grades I think Moreen will be well capable of achieving. The others on private schemes were so expensive (and yet appeared to offer the same thing), I wonder how anyone can afford it. The catering courses were horrendously priced and yet appear to offer little more than the vocational institutes CRO has already mentioned. Just as with the difference in rich and poor, this seemed equally staggering. Anyway it’s nice to know there are some good possibilities out there and I am excited to see where SALVE’s children are in a few years time.

Caitlin has spent much of the week putting together welcome packs for Harriet and Stephen. These will include an overview of SALVE and its work, various rules and regulations, contract and job role etc. These will be presented to them on Thursday when they are introduced to the home. As I say, it has been very interesting being on the other side of the recruitment process for a change and I think Caitlin is finding this aspect of her work immensely useful for her career plans in a possible HR field for an international charity. It’s also going to make things nice and easy for our new staff so they don’t have to spend ages learning things along the way.

My community education research has at last come to an end. I am a little sad that I will no longer wander the backstreets of Jinja, bumping into all sorts of interesting , drugged up, scary looking and lovely and helpful people, yet it is also extremely fulfilling to feel that it is now “complete” (in reality something it could never be) and all the info can be put together for many different uses!

Again, my poor head has been subject to a lot of numbers, figures and calculations as I have been working out things like the percentage of children that steal but that do not steal from the public and the distribution of reasons for leaving home according to the various communities. I love completing things and putting them in nice and easy visual forms though, so putting all these horrible numbers into charts and graphs, and hopefully a distributional map if there is time, feels very fulfilling indeed. The best thing is knowing that it can all be used so constructively.

I’ve chosen various interesting and helpful points to get across to the police and am currently writing up a report to present next week. The idea is to invite Jinja police’s Probation officer and Head of Family and Child Support Unit along to CRO for a workshop in which we can educate them with the facts that the street children are actually not so damaging to the town as they think. A few points like for example almost 50% of children on the streets carry out domestic duties such as cleaning, carrying goods and water to make a living and that only just over one in ten beg, whilst those that steal from the public are limited to less than two out of ten, will be very useful. We were particularly interested to see that, contrary to the police’s belief that the children don’t want to leave the streets, a staggering 96% of children we interviewed would return home if they had the opportunity. Also encouraging to see was that almost nine in ten children were interested in receiving an education in some capacity, 67% putting is as their top priority. Not only do I hold hopes that this could help challenge the police’s negative stereotypes, but it is overwhelmingly satisfying to have the evidence that SALVE is working for what so many children have their main hope in.

The results are also shedding some light on our community education plans. It’s been fascinating to discover the top reasons for children coming to the streets, and useful to locate the particular hotspots for certain problems. It turns out that, sadly, domestic violence is the greatest factor. Although it can be difficult to separate all the factors as so many are combined, it seems that this is the first and foremost issue that leads children away from home. Whilst separation and death of parents is also a major factor, the vast majority of children are able to find loving care with another relative. Although it is common that poverty forces the relative to give up the child or the child to leave to find a better living, beating from a relative and step-mothers in particular is accountable for more children on the streets than any other single reason. Luckily there are a number of communities we would set as a high priority reasonably close to Jinja so it is going to be interesting to see how we are able to tackle these issues.

Other than this, the beads project is still coming along nicely, this week teaching the mothers how to make white seeds earrings. Their keenness to learn and thankfulness for me giving the little time and resources I can continues to make it more than worth it and keeps me excited to see how things will be when their payments for all their hard work comes through from the UK market. Efrance, the matron and poor mother of two children at Joy School (one of which is called Esther!) had made almost ten necklaces and bracelets just since I taught her last week! She was more than keen to learn a new design and has worked on this with the loving care and attention she has employed all along. I forgot to mention that I saw her twice last week, when I happened to drop in at the jewelers where I get my supplies – whether she had been waiting for me all week to buy more materials for her or whether it was by chance I don’t know but her enthusiasm is a real inspiration.

Caitlin has been doing some research into grants-giving organisations to fund the link-school programme, giving money to teachers who can do exchanges between the UK and Uganda. She also came along to the school this morning to take some photos for evidence of the great need for funding construction work at the school. She also completed her research into bank accounts for SALVE, involving an assessment of the available local branches and what they offer in terms of interest etc.

The smell of mangos and pineapples is at last tempting me away from the computer, now that the sun has set (and I missed my cold beer but there’s time for that tomorrow) and the cicadas are already singing. We’re about to have a huge fruit salad with yoghurt so I shall leave you with your mouths watering for delicious Ugandan fruit and I will be sad to write my last ever blog with SALVE next time.

We’re looking forward to Mike and Robina’s wedding tomorrow. We can’t believe it’s almost here already! Caitlin will let you know all about it next week.

Lots of love,

Esther xx