31st October 2009

Wow! We cannot believe that it is going to be November tomorrow, our time here really has flown by! We had a fun start to the week when on Sunday we went to the SALVE home for visitation day, all the children (apart from Moreen, who unfortunately did not have the day off due to being at a different school! ) were home for the day so we had a lovely day playing games and eating lots of food prepared by Robinah and Harriet...Everyone had an excellent time and especially liked playing and winning Ludo! We left feeling very full and tired but are really looking forward to when we all get together again.

On Monday morning we came across the boys on the green by main street, they had found two tiny puppies and were having a great time playing with them, they had made them a house from a cardboard box and it was lovely to see how much they wanted to care for them, we stayed with them on the green and played games, whilst Esther gathered some more information for Charles profile with Charles and Stephen. We also got to meet with 6 more street girls sorting rubbish who were all very willing to answer my questions for the research on street girls I am undertaking for SALVE.

We were invited to a meeting of people and organisations keen to help the area of Masese on Tuesday, this was a very informative meeting held at Pastor Terry's house (We were also treated to a lovely lunch cooked by his wife) Everyone there was pledging their support to help this dis-advantaged community, and when we said that we were keen to undertake research into the girls who come from this community and go to the streets, everyone was very supportive and keen to help. Harriet and Stephen continued with the football, and said that everyone had a great time!

On Wednesday unfourtunately I was unable to attend the clinic at Source cafe. Esther said that it was a great success, with Mike speaking with the boy's about how he came to be on the streets and how he came off them.

We wanted to concentrate on Joy Beads on Thursday, as due to the two members of staff running the project at Joy being unwell at various points it has been hard to arrange a time to speak with the staff and the women at the same time. We met with the Matron who showed us some of the lovely seed necklaces that have been made so far. We were keen to meet with all the women so we were invited to return on Friday to speak with them all and see more of their fantastic designs! Unfortunately we got a phone call yesterday to say that the meeting had to be cancelled, but we will attend again next week. I have also been having some positive meetings with Jinja hospital this week regarding educating pregnant women on family planning and spacing of pregnancies which is all a vital part of the picture whne looking at why children come to the street in the first place.

Next week we hope to do further community education research in Mafibira and the surrounding communities. Esther will tell you all about this and Joy beads in our first November blog!

Thankyou for reading.

Lots of Love

Alice and Esther xx

24th October 2009

Hi Everyone,

Welcome to another blog.

As we have come to expect from life here in Uganda things never go according to plan so when our plans to do community education research on Monday got waylaid it was no surprise! Alice and I were on our way to meet Stephen when we met a boy called Asharif, we had never seen him on the street before and were very concerned by how young and upset he looked. So eager to see what we could do we took him to meet Stephen and spent the majority of our day looking into his situation.

After a brief conversation with him we established that he was known to CRO so we took him to see Rose. Both Noah (a CRO social worker) and Rose were very surprised to see Asharif with us as they had been involved with placing him with his current guardians and had seen him attending school just the Friday before. We were told Asharif's story and for someone so young, only about 7 years old, he has had a hard life. He was abandoned as a baby to a women who didnt really want the responsibility of looking after a child. He was moved from pillar and post, spent time on the street and in the transit centre only to be finally taken in with CRO's assistance by a family who were neighbours of the woman who had originally looked after him when he was dumped. However, it appears that although the mother of the family was keen to take him in her older children were not so happy with the situation and have constantly made him feel very unwelcome until he finally ran away to the streets on Saturday. As a team we all met with CRO senior staff to discuss Asharif's situation and it was decided that CRO would investigate the allrgations with the family and try and reestablish the relationship so he could return to school and if not he would be sent to the Transit Centre. Asharif did return home for one night but was unhappy so he is now staying in the Transit Centre and he is being closely monitored by ourselves and CRO.

Tuesday saw what has become our regular football slot with the street children which ws great fun although pretty muddy due to all the heavy rain we've been having every night of the week. The rst of our day was spent working on our various sets of guidelines and putting together displays of the children's artwork that they have done over the last couple of workshops.

Wednesday was workshop day and also Alice's birthday so as an extra special treat for the children in addition to our usual chipatis and juice at break we have iced cup cakes (kindly made for free by Jude at Ozzie's Cafe). They went down very well and we all sang happy birthday - the extra long Ugandan version!

The numbers increased again this week, with six boys attending and we began by asking them to draw their favourite things. Suprisingly they were all modes of transport and we had some very impressive looking motorbikes, lorries and helicopters.

Harriet took this week's lesson and she focused on teaching all the boys about children's rights, we quizzed them at the end and it was was great to see they had taken lots of it in. During the course of the session we noticed Luca has some sores on his lower back and bottom, so beig concerned it may be syphillis we took him to be tested. Happily both his syphillis and HIV tests were negative and it appears he may have a fungal infection that the doctor has advised us to keep an eye on. On wednesday evening we celebrated Alice's birthday with a trip to Falvour's cafe with some friends for their weekly film night and they kindly put on a film of Alice's choice, Bridget Jones!

Thurday saw another busy day. We met Mike bright and early to pay a visit to Joy school to see how the bead project has been progressing and also to check on Helena who has not been feeling well this week. Victoria, a teacher who is working on the bead project, informed us that the group has not been meeting very regularly due to sickness but they plan to meet next week so both Alice and I will be attending that meeting, we also purchased some more manilla paper, vanish and glue so they are able to keep producing their beautiful jewellery. Unfortunately Helena was not well but she was quickly diagnosed with malaria and is now receiving treatment so we are confident she will make a swift recovery. In the afternoon we met with Rose from CRO and two American women Katie and Tamara and attended the Masese 3 women's group meeting. They are setting up a bead project with the women so it was interesting seeing how they are doing it and are dealing with the problems they're facing. However, the main purpose of our trip was to see one of the houses rented by CRO for girls in Masese 3 and interview them for our streetgirl research which was really useful. Luckily for these girls CRO intervened before they had to face the hardships of a life of working on the streets of Jinja picking through rubbish.

The week ended with some much needed time in the internet cafe typing up our weeks findings and some visits to medical centre's around town to look into the cost of consultations and treatments and the care avalable for children with HIV for Alice's health guidelines. We are also looking forward to Sunday when all the children are coming home from school for the day, it'll be great to see them all together and have some fun. But Alice can tell you all about that next week!

Thanks for reading.

Lots of love,

Esther and Alice xxx

17th October 2009

Hi everyone!
Esther and I have had another very busy week in Jinja! Lat weekend we were concerned that we had not noticed any of the boys on the street. On Monday we went straight to CRO to speak with Rose and ask if she knew anything, she said that there had been a rumour of the police coming and doing a 'round up' of the street children, so most of the boy's had been directed to the transit center by another organisation. The boy's were staying at the tramsit center at night and coming back to town during the day to attend CRO. Rose did not know exactly when a round up would be happening, but she did think that there would be one soon, we will find out as much information as we can and Rose has said that she will keep us informed.

Tuesday was a fantastic day, we met up with the whole SALVE team along with Robert, Charles, Luca and Hasna ( a new boy who we have started to work with.)for our first weekly game of football at the local pitch. The boy's loved it and are all really looking forward to coming next week. Mike also surprised us with his football skills.....

On Wednesday we held our second workshop at Source, all the boy's from last week came plus Hasna they had a great time designing and colouring in their own football strips and after a snack we undertook some teaching based on 'staying safe' we covered topics such as sanitation, hand washing and simple first aid. The boy's love learning and are giving us lots of excellent answers!

Thursday was spent with Rose as she had kindly let us come with her to watch and gain research from one of the women's groups she facilitates in Massesse III (There are 3 Massess's surrounding Jinja town!) Seeing the womans group was fascinating, and they are all so eager to learn and participate in making their own crafts to sell. The women were all very helpful and welcoming and were happy to answer many questions as part of our research into community education. We also discussed with Rose that we are keen to undertake some research into the street girls who are seen in Jinja during the day, Rose has said that she would happily come with us next week to interview some of the girls which is really exciting!

(Rose with the women's group.)

Yesterday was great. We met with the project manager at TASO (The aids support organisation) in Jinja who was amazingly helpful and has given me the last bits of information I need to complete the guidelines for SALVE and even though (after many years of service at TASO) he is leaving the organisation to move to a different area he has still sad he is very hapy to review the guidelines when finished which id great! After a torrebtial downpour we went back into town were we met with Henry at JIDNET (A network for local NGO's within Jinja) he has been invaluable in helping us get CBO status and is always very patient when it comes to all our many questions!

So it is now the weekend and we are writing this after going back to the SALVE house in Bugembe to see Hassan, Richard and Ronald all are well and are looking forward to getting back too school on Monday!

Lots of Love

Alice and Esther xx

11th October 2009

Hi Everyone,

Alice and I have just returned from a day away exploring some of the beautiful scenery Uganda has to offer. On Friday it was Independence day here and was a national holiday. So we decided to make the most of it and visit Sipi Falls which is near Mount Elgon and is meant to be one of the most beautiful waterfalls in the country and it definitely didn't disappoint! It was very impressive and such a peaceful place to spend a night.

But on to what we've been up to this week. As Alice said last week sadly Musa decided to go back to the streets, his main reason appearing to be that he missed his friends. They are a very close group spending the whole day together, working together and sleeping in a group on Main street for safety, so we could understand that it must have been strange for him not being able to see them. We spent the early part of the week trying to investigate what had happened to MUsa, speaking to his friends, to shop owners we knew helped him and to senior members of CRO staff. As yet we have not been able to get hold of his parents but CRO staff think that it may be possible that he has journeyed to Kampala. But we are continuing to look into this and hope to have more information on his whereabouts soon.

This week also saw the start of SALVE's use of the local community centre at Source cafe for our street clinic. We're really pleased to now have a safe and regular place where we can conduct our clinics at least one day a week to begin with. We decided it would be really beneficial to have a team training so we held that on Tuesday at Source. It was great to all come together and discuss SALVE and our aims and objectives and we also spent time deciding what topics we think it will be useful for us to cover during our one day a week lessons with the children such as basic hygiene and life skills.

Our first workshop with the children on Wednesday was a great success and we're really looking forward to seeing it develop and grow in the weeks to come. Luca, Robert and Charles were the three boys that attended this week and we hope that they will come back regularly and our numbers will grow. We began with asking the children to draw round there hands, write their names in them and decorate them (which is something all the children at the SALVE house have done). It may not sound very exciting but they really enjoyed it and you could see it was nice for them just to do a fun activity for a change. We have now cut them out and mounted the hands and are planning to display them at each lesson and ask any new children to do them as well. This activity also highlighted that it might be beneficial to cover some basic reading and writing skills as all three boys had trouble writing their names. After this Mike spent some time explaining to them exactly who SALVE is and what we are trying to do and we then we had great fun playing a game to trying to learn each others names, for most of the day I was Elizabeth and Alice was Alex - close enough :) We took a break for chipatis and juice, not before trying to explain the importance of their hands before eating and then moved on to collecting some basic information about the boys such as where they're from, how long they've been on the street and how they get food and money. At the end of the lesson all the boys said they were looking forward to coming back next Wednesday and were even more excited about the game of football we're planning for Tuesday. Alice and I have also started using a log which we will use on each street clinic so we have a clear idea of who we are meeting each day which hope will help us monitor and evaluate their progress.

We ended the week by doing some essential admin and deciding on the criteria for the research we want to do for SALVE's planned community education project. We plan to visit villages in the Jinja district to establish exactly what each community sees as a priority for community education and what they would like to be covered. We also want to find out what community education already exists in the villages so we will be able to compliment them once SALVE's project is up and running. We have also been having a look into how charitable organisations in Uganda gain funding and hope to put together a list of possible sources for the future, although fundraising is not as established here as it is in the UK.

So there you have it another week in Uganda, as always we're looking forward to seeing what next week brings!

Lots of love,

Esther and Alice xxx

4th October 2009

Hi Everyone,

We have now come to the end of another week working with SALVE. We cannot believe how quickly it has gone, but it has certainly been quite busy, if not a little emotional!
Our week seemed to start and end with Source cafe, on Saturday we attended an NGO forum which was very informative, and helped us to make a lot of useful link's with other NGO's and community groups in the area, we were also filled up with very lovely coffee and brownies, which alway's help at a meeting!

On Monday we met with Mike and Stephen to dicuss the way forward for the street clinic, we goig to start the street clinic's a little earlier, to see if we are able to become aware of more children, as often later in the morning they are doing job's for shop's and restaurant's which pay them a very small amount of money. We were also becoming more aware of the need to have a room/space to hold the clinic, on Saturday we noticed that Source cafe had room's available to hire, it was decided that we would arrange a meeting with the manager ASAP and see if he would be happy to work with Salve. Stephen discussed with us that he had found two young girls who he felt had been abandoned at his church, he had arranged for the girl's to stay with a trusted person in the village and was keen for our input on the situation, it was decided that we would go to the village the next day and speak with the girls. Mike also said that he would be going back to the Transit centre in the morning to speak with Hassan which was really positive.

On Tuesday we left early for the vllage, we were struck by how young the girl's were. Veronica was 8 and Martha, 9. They said they were cousins and were living with their auntie and going to school, when the aunt ran out of money she said that she needed to take the grl's back to their home in Bugeri, while on this jurney they drove through Stephen's village and stopped at the curch, the girl's were told to wait for the aunt whilst she went for some shopping, the girl's waited for hour's but the aunt never came back. They said that they loved their family and wanted to go back. Bugeri is around 4 hours away from Jinja, so after speaking with Mike we decided that we would come back in the morning and speak with their families. Stephen said they were safe for the night, and we made sure that their carer had enough money to fed them. The girl's seemed very happy once they realise we were there to help them.

After our trip we went back to the Salve home to see how Musa was setteling in, ad to drop off some much needed felt tip pen's (There has been a lot of very artistic boy's in the house recently!) Musa was very happy, and was showing us all of his picture's. Esther then spoke with Richard about his experience of living in the Salve home for the new's letter which came out really well! Mike then told us some excellent new's that Hassan would be returning to the house later that evening which was a really fantastic result!

(One of Musa's fantastic drawings!)

It had been arranged that we would meet with Stephen and the girl's at 9:30am on wednesday morning, before leaving we got a call from Stephen to say that the girl's had gone missing, he had looked everywhere but could not fine them, we went to CRO and checked if they had any information, they had nothing on the girls. This was a huge dissapontment as they are so young, but we will keep looking, and if we see them again we will help them as best we can. Today we were also told that Musa had left the Salve home saying that he was missing his friends, Mike has been working really hard with him, and at the moment the change from the streets to the house is prooving very difficult for him, we are doing everything to work with him on the street's and hope to have him back in the Salve home soon.

On Thursday myself and Esther went to the Mildmay HIV hospital in Kampala, after a very bumpy taxi ride (with a coffee -not recomended!) we were greeted very warmly to the hospital. It was an amazing place, with fantastic staff. After meeting with the country director I feel like I know have an excellent overview of the HIV/AIDS care in Uganda and some invaluable research for my project.
www.mildmay.org

On Friday we got some excellent new's as every wednesday we have secured a room at Source to hold one of the clinc's, this is great as it mean's we can do much more with the children, while allowing them to feel safe and have the chance to act like kid's again for a few hours! We also spoke with Mike about all of us meeting up as a team for Salve's first team training session, this will happen next Tuesday and Mike is really keen to get started as he has lot's of fantastic ideas!
We welcomed Harriet back yesterday, and spent last night at the volunteer's house party which is run by Harriet's sister, Sharon it was a lovely party and was great to see some old face's and a few new ones!

We have a busy week coming up, and we hope to be able to tell you more about our work with Musa and our new developments with the clinic...

Lots of Love

Alice and Esther xx