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