Getting To Know...Stephen

Last week we introduced you to our Regional Director, Mike, who heads up all of SALVE’s operations here in Jinja. Working closely alongside Mike is Stephen, our community worker. Despite his job title, Stephen is involved in every aspect of SALVE’s work, although his real passion is for community education.

Stephen, S.A.L.V.E.'s Community Worker

Stephen was born and raised in the Jinja area and like Mike is determined to provide a better future for the next generation than what he experienced. Stephen’s mother was very young when she gave birth to him. As she was still was still in school she left Stephen in the care of his grandmother. Later she married Stephen’s stepfather but as is the case with many stepchildren, he was not fully accepted by his mother’s new family. And so he grew up being very self-sufficient, lacking any proper guidance, love or support. He would leave the house early in the morning and struggle to find food and small jobs to earn money.

Stephen takes centre stage at the S.A.L.V.E. staff meal out! L-R Emma (Comms), Laura (Intern), Stephen, Harriet (Home Care Helper), Janet (Intern)

Stephen has a very clear vision of the future that he wants to see for his community and for the children of Jinja. Through community education programmes and empowering the youth, Stephen hopes that the local communities will learn to be self-sufficient and that the children living on the streets of Jinja today will be the leaders of tomorrow by guiding and counselling others and ensuring that the cycle is broken. Having worked with street children for a very long time in many different capacities, he recognises that the street children of Jinja are lacking love and support in the same way that he once did. Many of them have left home because of violence, disobedience or splitting of families. He believes that SALVE can help to reconcile children with their families, rehabilitate them from street life and provide education to empower them to lead the way for the next generation.

Stephen with one of the S.A.L.V.E. children, Ronald

In other news, we are very pleased that baby Peace has now found a great home in one of the nearby babies’ homes that will take very good care of her over the next few weeks while we still wait for her HIV test results to come back. Her condition is continuing to improve and with an in-house nurse on hand over the next few weeks, hopefully she will rapidly regain strength.

Come back next week for more news from Uganda!

Laura and Janet

Getting to know you, getting to know all about you!

This week, Mike was in the hot seat! For the first month and a half we have been getting to know Mike fairly well, but we have never had the opportunity to sit down and fully get to the bottom of what makes him tick!! So we brought our resident camera lady (SALVE comms officer, Emma) along and threw some of the most hard-hitting questions we could manage at him. After the short interview, I think we learnt an awful lot not only about him personally but also Uganda at large and many of the deeply rooted social issues in Ugandan society.

Many of you may know Mike Asiya as the Regional Director of SALVE international in Uganda. Mike was born and raised in Northern Uganda by his grandparents, along with his cousin. However, both children found themselves living on the streets of Arua after their grandparents were killed in tribal war.

During his time on the streets Mike (aged around 7/8) experienced many forms of abuse and exploitation. At one time he was used to traffic gold across the Congolese/Ugandan border in exchange for chapatti, which remains his favourite food to this day! After sometime, Mike was picked up from the streets by a man working for World Vision, who took him in and cared for him. However, as in many of the cases we have heard regarding street children, Mike was not accepted into the family by the man’s wife and found himself subjected to physical and emotional abuse - eventually returning to the streets again to escape the violence.

Eventually Mike ended up being put in touch with a lady who ran a local orphanage and who offered to look after him. As it turned out, one of the workers in the orphanage was a relative of Mike’s, whom he’d lost contact with after the death of his grandparents, and she took him in, caring for him and putting him through school.

Mike’s time on the streets had an immense influence on the rest of his life. Although he has worked in many different fields, his main passion has always been to reach out to the children living on the streets of Uganda and give them a sense of hope for the future. Mike is a fantastic example for all the children in the SALVE home. He shows them that regardless of their pasts or what they have done up until now, they are capable of achieving anything in the future if they work hard enough and are given the opportunities they deserve.

As well as his very large SALVE family, Mike also has a small family of his own. His wife Robina has been a wonderful mother figure to all the children in the SALVE home for the last year and we both have great admiration for her. Baby Caren is universally doted upon and treated as a little sister by all the SALVE children.

As a follow up to what we told you last week about baby Peace, this has been a tumultuous week. On Saturday, we received the news that her father died in the village in Kamuli. Her widowed mother is receiving treatment in Kamuli but feels unable to look after Peace in the near future. Peace spent the week in and out of hospital being treated for various infections, malnutrition, pneumonia and malaria. At the end of the week she seems to be getting stronger and is currently out of hospital. We are still awaiting her HIV test results which will take another few weeks to come back due to a broken lab but as soon as we receive news Peace can begin ARVs and Ashley, her current guardian will find suitable long-term accommodation for her.

And so concludes the dramas of the week in Jinja!

Following the childrens return to school, the SALVE house suddenly seems very quiet this week. Only Maureen remains and she is chomping at the bit to start at her new secondary school on Monday.

Mike's daughter, Karen, has taken this opportunity to fill the void of the children by starting to walk on her own, something we've all been desperately trying to tempt her to do for the last few weeks (even to the extent of Mike buying her some squeaky shoes in an attempt to persuade her!)

Now that the chaos of preparing the children for school has abated the SALVE staff have had the opportunity to really make headway this week, putting plans made at the AGM into motion. House hunting and recruiting new staff have both been on the agenda.

As the SALVE family is gradually expanding it was agreed by UK and Uganda staff that we need to find new accomodation. The goal of SALVE is to own a piece of land and build on it, allowing us to have a home that suits all the needs of our growing family, along with the security of owning land rather than renting it. However, at the moment this is not possible and not something we want to rush into, so in the interim we are looking to rent a larger house until we find the perfect plot of land. This, however, is appearing easier said than done - and also a job that is strictly for the Ugandan staff as seeing us drives prices up.... No 'Mzunqu' allowed!

After the departure of Harriot last week, for cloudier climates, this week has seen Ugandan staff interviewing candidates for the new home carer role. As briefly mentioned last week, SALVE has plans to develop it's community research and explore the phenomena of girls living on the street, aiming to incorporate them into our work. With this in mind, and also in light of future plans to move into a bigger house and for Mike to move into his own family home, it has been decided that it would be more suitable to slightly adjust the role of SALVE staff out here. The new intention is to have both male (Stephen) and a female (new recruit) living in the house with the children and also being able to conduct gender sensitive research alongside SALVE interns. We have therefore been interviewing a variety of candidates for this role and will hopefully be able to let you know the outcome in next weeks blog - it suffices to say that it is very exciting to see the potential for expansion in this area, and its something we all feel very passionate about.

Finally, just a little update on our visit to Harriet's village. As mentioned last week, whilst we were there we took the opportunity to conduct some research on why girls marry at such a young age. There was a particularly heartbreaking story that we came across of a young girl marrying at sixteen and now has two daughters (aged three years and six months). However, the girl was not informed by her husband until very recently that he has HIV. When we met the family it was clear to see that the husband was very ill, but also that the baby was in a bad way - malnourished and suffering from servere mouth sores (both clear indicators that she too could be suffering from HIV). Harriot really tried to talk to the family about seeking medical attention but it appears that the husband was in denial about his condition and wouldn't allow it. HOWEVER, we have had some very good news this week that the family did - at least in part - take notice of what Harriot said and came to Jinja to seek medical attention for the baby (Peace). We are currently awaiting her HIV test result and in the meantime she is on medication to treat her symtoms and is getting healthier by the day! Again, we hope to be able to update you on her progress next week.
Laura and Janet.

(NB pictures to follow)

Back to School and a trip to the Village!

Back to school time in Uganda causes a bit of a kafuffle about town. The ATMs have queues around the block for parents withdrawing the money for school fees. Out of the window of the taxi you can see bodabodas (the local motorbike taxis) taking students to school laden down with duvets, clothes books and all their other requirements. Among the interesting sites spotted on Jinja road this week was a boda driver taking a student to school complete with 2 live chickens dangling over the handlebars!

The SALVE house didn’t escape the chaos either! There were dramas a-plenty in trying to organise ten very excited children for school. Thankfully by the end of week we are pleased to report that all ten SALVE children are safely installed in their new schools, happy and prospering, despite over-packed bags, missing underwear, lost jerry-cans and minor arguments over the trading-rate of biscuits!

(Stephen and Ronald)

For us interns, we were really lucky this week to have the chance to visit Harriet’s village as she paid her last visit there before heading off the Finland. The village was about a 1 hour (rather precarious!) boda ride from Kamuli town and was a huge contrast to our experience in Uganda so far. Far away from the thumping R’n’B on main street, the Daily Monitor, and the heated debates about the 2011 elections and anti-homosexuality bills, is the village of Kibuye.

In contrast to the occasional power cuts in Jinja, there is no electricity at all in the village. The population rely almost entirely on subsistence living; growing, rearing and fishing for their food and only trading in small amounts of money at the nearest trading centre. Many people in the village have never even ventured as far as Kamuli.

As we moved about the village, we got a clearer understanding of the vulnerable situation that many young women find themselves in. The girls are often married off by their families at an incredibly young age. One woman told us that she gave her daughter over to be married at the age of 10. After this the girls take up the burden of home-making as well as looking after their husbands who are often much older. Much of the work of cultivation and child-rearing is the women’s responsibility, while the men seem to be most commonly found at the local drinking huts, sharing some local brew.

(Men in Harriet's village)

In Jinja, there are street boys everywhere, but we have found ourselves wondering where the vulnerable girls might be. Our experience in the village, illustrated that perhaps it is necessary to go a little further afield to find the vulnerable girls. Our street clinics, our main way of reaching out to the street children almost exclusively attract boys. This reflects the fact that along the streets of Jinja it is almost only boys that you will see sleeping rough and begging. The streets are too dangerous for vulnerable girls and they often seek shelter from abuse and neglect in different places.

(Local children greet the visitors!)

The girls in the SALVE house have all come from very difficult backgrounds but none of them were found begging on the streets as was the case with many of the boys. For example, if it wasn’t for a lucky coincidence with a friend of Mike’s visiting his home village, our newest SALVE addition, Blessing would never have found her way into the SALVE home. In the case of Maureen, after she ran away from home to escape being forced into early marriage, she slept in a church construction site outside Jinja and she only ventured into the town to buy food. It was on one of these trips that she met Mike, who recognised the signs of abandonment and started talking to her.

(Harriet takes a dip and enjoys a beautiful sunset)

One of the challenges that SALVE now faces is how to reach out to girls neglected and abandoned but not as visible on the streets. Certainly our trip to the village among other encounters we have had has made us feel very aware of the hidden suffering of many girls. Although there are many more avenues to explore, we are hoping to be able to expand the work of SALVE to be more inclusive of girls.

Janet and Laura