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!