This week opened with some good news from Jinja Network. Our membership application has been approved and we will be able to start attending meetings and participating in activities with other organisations who work for vulnerable or marginalised children in Jinja. This opens a whole raft of possibilities for us in terms of link building, partnership working and cementing our place within Jinja’s NGO community.

Unfortunately, this week has been a frustrating one for SALVE and the interns as far as street clinics are concerned. We have been unable to meet as many children as we would like to as the children have moved from their normal gathering places. Unfortunately one child was caught by a stall holder in the bus park attempting to steal some shoes and since then the children have been scared to return there as usual in the morning. This has made it difficult for the team to make contact with them and highlights the chaotic nature of the lives of these children. On a more positive note, we have been able to meet with some older children. Although they are too old to enter the SALVE project, we hope that in building contacts with other organisations through our membership with Jinja Network, we will be able to refer them on to other organisations who can help them.

The community education projects are slowly getting off the ground. We are in the final stages of putting together a proposal for the carpentry project. This will be sent to the UK for approval and hopefully funding will be granted so we can start work with some of the poorest people in Jinja to broaden their skills and employment opportunities. In doing so, we hope to reduce the number of families living in poverty and therefore the number o children forced onto the street.

Junior has successfully completed his first week of school. He has really enjoyed it but is very tired from the 6.30am starts. Its very strange to have him be so quiet at the dinner table! He reports that he’s made some friends and has enjoyed learning English. Topics covered this week include learning how to tell the time and how to describe what he is wearing. We hope all the English we’ve been speaking at home has helped him a bit!

Next week looks to be a buys one. We will start with our first meeting at Jinja network on Monday and hope to put in place the foundations of our tourist education programme. More to follow on that next week.

See you soon,

Emma and Imogen

A busy first week...

This week has been a very busy one for Emma and I as our time for settling into our new surroundings and orienting ourselves ended, and work began.

Monday was our first day of accompanying Mike and Stephen on the street clinics in Jinja. Having negotiated the busy rush hour streets, dodging matatus, boda bodas, bicycles, and huge trucks, our first port of call for meeting the children was a derelict bus stand, set behind a market square in the centre of town. Wooden crates are piled up in front of the stand, and stalls selling shoes are set across the entrance so that when the children are here, they are mostly hidden from view. The stand consists of rows of wooden benches - upon arriving, we found up to ten children in this area, socialising with one another and sniffing glue.

It was amazing to see the children’s responses to the arrival of Mike and Stephen. The greetings were sparked with excitement followed by a fist-to- fist gesture which is common between friends here in Uganda. Referring to Mike and Stephen as ‘uncle’, also a term of endearment that children give to adults who are friends, introductions to the new ‘mzungus’ were carried out, and conversations ensued.

We split into two groups, myself with Mike, and Emma with Stephen. Emma and I took notes as Mike and Stephen interpreted for us; although some of the children can speak English, it is more natural for them tor relate their personal experiences in their mother-tongue.

Mike and I spoke to a number of children, three in detail, who were willing to spend some time with us. A young boy called Jimmy, 13, was particularly keen to speak to us.

Jimmy on the street in Jinja

He told us that his mother left him with his Grandmother when he was very young. During this discussion, in which we heard his realities and desires Jimmy, who originates from Kalangulumira, a town about 50km from Jinja, told us his story and fervently expressed a desire to return home to his Grandmother.

As soon as we arrived a young girl approached Stephen. Zula told us that she had already spent two nights on the street. As a young girl of 13, we were lucky to come across Zula as street-life presents a number of threats to a young girl - exposure to prostitution, sexual abuse and child trafficking, to name but a few.

The team met and discussed the case of Jimmy and Zula on Tuesday afternoon. It was decided that it was imperative that we take Zula in to the SALVE home for the night. We also decided that we should make an attempt to return both children to their families.

On Wednesday, Stephen and I found Jimmy in Jinja and set out for Kalangulumira to find his grandmother, and Assy and Emma accompanied Zula to Gulama.

Upon arriving in the village, Emma and Assy were met by a large extended family including Zula’s grandmother, with whom she had been living, an uncle, three siblings and two aunts. All attested that Zula was a very bright girl, achieving good results at school, and very helpful and hardworking in the homestead. However, she had a habit of running away and this particular occasion was not the first. The family were very happy to accept Zula back but before leaving, Assy and Emma tried to understand Zula’s reasons for running away from a loving family, home and school. Zula said that she was keen to go to boarding school and had gone to Jinja to pursue this aim. She had been confident that she would find a ‘mzungu’ to pay for her fees.

Zula with her family in Gulama

After the hour long bus ride, upon finding Jimmy’s Grandmother’s house with his direction, Stephen and I were greeted kindly. Her reaction to Jimmy was not as I thought it would be, perhaps being difficult for me to read, it seemed to carry an element of indifference and perhaps frustration.

Jimmy’s Grandmother was very forthcoming in talking to us and explaining the situation with her grandson. Jimmy was left with her, as he had previously told us on the street in Jinja, by his mother when he was very young. A number of her own children have died so she cares for many of her grandchildren. She has no employment as such and so grows food to feed her family – some of her grandchildren are in sponsorship schemes and so are at boarding school but the family are very poor.

Jimmy’s grandmother explained that Jimmy has run away to the streets many times. CRO, another organization that sponsor street children through school, have returned him and paid his school fees at a local school, yet still he has run away to the streets. His Grandmother claims to have received him back each time with open arms and without reprimand. It was decided that Jimmy would stay with his Grandmother, as that was his expressed desire and she also agreed. We are going to contact CRO and hopefully get him back to school in due course.

Stephen with Jimmy and his Grandmother on her porch in Kalangulumira

So all in all, a really busy week. We’ve managed to restore two children to their families. The examples of these two children show that the reasons why children take to the streets are varied, complicated and always case-specific.

We have also been spending a lot of time with Junior, who is very excited about going to school. He’s a really confident boy with a great sense of humour and it is very difficult to imagine that he was once on the streets - testament to the important role SALVE has had in his life. He got some new school shoes, bed sheets and a mosquito net yesterday – he spent more than an hour in his room setting up his new belongings and proudly modeled his shoes for us. We’ve been going through the phonetic alphabet with him in an attempt to help him with reading, while he has been teaching us some Luganda.

Welraba J xx

New arrivals

Hi all,

So it's our first post from Uganda and you'll be glad to know that we made it here safe and sound. The journey was a bit of a long one and we're pretty tired so we've spent the last few days adjusting to our new surroundings and sleeping!

It was great to finally meet the Ugandan team. They've all welcomed us with open arms and we've already had some good discussions about the kinds of projects we want to work on together. A priority is writing the project proposals for the community education carpentry and jewellery making projects to get these finalised, funded and off the ground. We also discussed starting some sort of tourist education with the overland tours that come through Jinja. A major problem seems to be that children are encouraged to stay on the streets by large handouts from wealthy toursits- a practice which may seem helpful in the short term but only exacerbates things in the long term. We'll also be concentrating on the street clinics as have past interns. All this starts next week and I'm sure as things develop we'll have more on our plates so stay tuned!

We just missed most of the children who have all (except one) gone back to boarding school now. We're looking forward to visiting them soon though and have plenty of things to do planned for when they come home in December. The one child who remains in the house is Junior. He joined the project 3 months ago having been on the street for 4 years previous to this. He's settling into the house at the moment and we hope he will be able to start day school as soon as possible. He's a lovely child- full of smiles and energy and a keen artist. He hopes to be a pilot and fly to London one day so we need to get him started on maths and physics I think...

As for us, we're just settling into the house and getting used to having constantly grubby feet covered in red dust! It's pretty big and we've got electricity which is great as alot of houses in the area don't. Steven and Assy have big construction plans to make it spic and span for when the children get back in December one of which involves a wall and a sledge hammer... although I am assured that Steven has plenty of experience in construction so no worries there.

Yesterday was Eid and a national holiday in Uganda. The whole day had a party atmosphere from 8am when the music started next door. Bugeme's residents were out in force and their finest and the main street was absolutely buzzing in the evening with people out and about enjoying the day.

Thats all for now,

Emma and Imogen