Greetings from Uganda! (And a fantastic start to the UK team's trip...)

After a much-needed rest from travelling overnight Nicola, Helen and I are once again back into the swing of things and are very much enjoying our work here with S.A.L.V.E. International! As it is a return trip for all of us we were really excited to return to Uganda and experience the sights, smells and friendly welcome that we always receive from everyone.

Our work began this week with a long meeting with Mike, our Regional Director, discussing a few things before our schedule began. We were so glad to see his face after such a long time and it reaffirmed what a wonderful man and great example to the children he is. He then took us to the new S.A.L.V.E. home and we were welcomed by four new boys, all with smiley faces and infectious personalities. We enjoyed our afternoon playing, reading and getting to know them. The new house is brilliant and has much more space for the children and staff.

Mike and his lovely little girl Caren

Getting back to the street clinic was fantastic and my favourite moment here so far was when a boy, Waswa, who I met as an intern a year and a half ago recognised me and gave me a huge hug. It was a bitter sweet rendezvous as obviously this means he has remained on the streets all of this time. This changed today, however, as after some talking and time spent with him, Mike took him back to the S.A.L.V.E. home to begin his time as part of the family. We are all so pleased to have him join us and hope that he enjoys his new life! However, it can often be difficult for children who have spent a long time on the street to settle into life in a home straight away, so we will keep you updated on his progress as he begins his journey with S.A.L.V.E.

A group of girls we met on a S.A.L.V.E. street clinic

To complete such a brilliant day we then went to the Community Education project that is operating in Mafubira, an area just outside Jinja. We were met by a group of women, all making paper beads ready to make into beautiful jewellery that we sell in the UK. It was brilliant to see them all in action after hearing so much about the project from home! Our research has shown that poverty is a major factor in children coming to the streets. Some of the women attending our workshops have only the income from this project to feed up to six children, so we hope that this is a small step on the way to changing their lives and reducing the devastatingly huge number of street children in Jinja.

Women on our community education project put the finishing touches to some jewellery

All in all, I’m sure you’ll agree that it has been a very successful start to the trip! Nicola and Helen will be updating you on the rest of our time here so watch this space! In the meantime if you are interested in supporting our work then you can make a Splash for S.A.L.V.E. by swimming a length of the Nile! Take a look at our website for more information: http://salveinternational.org/id50.html.

Winding down

So as the temperature's rising here in Uganda, our time is coming to an end. We said goodbye to some of the older children last week as they headed off, with bags packed and smiling faces to Teen Missions, the holiday activity camp where they will be spending Christmas. Teddy and Dinah have gone home to visit their families so we have four boys, Junior, Isma, Asuman and Junior left in the S.A.L.V.E. so we've been spending a lot of time with them, and let them loose with the arts and crafts box which as you can see has been a lot of fun! It's so hot here at the moment, so tomorrow we're going to take the boys swimming...




We've also interacted with some of the children who are still on the street. Another organisation in Jinja is taking many of them up to Bujagali, a lovely village on the Nile, for Christmas day so they are excited about this.

The women in Mafubira are making good progress in the bead project and another shipment of beautiful jewelry should be ready to send soon. As they are becoming more confident, their creativity seems to be flourishing.

We're all looking forward to the Christmas celebrations. Mike's wife Robinah is going to give birth any day now, so we're really looking forward to welcoming a new face into the family. Exciting times.

We'll be back next week with our final post from sunny Uganda.

Bye for now,

Imogen and Emma x

Dear Santa/ S.A.L.V.E. Supporters

Dear Santa/ S.A.L.V.E. Supporters,

So we've been making a list (and checking it twice)
Because this year everyone at S.A.L.V.E. has definately been nice!



We've worked hard all year and times flown by as you know.
Soon the UK trustees will be escaping the snow ...

In January we go back to Uganda and our bags are a little light,
Do you or your friends have the items we need to make S.A.L.V.E.s future bright?

S.A.L.V.E.s Wishlist (please get in touch and let us know if you/ anyone you know might be kind enough to donate us any of the following items)

- 1 laptop (to allow us to do our salve administrative work in Uganda)

- 1 digital camera (to allow us to take good quality pictures in Uganda so everyone here can see how the children are getting on all year round)

- 3 USB memory sticks (to allow us to move around and back up our files)

- 1 voice recorder (to tape our interviews with the children on the streets for our records)

- Summer clothes for teenagers (boys and girls)

- Educational aids for older children

Thank you for reading our list and checking it twice
Don't hesitate to get in touch if you have a donation that you think would be nice!

info@salveinternational.org

Merry Christmas everyone!

Christmas is a comin'...

Christmas is on its way here in Uganda and yet blissful little sign of this can be found. There is no Christmas advertising, only a sprinkling of miserable looking plastic Christmas trees, a smattering of carols on the radio and the temperature remains in the 30's. Time then, for the SALVE Christmas party!

With all the children home for the holidays before going off to see family or to the Teen Missions camp, the annual celebration was held yesterday at the home. Mike spent time talking with all the children and reviewing the year. Special mention was made of both Teddy and Tiff who did especially well at school this year and also of Junior who has triumphed in his P1 exams and will be moving up to P2 in February. Meanwhile, Robinah and Assy were busy cooking up a storm. Not traditional fare of mince pies and sausage rolls but instead spiced rice, beef stew, roast potatoes, cabbage and chapati were served up in huge portions.

This was followed by some more traditional party games- a bit of musical bumps (which 1 year old Caren found hilarious but hard to understand) and musical statues. By far the greatest hit though, was a game involving silly clothes, dice and cutting up chocolate with a knife and fork. Even the big children got involved in this one and were shrieking with laughter at each other trying to throw on a spotted jacket, T shirt, cloves and a hat and then eat Cadbury's Dairy Milk with a knife and fork. I think its safe to say that a good time was had by all. Tomorrow, the house will become a little quieter again as the older children go off to Teen Missions and Dinah and Teddy go to visit their families.

In other news, the bead project is progressing well and the ladies are learning new types of beads and styles of necklace to produce a greater variety of jewelry. Things are in the pipeline for the online shop too which is great.

Imogen and I have only 3 weeks left in Uganda now which is incredible. As always, time has passed too quickly. We're looking forward to the weekend as some of Uganda's biggest music stars are coming to town for a street party. Hurrah!

Hope preparations for Christmas are going well for all at home.

Love,

Emma and Imogen

A month til Christmas?!

This week we began our film project, interviewing the new children in the home, as well as some of the children who are still on the streets, which has been a lot of fun. Ashiraff, who has been known to the team for some time and is one of the older boys on the street, has shown an interest and expressed a desire to help us with this, but the first day of filming on the street showed us that this might be a trial and error endeavour. We managed to get some good shots but the boys are a little-overexcited about it so it might take some perseverance before they are used to having a camera around. We’re going to continue taking the camera with us on the street clinics and hope to have some tangible and informative shots, ready to be edited in January when we are at home. Translating the interviews with the boys at home is going to take days!

The school term has now finished for Junior so he is enjoying some time at home with the new boys who are settling in well. I was at Nakanyonyi School in Bugmebe this morning and each year group are taking end of term exams so there was a very studious and serious atmosphere. Teachers and students alike are looking forward to the Christmas holidays. Here the build up to Christmas is nothing like that in the UK – I don’t think we’ve seen or heard a single piece of advertising and with the hot weather it’s difficult to imagine that it’s only a month away…The impending elections in April seem to be taking up much more time and energy, as the streets of Jinja are filled with rallies and matatus filled with people singing and shouting for their chosen candidate.

The bead making project is also going well and we were all really pleased to hear that the beads went down well at the Ceilidh fundraiser last week. Emma and I returned to crazy Kampala on Wednesday to purchase new materials, and during the week coming the women will be taught how to make new styles and shapes of beads, for necklaces of different lengths, bracelets and earrings, so we hope these might do as well in the future.

The boys at home also have a new bedroom as Stephen utilized his D.I.Y. skills and bashed a hole between the garage and the kitchen, converting the garage into a bedroom! All very exciting!

So yet another good week in Uganda :)

Imogen and Emma xx

Fact finding in Kampala

Two big pieces of news this week. The first is that we have two new additions to the S.A.L.V.E home. Asuman has been known to the S.A.L.V.E. staff for some time and was taken into the project this week. He's 11 years old and has been on the street for about a year. He's a very smiley, confident boy and drew us a great picture of an elephant this morning. Its great to see him settling into the home environment after having met him so many times on the street and Isma really appreciates the company. Waswa was also brough in this week and aboev you can see the three new recruits (from left to right Asuman, Waswa and Isma) along with our rather sad old football. Time to invest in a new one I feel! Assy and Stephen will be spending alot of time with them in the coming weeks to teach them some basic life skills- keeping themselves and their things clean, how to resolve arguments, how to help around the house. They may sound basic but its these sorts of small issues which can end up causing large problems. Imogen and I will also be spending time with the boys but on a less formal level as their command of English is pretty limited. We'll probably do lots of painting and football... theres lessons to be learned from these things I'm sure!

The second bit of news is that Imogen and I went off to Kampala this week to visit the Kireka women's group's bead project. We hoped we could learn some useful lessons from a project run along the same lines as our own bead project but established for a little longer. The group has been together for about a year and consists entirely of women from the north of Uganda displaced by the war and living as refugees on the outskirts of Kampala. Before coming togehter as a group the women were break rocks in a quarry on the edge of the city which we also visted. Not a nice place to be on a hot day. Through their own initiative in forming the group and the capital of the Diaspora project (who oversee the group and sell the products online and abroad) they have made a huge improvement to their lives. We were so impressed with the quality of the jewelry and came away with some good ideas for new designs. We were also able to have a good chat with the project manager who gave us some useful (if not the most exciting!) advice about how to manage the accounts and market the products. It really is wonderful to see how womens groups can turn things around for themselves and work so effectively together. They seem to be springing up all over Uganda and starting all sorts of projects from beads to gardening collectives to chicken farming groups. In a country where women have been so disempowered in the past its great to see them taking back control of their lives. From little acorns great oaks do grow...

Anyway enough philosophising for now!

Emma and Imogen

The fight against child sacrifice

This week has seen a hub of activity from Mike as he accompanied members of the Jinja network to the Ugandan houses of parliament in Kampala to offer MPs a petition and memorandum concerning child sacrifice. Child sacrifice is devastatingly common here in Uganda as witchdoctors frequently ask their clients for human blood to initiate people into the practice, along with promises of future wealth. The memorandum argues that the main provisions in the law for punishing the perpetrators of this devastating crime are rendered impotent in causing fear amongst people practicing witchcraft as so many child sacrifices have gone unpunished. The network has been working on this issue for some time and the memorandum outlines changes that urgently need to be made. Advocating for the rights of all children is an important aspect of S.A.L.V.E.’s work and it is great that our Jinja network membership is providing us with a collective voice.

In other news, a young boy called David was brought in off the street this week. Unfortunately, he ran back to the street within a few hours. Each child is different and the transition from the street to home life is wrought with difficulties for these young people. We hope we might be able to relate with him more next week and with some patience and understanding convince him to come to the S.A.L.V.E. home again.

The bead making is going wonderfully. We have now sent some beads back to the UK hopefully in time for sale at the S.A.L.V.E. Ceilidh fundraiser at the end of the next week. An online shop is also going to be created so you will be able to see and purchase the beautiful creations online too. In order to give ownership of the project to the women taking part, secretaries and mobilisers were democratically elected this week who will manage the stock-taking, time keeping and purchasing of new materials. It is important for the project’s sustainability that the women are taught how to manage the income we hope to generate, how to account for new materials and save money for expansion. Educating these women on these techniques is a large aspect of the project.

So another good week in Uganda. It is getting hotter and dustier here by the day…

Imogen and Emma xx