Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!

Merry Christmas to you all!! Jude, Lizzie and I are in the UK enjoying our time in the snow. We came home at the beginning of December for Jude as he had to have an operation.

He went to Birmingham Children's Hospital on the 8th December. His operation was at lunch time, my Dad and I went with him into the theatre and watch him go to sleep and then had to leave him there all on his own, which for me was a bit overwhelming, we then had to sit in the ward to wait for him to return. He came back all snuggled up and fast asleep, he woke up and ate loads of food and was able to go home, he played while we waited for our lift home and he coped with the whole ordeal really well. We kept him on drugs for a week which helped with the pain, he rarely cried but when he did he would say "it's hurting me mummy" and hold me tight until it stopped, generally it was fine and the operation was successful and I was very proud of the way he coped with it all.

We are staying with my brother in Worcester, both of my brother's live in the area and they both have children. So Lizzie and Jude are having lots of fun playing with all their cousins. You can see them in the pictures.

The day after we arrived home we it was Judes 2nd Birthday and we had a little family party to celebrate. It was a nice day however I was quite tired to enjoy after the

Its been snowing this last week so we have been out sledging a lot. Today we found a big hill where I took Jude and Lizzie on my own it was great fun.

Its christmas time and we are able to celebrate it here in Kempsey with a lot of my family and my sister-in-law's family. I'm really excited about spending christmas here having a real traditional English Christmas. I haven't been able to celebrate christmas here for a long time so it's really nice even though half my heart is left behind in Uganda. We also are able to have a white christmas which has been great we have been doing a lot of sledging which I have enjoyed having children to take with me. They have enjoyed sledging but also have been very cold at times. We are hoping to go out again today for Christmas eve on a slope we found yesterday so hopefully we will all have great fun.

I've never been away from Uganda without having someone at home to look after the children. Its been a hard few months trying to organise homes for them. Diana was the most difficult, she is 6 years old and so we couldn't just place her anywhere. Grace and Akwedde have gone to somes freinds of ours where they love going and have great fun so that wasn't hard at all. Finally in the last days of arranging everything we found a place for Diana with our Canadian friends. They have two young children so Diana will have fun playing with them and they will also look after her with great care being westerners. Six of the boys the one's less likely to get into trouble have stayed at home with two of our African friends looking after them. 3 other boys have gone down to our Doctor friend in Mbale and one of our boys has gone home for the holidays to his family in Congo. Even though its hard to be away knowing I'm not with them for christmas I am sure they will have a good time together and we can have a special day when we go back.

This year has been a good year for all of us, everything has progressed well. In the new year Charles will be getting his A-level results and then will have to choose a course and a university to start in Aug '11. Rafiki, Isaac and Passier will be getting their o'level results and then will choose subjects and schools, so you can think of them all as they make difficult decisions. The rest of us will have no major changes and wiill continue into our normal routine but we hope that we all do well in 2011, the children to concentrate and work hard at school and for a small daycare and school we hope we may have a lot of new children and reach great standards throughout the year.

We wish you all a very happy christmas and we hope that your year 2011 will be a great one for you too. Thanks to all of you who support us it would be hard to live without you.

Amar, Edward, Akumu and Adam

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In this picture are Akumu, Adam and Amar. They have two other brothers, one is Opento who is in a bad way

with drugs the oldest of them all. Edward the youngest, is the other one, who I couldn't find that day he was playing somewhere.

Akumu is in year 4 in Kairos primary school and Amar and Edward are in my school. Amar is in year 2 and Edward in year one but as we have just a few children they are with the same teacher. They are doing very well. Both children didn't know how to read or write but now they can read and are doing well to catch up.

They come from a very poor family, the parents are separated, the children live with their mother. The pictures you can see are pictures of their house. I didn't know how poor they lived until one day I had to go and visit them and I found them cooking in the space outside their house in the picture where you see the water flowing through which is actually waste from the neighbours homes. Two of the walls had fallen down and temporary walls had been put up using tarpauling. I was a bit shocked by the poor condition. I have been working with this family on and off for years but haven't been down to their house for a long time. I knew they were poor, living in the slum area where the rest of the families had been living but this was a bit shocking. I then went back a few weeks later to take photo's for the blog and I found a women sitting in the chair smoking something, they had actually built the walls up again with mud but the conditions are still very bad.

Due to this Akumu misses a lot of school as her uniform gets dirty or stolen. She takes most of the responsibilties to care for the other children and this is very hard for her considering shes only 11 or 12 years old.

Their mother spends long hours away from home, shes seem to have some psychological problems, she gets very angry and mistreats the chidren. She drinks and I think takes drugs.

Their father who is in the picture below, is a lovely man, but unfortunatly is an alcoholic, he works for us as our home security guard. When he is sober he is very good at his job, keeps the compound clean and does the flower beds, but he is always itching for excuses to go and have a binge. He went through a stage recently when he was always telling us that one of his relatives had phoned to say that someone was very ill and he needed ten thousand to visit them and then 2 days later, they had died, and he had to go to the burial! But when mamma Namuya came back and reported he was stone drunk in the slum area, we became wise to it and refused him to go. Isaac one of our boys commented how could he have had a phone call when he hasn't got a phone!! His other ploy was to take the rubbish which is usually done by one of the boys, one day he escaped with the rubbish on one of the boys bikes and just dumped the rubbish in the middle of the road when he was caught and had to pick it all up with his bare hands and put it back in the sack, which was not a nice job!!! When he's drunk he can be very violent with his family and goes to their home most evenings to fight with his family. But having said that his wife can be equally difficult.

The Adoption's

At the end of November last year I started adoption procedures for Lizzie, Namuya and Grace who are all brother and sisters. I was originally going to just adopt Lizzie thinking it wasn't possible to adopt the older children because of their ages. But my lawyer thinks that it would be possible to adopt all of them considering the length of time I've been with them and because they are all from on family.
It has taken a long to get the file all together but finally it is done and submitted into the court and we have a court date for Monday (13th Sept) at 10 o'clock in the morning. You can never tell how it will go here but we are hoping for a smooth court appearance with a nice, kind friendly judge.

I have written about Lizzie and Grace before as well as their mother, so you know a bit about them.
Namuya was a young boy around the age of 7 or 8 years when we first met him. You can see him in the picture at the side that was taken in the very first days of knowing Namuya. He, at that time, was a full time street boy. He use to sleep under the taxi's at night or in derelict houses. His father had died and his mother had gone back to her families' village. So his uncle decided to bring Namuya to Kampala to help him and live with him at home. Unfortunately it was in a very bad slum area and his uncle had a difficult wife, there was no care and responsibility taken over Namuya so he use to play on the streets and finally ended up sleeping away from home.
It was difficult at the beginning to look after Namuya, he took along time to settle. He use to get a lot of wounds on his body which we use to dress everyday but he would always go and come back when he had taken the dressing off and picked the wounds, so that we could dress them again the next day. He was always a sweet boy, but was use to street life.
Over the years we have been through a lot with this family and Namuya being the oldest has felt it more than the younger children. His mother use to dislike him for some unknown reason and when she use to pass him in the street she use to throw rocks at him. She was always shouting abuse at him. One time we did try to re-settle the family back with their mum, but unfortunately the mum beat Namuya up and he ended up on the streets for the night.
But now he has grown into a lovely, mature young man. His relationship with his mother has changed so much and he is always going home to her house to check on her or help her when he sees her.
At school he is the news pre-fect, he is intelligent and is always top of the class. He loves to sing and dance and is determined to do well in order to have a good future.

Weddings, Aniversaries and Birthdays

Since my parents came back in March we have had a lot of people interested in cakes, my mum has been making a cake a week which we have never had before. A cake a week for a term helps pay for one child at school.

We have also had a number of weddings too. Two wanting just cakes and one big wedding where they wanted the cake, decoration and dresses. It was such a successfull wedding. Its the biggest wedding we have done. The bride bought one of our going away dresses, and her maids hired some of our dresses which were donated by a friend last year. We made the cake - 14 tiers. We decorated the cars and church. The reception was an outdoor wedding in tents. It was a sit down so we decorated it with chair covers, table cloths, baskets for cakes in the middle, sweets, and other table decorations like candles. We had to decorate the tents and the walk way. Each person had a glass for a drink it took along time and had most of the boys and two other friends helping setup.

When we arrived the tents or tables weren't put out, the sun was so hot and we thought we would never finish in time but the place looked beautiful and loads of people took our business cards. From that wedding so far we have decorated another wedding last Saturday which is the purple decorations below. It was outdoors with just one tent for the bridal team. The decorating ran smoothly. However, right when we had finished the wind picked up and blew a lot of the decorations over and then when the bridal team came it started to rain. A lot of the table cloths were stained and a lot of a glasses were broken. So this week Namuya's mum has been scrubbing all the chair covers and table cloths to get them clean again for our next wedding this Saturday.

Friends of the first wedding say they are interested in us to decorate for them and friends from the last two weddings are also interested. Maybe this is the real start of the business. We hope so it has helped us to pay a lot of debts at the children's schools. We have all enjoyed doing it, even though its tiring, its a really good day together, all the boys come and extra friends, like our housekeeper Lois. We spend the whole day there if its an outdoor one and the kids work so hard putting up and taking down. You can see in the pictures below of some of them working.

Jam

This month we started making Jam again. It's mango season so we have been concentrating on the mango and papaya jam as the mango season doesn't last for long. We have had to buy glass jars to help with the packaging as its been going off in the plastic jars. Its been expensive to buy them which has resulted in not much profit, I will have to see if I can import the jars to make it cheaper.

The jam is really tasty and people seem to like it, it means now we have to find a market so that we can get it sold, which is actually quite difficult and has made me quite nervous. I decided to print my own labels for now as you need to buy properly printed labels in bulk to keep the cost low I designed the labels and printed them from home, which is ok for now.

We also have made a few pineapple, mango and papaya jams which have also turned out well. We have a company that has three lodges who would like to buy the jam but we need more to sustain the ladies cooking it.

Mama Namuya who is in the picture in the right has been cooking the bread and now helping with the jam, she has been doing so well and I am really impressed in the change in her life, everyday she is becoming more responsible and happier. She comes everyday to work and thats a great improvement. She has spent many years walking the streets of town begging at car windows and people passing buy, drunk most of the day, dirty with no respect for herself and constantly fighting with her friends. And now reguarly at work, she is hardworking, dresses smarlty and looks clean. She no longer goes down to the streets of Kampala begging.

The otherday she came in the evening on a sunday and saw me just starting to cook a big batch of Jam, she was complaining how her feet and ankles were swollen as she had been working so hard, and how her body hurt so much. When she was to go home she couldn't, she stood in the kitchen watching me and told me in half swahili and broken luganda how her heart is unable to see me working so hard that she must help but she is so tired. She stood for so long struggling with the thought of helping, untill she sent me away to rest and took on a large amount of cooking. Finishing at 9.30 pm.

The last time we tried to start selling Jam we had quite a number of ladies helping, but this time i decided to to just bring in one lady at a time. So after Mama Namuya had learnt how to cooked Jam well I called Mama Enoko to help. Last time she worked for us she was quite difficult lady leaving me with no hope that she would really adjust to working with in a real job. We felt we should give her another chance. I dont know what has happened but, she came back with a different attitude, apparently for over a month she hasn't been drinking. She has been coming to work clean and dressed well, she has been focused and working hard, cooking bread and jam on the days when Mama Namuya has been away sick. I am a bit shocked to see such a change, and I am please to see her becoming so responsible.

Our Jam making this time has been sucessful and has been tasty so far. My hope now is that we can sell it well, so that we can give these street ladies and many more a job and security, so that they may no longer walk the streets of Kampala. So that we can help them leave drugs and alcohol, encouraging them to be respectful of themselves and others.

Mamma Namuya is Namuya, Nangiro, and Lizzie's mother, and Mamma Enoko is Enoko's mother , the children we care for.

Holidays

It's holiday time so today the clinic who does a lot of work with HIV and Aids patients where we take our children and families for treatment had been given free tickets, for all their children who have HIV, for the cinema at cineplexs. My mum and I had volunteered to help out. We arrived at the clinic where the children had started to gather, they were lined up in front of 2 buses and 3 taxi's putting on a pink ribbon so that everyone could be identified. 200 children were expected to come along, as the children got onto the bus they were giving their names and then squeezing into the bus. 3 taxi's had come from a particular village two hours out of Kampala. After counting all the children and transporting them to the big shopping mall we realised 300 children had come to enjoy such an exciting trip.

Most of the children have never left their suburb or village let alone visiting a wealthy mall. One of the biggest novelty for the children were the toilets many of them hadn't seen a flushing toilet before and didn't know how to use them, the children went back and forth throughout the morning visiting the fascinating toilets.

Every seat was full with a child sitting ready to watch a film, they actually filled two cinema halls, the adults didn't sit on a seat they sat on the steps at the side watching the children as there wasn't enough room. Every child was given a soda and a bag of popcorn donated by coca cola and cineplex.

I was greatly moved by this adventure and the experiences the children had. As I watched them and looked at every child I was touched by so many children before me all affected by HIV. There were so many. I looked at so many seats available and every seat full. This is just a small clinic in a small suburb who is working with a small group of people, this just scratches the surface of actually how many are affected in Uganda. I have been moved by the effects of HIV over the years being here and working with people who have HIV, but today I am challenged in a greater way to help these little children. Next time you go to the cinema try to picture every seat full with a child affected by HIV.

As I said it's the school holidays, so most of my children are home apart from the candidates who have their final exams at the end of the year, Nangiro who is doing the British holidays and of course my day care is still running. A few of the boys volunteer in my friend Betty's resturant for a bit of work experience, the rest of the boys are at home and enjoying the rest. On Tuesday it's half price at the cinema so I'm taking all the boys to see a film, I hope to take them to do some other things as well before the holidays finish. Because their is no school some of my younger children, brothers and sisters of the boys have no one to look after them so I have been taking them to the Daycare in the day, so the day care is quite busy. In the evening we have around 12 young children for a few hours. You can see them in pictures below.

Isaac's Birthday Party

We celebrated Isaac's birthday last week. He was 19 years old this year. We made him a cake and a nice meal and everyone ate together, afterwards my parents gave out gifts from their trip away in China and then we watched a movie together.

That's the usual way we celebrate the boy's birthdays. There are so many of them we normally have one almost every month some fall in the same month, they are allowed to have a few friends to come and celebrate too. I also give them a small amount of money so that they can go shopping for clothes or put it towards something else they were wanting.

Isaac came to live with me just two weeks after meeting the boys. I was told that he had been living full time on the streets with his uncle. His Uncle was a security man in the day so Isaac just hung around on the streets taking drugs and doing small jobs to get money. One day a lady told me that his uncle had died at night he was drunk and fell asleep on the railway line and a train came and killed him. At that time, being the beginning of the work,I felt that if I was really going to work with these children, I had to show them that I was really there for them and if I was really going to help them I needed to meet all their needs. Someone wanted to take him to a children's home but I felt I had to take him. So I did.

For the first few months he was an easy child, so excited to be with me, to have a home. He would run around the whole house flicking all the lights on, doing press-ups in the kitchen, jumping everywhere. Years later he wrote an essay at school about one of his most exciting memories and he wrote about having his first shower and the excitment he had. After the novelty wore off the longing for drugs settled back in so he started to run off, I use to spend the whole evening looking for him in the slums, it was late at night and I would walk around on the way picking the rest of the boys up from film halls where they were asleep rolled up on the floor, or running around the streets with their friends. By the time I had found Isaac I would nearly have every other boy with me. When Isaac saw me he would run away, so the boys would chase him till they caught him. One time the boys were chasing him so everyone on the road started following, until there was quite a crowd (in Uganda they take the law into their own hands, its called mob justice where they will either beat up or kill the criminal suspect.) So they thought Isaac was a criminal , and by the time I caught up with them they were trying to beat up one of my other boys thinking they were a thief. While living with us at that time, Isaac became really violent, hitting us, biting us, destroying everything in sight. I t took more than one person to cool him down. My dad told me on a number times that we had to let him go because by the time this boy is 18 he could kill us. I was determined at that time never to give up on anyone especially him. He had to change we couldn't give up on him as that's what the world had done.

Eight years later Isaac is a settled young man, very intelligent and does very well at school. Although he goes out a lot more than he used to, for a long time he was what you would call 'a home boy'. He loved being at home and rarely went out. He's still a bit loud and laughs a lot with a lot of his jokes. He has changed so much, he's caring and concerned about the people around him. He is hoping to be an engineer when he's older.

I Love My Babies

My Youngest two children are Lizzie and Jude, Jude is my biological child who is 17 months old. Lizzie is 19 months old.

Lizzie is Grace and Namuya's little sister. Their mum (mama Namuya) is an alchoholic, drug addict and a street lady. A few years before Lizzie was born her mum had a baby and through her depression and achoholism Nakiru was neglected and abused. Lizzie's mum would leave Nakiru in her one roomed house locked up the whole day untill her mum would come home drunk and beat her. Nakiru was starved and mistreated until she was hospitilized and died of bronchial pnemonia. I was in a horrible situation at that time and due to many circumstances was unable to save Nakiru. It was one of the worse situations of my life and broke me so much that I vowed I would never let it happen again. Lizzie's mum never meant to have a baby she never meant to hurt Nakiru but a lady who was unable to care for herself couldn't care for others.

Up to the birth of lizzie I was still in confusion what I would do with her, being pregnant myself I didn't know if I could care for two. I went to the labour and helped Mama Namuya give birth. It was an eventful birth where you can read an account of it in my friends blog African Diaries. From the birth onwards I have cared for lizzie and have taken her on as my own. So it has been like having twins.

Lizzie is a very busy little lady who loves singing, she is very motherly always helping her other little friends, giving hugs and kisses to everyone. She has a very sweet character and a lovely sense of humour.

Jude is also a very sweet natured boy, he loves playing with balls and his sit along car, he is very gentle, happy and friendly. His language is excellent where he can speak all sorts of words. The sweetest thing is thank you, he will say thank you everytime he is given something even in the middle of the night when you give him a drink he will still say thank you.

Jude and Lizzie really love each other, its sweet to see when ever one them has been away they always greet each other with a hug and a kiss.

I love my babies and cherish every moment I have with them, I know they grow so fast and I try to spend every minute I can with them making sure I make the most of them.

Sparkling Stars Early Learning Centre

Sparkling Stars is set up as a day nursery and a pre-school. I initially had the thought of starting it because I wanted to reach children at a younger age before they reached the streets. So many children wander the streets without parental supervision. They walk with their younger brothers and sisters and friends some at an age of 2-3 years. Many girls are left to carry their baby sister or brother where they will walk and play anywhere. Children are left on busy roads in town to beg at the age of 2 years or maybe younger where they will sit from the early hours of morning to late at night, staying in one place not even playing.

My boys were full of habits and bad behaviour when I first met them which they had learnt from a life on the streets. It is much easier to stop a child being exposed to this life style than to deal with someone who has already been exposed. So I thought in opening a daycare/nursery school I could give a child a place to play and they would be able to be a child instead of living in a place of danger and having to behave like an adult.

As the years have gone on Uganda has become quite an expensive place to live, food, housing, transport, health care has become unaffordable. Things became quite difficult as a family to live, so I decided to make the day care not only to reach the young children who would be at risk but also to use it to help provide for us financially.

I have tried to build the centre at a high standard with good equipment and an enjoyable environment so that I can charge high fees to the affordable parents, then the centre can be self supporting giving free places to children in need and also giving us extra to help my older children and their families in their daily needs.

So far I have 5 paying children on a monthly basis. I also have 7 children who are coming free. I am really hoping to build the centre to a high standard so that it really does attract the paying customers. But my deep hearts desire is to bring those abused children who beg on the streets everyday in the scorching sun, dodging the busy traffic and the the young children who play in the streets in the slums who are exposed to the danger of being abused physically, emotionally and deprived of being a child. May I keep the focus.

New Shoes

Over the last year or so Nangiro Grace has been finding it difficult in school. She is a bright child but lost all interest in studying and her grades were low. She seemed to be so unhappy. The classes were too big and not enough attention was given to her. So this term I put Grace into a new school. I found one up on the Hill. It has an integrated system where it covers the local and cambridge curriculum. The classes are small and they are trying to be practical in their teaching. She also does swimming once a week, tennis and cooking. She is so much happier and she is interested in studying again. On the weekend she spends her time making pictures and cards for people.

The other week we had to buy her some new shoes as she didn't have any good ones for school. So we went on a Saturday shopping. I went with Lizzie and Jude, Diana and Naomi Ruth, and Grace. It was all very exciting as we went to the big new shopping mall where the children can play on a bouncy castle after shopping and have a plate of burger n chips. While we were in the shoe shop the babies got tired of sitting in the push chair, so I allowed them to get out not realizing how much mess they would create. In just a few minutes they had pulled so many shoes off the displays that there were shoes everywhere. The shop assistants said that they were fine. I decided to buy shoes for all three of the big girls. After we had finished, when the children had chosen and paid for the shoes we went to have supper and play. Reaching home that evening we realized we had come home with too many shoes. Some of the girls were carrying theirs and the shop assistant packed the rest and put an extra pair in the bag. So we had to take them back. I think they were quite shocked that we actually returned a pair that we hadn't paid for.

The Girls were so excited to have new shoes. Diana especially. The day before she had her hair platted and had new sandals and then the following day new shoes. She was telling everyone at home that it was her birthday. For a long time she had been walking around in odd slippers and wellington boots (even when it was extremely hot). For her, it must have really felt like her birthday. She's so happy now running all over the place and so chatty.

Welcome Back and Daily Tasks

After 7 1/2 months my parents have come back to Uganda with a very big welcome from us. We had a celebration cake. .Life has been quite hard while they have been away, Managing the boys, the girls and two young babies has been hard. It was difficult to go out, it was hard to make sure they all helped around the house properly thus making sure the house was managed well. So I am so relieved to have them back.

For the Last 7 years or so my parents have always lived in a separate house. Due to fiancial reasons it was very difficult to rent a house for the family and being one person it was also very difficult to look after all my children and have time for them individually. So we all moved into their house just before they left. Since my parents have been back my mum has sorted out so many untidy rooms, sorting out clothes and books and tidying up the general muddle which I hadn't really time to do while they were away. We have been in a mess for such a long time. My Dad has organised all the children by making sure all the household jobs are well distributed with a rota. Each day a child will be on a washing up rota, sweeping the house, the compound, cleaning the water filter and filling up the container, cooking and in the evening to watch the gate and so prevent intruders entering.

This is Orikodi in the picture on the right. It's his turn tonight being incharge of the gate. It was raining so my father gave him a raincoat to wear.

Orikodi is now in the first year of A/Levels. He is studyng Maths, Economic, Geography and Art. He did well in his O/Levels getting a score of forty just missing first grade. He is very hardworking and with my Mum's new computer and with better internet access he is able to research on the internet various topics such as geographical faults. He has a leisurely attitude to life in general.