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.