Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

This year has flown by so quickly, to think we are coming to the end of the year is quite scary. This year has been a good year for us all. Everyone one has done well at school, Orikodi has now finished school for good and is now moving onto a new period of his life. He is now looking for a job and looking forward to higher education later on in the year. Charles finished last year and has had a good year of opportunities. He obtained his driving license and has been working in a lodge. He will be starting a tourism course sometime in the new year. Although he feels its been a hard year for him I think its been a fruitful year where he has achieved a lot. The rest of the boys are happy and working hard in school, a few of them will be going into there final years of high school this year. I can't get over how the years have past so quickly and how they have now grown into responsible great young men.

The school is developing quickly, just in the last few months we took a big step in renting a much bigger building in a more expensive area. We moved into the upstairs for our residential home to help with costs. Although its a beautiful building and has a big garden it means I spend a lot more time at work which can be more tiring. Its been an exhausting term for me with the changes and the pressures, but I am excited to see us moving on. The new children that I wrote about in my last blog are doing very well and settled in. Its good to see the changes in them already. We have 46 children, 24 free and 22 paying. Because of the higher expenses in the school we are looking for 32 extra paying children to cover our costs so you can think of us in the new year as we work hard to achieve this.
We are also really in need of international volunteers that are interested in coming for more than 6 months to teach and work in the school, so if you are interested or know people who are interested please contact me.

We have been doing family savings with the parents of the children we work with and training in life skills. This has been going well and good to see their enthusiasm to develop their lives. It has been especially difficult in the last 6 months with the alcoholics we have been working with. For some reasons they have been less interested in looking after themselves and not really wanting to help themselves change. One of the ladies has gone back to drinking and given up her job after she had been doing so well. I hope to spend more time this year in the community to work amongst these people to help them out of the problems they face which cause them to drink, it will be a hard job but I hope that this year they will be helped.

Grace is now in her final year of primary, she will be finishing in May. She is doing so well and is a beautiful girl. Its a blessing to see her grow up so happy. Diana is doing so well at school, she loves reading and studying and is so happy just generally. I keep thinking of how she use to be so shy and use to hide around the back of the house playing especially while visitors were around but now she so sociable and happy to be around people.

Jude and Lizzie are now three years, they have grown up so fast and its so enjoyable to be around them. I love watching them play together, they really love each other and have so much fun together. They are both different in their characters but so loving and happy.

This year has been a good year for myself, although I found out I had diabetes which has been quite devastating and life changing still I can say that I have seen a lot of good developments in my life. I am happy to be here in Uganda which has been a hard thing to say for awhile. I am looking forward to seeing what 2012 brings us.

Thank you so much to you all for all your support.
We wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Lots of Love from us all!!

Inspiried to be an Inspiration

Last month, following discussions with a friend who runs a medical clinic nearby, we invited ten new children to come to the school. The children were identified by the clinic as being very vulnerable, living in poverty, and being affected in some way by HIV. None of the children were able to attend school due to inability to find school fees. Many have brothers and sisters who are also not at school. Upon meeting the mothers and visiting their houses, it was clear that many of them are extremely poor and have highly complex needs. Though it stretches our resources past what we can afford, once meeting these children and their parents, there was nothing we could do but offer them hope through a high quality education. We want to give these children a good start; inspiring them to be an inspiration in the world. It is exciting for us to introduce you to these fabulous children.

Solomon is three years old. His mother and father are both HIV positive and unemployed. His mother suffers from severe depression. There are four other children in the family; the older brothers work in the holidays to pay the rent. Solomon’s mother is attending our adult’s meeting where they are educated on life skills. Solomon attends Sparkling Stars Early Learning Centre and has settled in well.

Patricia is five years old. She lived with her mother in a very bad slum area, but unfortunately she had just been thrown out of her house because they failed to pay the rent. Patricia’s mother is HIV positive and her father recently died. All of her siblings live in the village. Patricia’s mum has a small job washing clothes that doesn’t pay much. She has recently got another job cleaning in town so is not around in the evenings to care for Patricia. Hopefully though, with two jobs she can find another house. She earns about £1 a day. Patricia attends the primary school.

Emmanuel lives with his mother in a terrible slum area. His siblings live in the village and his father ran away. Both him and his mother are HIV positive and have to take medication every day. He is three years old and attends Sparkling Stars Early Learning Centre. His mother had a small job serving food earning 50p a day but we recently employed her to prepare snacks and assist with cleaning at the school so she could earn more. Her rent is £10 a month. She attends our adult’s meeting where we are helping them with a financial savings scheme.

Mark lives with his mother and her new baby. The father does not stay with them, he has another wife elsewhere. He is three years old but is very small. Mark is enjoying nursery school; he is best friends with Emmanuel, they do everything together. Mark is a happy boy and his mother is very grateful that he is able to attend school. She has a small job helping to serve food at a local restaurant.

Akim is three years old and lives with his mother. He used to spend his days running around the slum where they live. His mother works sweeping the streets. It is hard work and the council doesn’t pay her reliably. Sadly, their house was recently burgled and the little she had was stolen. Akim did not behave well when he first started school but is now settling in and learning some English quickly. Mama Akim is considering working with one of the other mother’s on a small business idea.

Juliet lives with her mother and four siblings. The mother has taken in another child of a friend who recently died, a common occurrence in Uganda. Juliet is six years old and loves school. Her mother does not work but is attending the adult group we run to participate in the savings scheme and gain education in English and other areas. She is trying to put together a plan to open a small hair salon to earn some sustainable income.

Sauda is three years old and lives with her mum and two siblings. Her father died recently leaving her mother with the children and six months pregnant. Her mother is HIV positive and the family struggle in very poor housing. They share one very small room with a mattress on the floor. The walls are a mixture of pieces of wood and cardboard. Mama Sauda works cutting stones in the quarry for 25p a day. She does not know where the money for their rent is coming.

Stella lives in a very poor area with her mother. She is four years old and has two older siblings. Her mother runs a small shop and is able to earn £1-3 each day. She is unwell with HIV and tuberculosis. Stella is learning well in the primary school and her mother is coming to our adult’s meeting.

Mariam is one of four children living with her mother. She works at the quarry bashing stones earning 25p per day. They live in the slum area in a house that is leaking from the roof. Her mother is HIV positive; Mariam has not yet been tested. Mariam is in the primary school and enjoys her lessons.

Robert is a sweet boy, attending the primary school. Robert’s father died of HIV related issues and his mother is positive. His mother has a small job cleaning a house. She is looking after four children and manages well with what she has.

We encourage all of the parents to attend the adult’s meeting once a week at our house. We have found over the years that the children do better if their whole families are supported. Currently we are not supporting the families financially but are working with them to help them to save some of their small earnings and are considering a microfinance program to help them with sustainable business ideas. We are educating them to speak and write English, in health and lifestyle issues, and offering a support system where they can bring their issues to discuss within their peer group.

It is encouraging to see the changes in the children after only half a term of school. They are happy and healthier, with regular meals and snacks provided during the day. Their parents are taking pride in their appearance and the children are now turning up smart to school each day. Many of them are communicating in English already; they spoke no English when they first came. They integrate well with the other children in school. What is most exciting is they are now productively occupied during the day instead of running around the slum areas and streets. This, after all, is one of the main reasons we want to offer children the opportunity for education, to prevent them from living the lives the boys lived.

We would love to share more with you if you are interested in these children. We hope there are many more stories to tell in the future of children who we can inspire.

Sere, Akwedde and Osilo

Sere Charles

In December 2010, Sere finished his A‘levels. He is our oldest child and the first to finish his school education. In Uganda the local school year finishes in December, but the university year starts in August. So for the last 6 months or so Sere has been trying to find a job that could help him earn some money. We have decided that after they finish secondary and wish to continue on with their studies, it would be good for them to contribute to the fees. We hope that this will teach them to work hard and value their education and job, so they learn to be self sufficient.

Charles found a job with a friend of ours who runs a tourist business. He sent Charles to work deep in a forest in Budongo Safari Lodge. It’s been very hard for Charles as he has never lived outside of the city so he really struggled trying to adapt to not having life around him. He sleeps in a tent so not even having electricity and friends around to chat with has been very hard. When he first came back he totally refused to return that he couldn’t cope anymore. We talked with him throughout his time off explaining to him how this could be a good opportunity that our friend who owns the lodge is a very successful person and could offer him a good opportunity. Eventually Charles returned after he had applied to the Universities around Kampala and spent another two months planning to come back in August to start Uni. Just before he finished his time our friend Amos went to check on the lodge and spent some time with Sere. He saw that he was doing very well and could make a good tourist guide and offered to pay for him to study tourism as a diploma down in another town out of Kampala. He asked him to come back home to learn how to drive properly and then he would be able to go down to one of the Safari parks and while studying he could also be a tourist guide. He explained that there were a lot of opportunities in tourism that you don’t need a degree for and many people who have been to Uni haven’t been able to get jobs. It is expensive to learn how to drive so it might take a while to pay for everything for him; meanwhile he is working for us at Sparkling Stars cooking lunch for the children and staff.

The rest of the boys are studying hard. Orikodi finishes his A‘levels this December and then will look for a job. He has told us that he doesn’t want to go to University straight away that he would much prefer to work for a while and save money and study later, maybe first get a diploma like Charles. The time is running fast and each year a few boys at a time will be finishing school entering the big world with hopes of further studies. Fees for University are a lot different to school fees. Many people ask us what our children will do when they finish secondary, we always tell them like any family we hope to support them until they can support themselves. If that means university then we will try all we can to provide for them. We have a friend who already has been raising funds for further studies by making and selling Christmas decorations. We hope to find other ways too.

Some of the younger children are finishing primary school and needing to go to secondary school. Two of them, Akwedde and Osillo, have been home-schooling this year because they are dyslexic and Ugandan schools don’t really recognise it and definitely don’t have support for it.

Osillo has repeated one class at school three times. Recently my mum has been teaching him and he is now reading and writing after only a few months. We’re hoping to send them to a school that does look after children with dyslexia but it is a lot more expensive than a normal school.

This is Akwedde Erina, she is 14 years old. She is a sister of Kilappa, Orikodi, and Rafiki. She came to live with us two years ago as her mother had moved to the village and she had a problem that needed parental supervision. She is a lovely girl and is very good with Jude and Lizzie. She panics in exams even when she knows the answer in her head so doesn’t do as well as she could do.

Osillo is younger than Akwedde and from the same family. He still lives with his parents at home but they don’t have much control over him and comes home at all hours of the night. When he started home-schooling this year I couldn’t really face working with him as he had some of the habits the boys had when I first started working with them and felt that as I had been through all that before could I really face the challenges again. However he is doing well and is changing and it hasn’t been such a big challenge.

Sparkling Stars

The school has now 31 children, 14 of which are free children who come from very, very poor families who live in the slum areas. The rest are paying children. It is encouraging to see how the school is growing, though at times I have been very discouraged and have almost given up. But this last 6 months we have been able to put up our fees and admit a few children who are able to pay these fees. Although we are still not covering our costs and some of the expenses are required to be covered by donations, we are doing a lot better and we have a lot more enthusiasm to continue on with it.

We are covering the Cambridge system of education. After many years being, here having my older children in the local system, I have got to know how the local curriculum works, and to see how it has affected Uganda’s development. It uses a lot of fact cramming, not really teaching a child to think and use their initiative; with no imaginative development at all. After a lot of debate, we have now started teaching using a more international approach. This means a lot of work for us as the teachers are not experienced in teaching practically. We spend a lot of time planning for each term and teaching the teachers what to teach. It makes it quite hard and frustrating attimes and feels like we are doing many jobs at once. The local educational examining board allows the Cambridge SATS results to be converted into the local PLE (end of primary exams) results so meaning the children will not be affected if they need to go back into the local schools. So far, the parents are very happy and the children love coming to school.

We have a good staff; 4 Teacher’s, a Toddler worker, a Security man, a cleaner, and a cook. They are good workers, but of course it’s hard at times managing them due to cultural differences. Jane, one of the teachers who I have been working with for around four years, has just finished her Nursery Teacher training course. I met Jane when she was struggling with life. She finished her A’levels but hadn’t been able to go on with further education so she was working at a fishing net factory. She was really struggling with hardly any money so didn’t have good accommodation or much provision of anything else. She didn’t have any teacher training but applied for a job with us so we gave her a try, with the aim to put her through studies if she does well. After a while her living conditions worsened so I gave her a house to live in. At that time her boyfriend mistreated her, deceived her into bed and she fell pregnant. For months she never told me in fear of being fired from her job, which often happens here. She was astounded when I found out and didn’t send her away. Since then she has been working for us and being a single parent to her little boy who has just turned three.

At the end of the term in July we held a school performance where the children sang songs and did presentations on the things they had been studying during the term. We had been studying about the world; they sang songs from different countries and also made cakes to sell to the parents after we had finished. The children performed very well. It was a lovely afternoon and the parents were so impressed. You can see some of the photo’s below.

We have a friend, who I have mentioned about in one of my other posts, she has a clinic where she works with many people who are affected by HIV. She has raised funds for many people to have free ARV medicine. She looks after a lot of children, many who are very poor. This term we will be taking in at least five of her children under free education, and if we can raise enough support, to help with housing and other financial costs the family may need. We are happy that we now have a good base of fee-paying children to enable us to support more vulnerable children, much in need of a good education.

Volunteers

We have had many short term volunteers come and work with us in the past. They have offered valuable assistance and enjoyed the experience of living and working in Uganda. We appreciate the value that these volunteers offer and realise we cannot do all the work ourselves. We are currently looking for long term volunteers who are trained teacher's and nursery teacher's to work with us in the Sparkling Stars Early Learning Centre.

The school is going well and growing steadily. We now have a nursery school section as well as a primary school. The foundation pupils are now at year two, in September they will progress to year three. Many of our children are from very poor families who cannot afford education. They attend the school for free. Our aim is to increase the capacity of the school to offer more places to disadvantaged children.

Though the school is going well, we have a great need in the area of teacher training. The school teaches both international and local curriculum with a focus on practical learning. Because all of our teachers are locally trained and have experience working in the local school system alone, they have little awareness of a practical approach to learning. A volunteer with experience working with an international curriculum who could work alongside and train the teachers is essential for the high quality education the school aims to offer. I currently do most of the planning for the lessons for all year groups which is a lot of work and unsustainable in the long term. With assistance from a trained volunteer, the teachers could become independent in this aspect of their jobs.

We would be able to provide accomodation and meals for the volunteer, plus a small allowance. We are seeking a volunteer to be committed for a minimum of six months starting at the beginning of September. Please spread the word and ask teachers you know if they or any of their colleagues are interested. It is a great need and we would really appreciate the help.

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.