Childrens "Sevices" part 2

I went with another gal from church to meet Natalie and catch the van that would drive us the 1 ½ hours to the “camp”. This week, thanks to donations from church members and other resources, all the kids had at least a pair of trousers. Many had shirt, albeit torn ones, and some had sandles.

There was no electricity since Wednesday and therefore water had to be dipped from a pond to fill large barrels to use for cooking and cleaning. This was the only water for the 200 + kids who were there this week. Although the kids had not eaten for 3 days, some benefactor had brought posho and rice last night and the kids had two meals today. One meal was hot porridge, about 1 ½ cups of water cooked with posho flour. The second meal was simply rice. No beverage, no fruit, vegetables, seasonings, just plain food.

Thank goodness, Natalie and others of her friends will serve one real, big meal tomorrow, rice, potatoes, beef in gravy with other vegetables and milk to drink. What a feast!

The 20 girls are kept separated from the boys. In fact we saw only 3 of the 20 girls today. None of them are in school. There are scholarships for 4 boys so far, with 16 more who want to go and learn. The school is only a 2 mile walk away.

The physical plant has many buildings including a large multiunit dormitory for the boys, a cafeteria with two kitchens, an assembly hall, administration building, a carpentry workshop, girls residence house and several other buildings whose function I didn't know. There are large yards and some fields around that could support gardens, if anyone knew how to dig and plant. (Ali told me the place was originally built in the 1980's for teen-age criminals to rehabilitate them rather than put them into the adult prison.)

There are just 3 or 4 paid staff to operate the entire place, covering all shifts. Or maybe the kids are simply locked into their dorms for the night. I don't know. Speaking of dorms, there were about 34 sets of double bunk beds to accommodate the 180 boys, ages 3 to 18. the bottom bunks had mosquito nets, but the top ones didn't.

This is a government run facility, in the middle of nowhere with kids who are seen as problems. There is currently no attempt to reunite the kids with family members, although each week some of the kids run away in an attempt to find their mom or dad. But Kampala is a city of almost 3 million people and the neighborhoods and areas change rapidly with all the building that is going on. It is common for the escapee to be picked up and returned in a month or so.

It is hard to know if life here in the camp is better than the one they had begging on the street.

More later.....

Library Books

Have you gone to a library and looked for a book to read? If you are just browsing, it likely doesn't matter if the books are in order or not. BUT, if you are looking for a certain book, there is a lot of frustration for you and the librarian when it is in the library somewhere, but not on the shelf where it is supposed to be.

Heritage International School has a library of about 3500 books. The new volunteer librarian, who comes from a family of librarians, almost pulled out her hair when she discovered that every section of the library was so badly misfiled that you couldn't be certain of finding anything!!

With the help of the older students she is refiling and reshelving all the books. Each section, elementary, junior, adult and selected adult have been taken off the shelves and are in the process of being sorted, refiled with some pulled out for repair or discard.

For about 6 hours I helped. These are some of the things I found:
Dr. Seuss and Arthur books cataloged as Junior fiction;
books cataloged by the first three letters of the title or of the author's first name;
adult fiction in the junior section and vice-versa;
books on the shelf that are not even cataloged into the library (maybe there is a book fairy adding to the collection?);
and of course, non-fiction and fiction in both sections.

For those of us who value books for all the wonderful stories, information, photos and insights, this new, short-term volunteer is a huge blessing. Now, if the kids can learn to help keep things in order and the librarian who comes next works to keep the order, it will be time well spent.

Childrens "Services" part 1

One woman from Belgium has found a ministry with children in a “camp” west of Kampala. She goes twice a week to tell stories, sing songs, through an interpreter, as most of the children don't know any English at all. She spoke with great passion about the love that she feels when she is with these young ones.

The camp is the enclosure to which all of the Kampala street children are taken when the authorities want to clear the downtown streets before international events. Children ages 3 to 18 are taken there if they are not accompanied on the street by a parent/guardian. Before Natalie began to visit, most of the children had no clothes, while a few had dirty rags to wear. In the camp there are no facilities for bathing or doing laundry. Drinking water and food are in very short supply. Most of the children have skin sores of some kind, and there is the good possibility of contagious diseases like ringworm..

This lady, with a social worker and a few others, goes twice a week in an attempt to bring some comfort and hope to these 300 children. I plan to go with her this Friday. More information to come.