It is 9 o'clock in the morning, as a team we sit on the veranda to start the day with a meditation and prayers.The gate opens, visitors.... It is Alice with her grandmother! Alice comes with big steps to the veranda, they are going to sit.
Alice is almost 3 years old, we found her 2 years ago, in a far village. Her parents had died of AIDS, earlier that year and the grandmother was left to care for Alice and 3 other siblings. The grandmother is old, when you ask her if she knows her age, she says, that she even could be 40 or 50! She has no idea how old she is. Their little hut was very run down, there was no door and holes in the grass roof. Alice was malnourished and often sick. We spoke with the grandmother and together we agreed that we would take Alice for a while to Amecet.
In Amecet we took her for tests and Alice also had AIDS, we were able to enroll her in the ARV programme in the hospital and Alice started to gain weight and be more happy.
After 8 months she was ready to go back home and I was really scared to bring her back to the village. Would the grandma be able to give her twice a day her ARV's? When you start the ARV's, it is for life, you can't stop. We already had helped the grandma to repair the hut, we were also able to give her a cow, seeds and groundnuts to plant.
And we prayed that everything would go well. When we went to visit her, 5 weeks after we brought her back, we were surprised! When we came walking down the little path (we couldn't come close to the hut by car, so we would walk the last part) the grandma was dancing to welcome us! Alice had gained weight and looked well, the ARV's were given exactly the right amount! We were so happy! Now the grandma comes every two months with Alice to Soroti for new medicines. She always comes first to us and they have breakfast on our veranda, we give her also transport money. Alice is doing great and is hardly sick (only sometimes malaria).
I have seen again that we should never underestimate our African Grandma's!!!!
Very good.
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