Our staff is beautiful...

As you all know, we have quite a big group of people, working in Amecet. We have Social Workers, we have the caretakers and we have the people in the kitchen, the garden, for the laundry and for cleaning the house. Lately, we have had a busy time, we had a lot of sick children and also we have many babies at the moment, it is really a busy time. Then loosing a baby, like we did last week with Julius, it is painful. Besides all that we had a challenging time with one staff member, so all in all we could use some encouragement!!
There was a team from Madison, USA, they wanted to bless the staff and they did!!!!

 The team from the USA were 8 lady's and they prepared this table with nice fruits, chocolate and cookies for us!!

The staff was invited to take whatever they wanted and they also prepared for every staff member a small gift (you see at the side of the table).

 The baby's and toddlers were in bed, we had planned it at 12 o'clock till 2 pm, but the bigger children had a small party outside on the veranda. They had great fun!!

 The USA team had prepared all kind of things to bless us: a foot bath and a pedicure with all kind of beautiful nail polish colors. Faith gets a foot bath here and next to her gets Esther her nails done, while feeding a baby, because those things have to go on!!

 They also gave facial masks and I was one of the first people who got a nice cucumber mask!! Everybody was laughing at me, but many followed my example.....

 As you see...from left to right: Leya, than Mary, Beatrice and at the right Esther! We had great fun, because for most people was it the first time and you really look funny with a white, green or blue face!!

 And also the men in our team joined in, what do you think of our Garden men, Calvin and David??

This is how it looked in our living room, we had nice music on, a lot of laughter, nice snacks, left you see Simon with a mask and next to him gets Pauline, our laundry lady a foot massage, baby are getting fed (in the background by Anneke).

Thank you Madison team, you really blessed us, 

Another Torroro trip...

Today we left at 7 am for another trip to Torroro. I have been writing about Joshua, he has a very serious eye problem. It started with allergies and it has not been treating right and now he is on one eye blind, the other he can see with, but not very good. We are going very regular to the Eye hospital in Torroro. He has been admitted there in the past, they operated his right eye and now we go for review and today we got again treatment because he has an infection in the eye.

They are working on the road from Soroti to Mbale and also on the road from Mbale to Torroro. Because of the bad road we drove for 4 hours to Torroro, today it was wonderful, we were in 2 hours and 15 minutes in Torroro.

Elias drove and Catherine (my youngest daughter) went with us, just for the company. On this picture we eat our lunch on the way back.

I want to ask your prayers for Joshua, I am so impressed with him, he is so positive and happy. When the doctor asked him how he was doing, he said: not so fine, so the doctor asked some more and he said: I can´t read anymore. I just felt for him. He was not angry or sad, no he just said that he couldn´t read anymore. I asked him before if he was scared about his eyes, he said no, he was not scared.The doctor looked at his eye and he put him on a treatment of different eye drops. So we have now a schedule hanging in the living room, what to give and when to give!!

But I can learn from Joshua, to take things how they come and make the best from it and to keep smiling!!!!

Jiggers ...part two..

Last week (21 January) I wrote about the two children, Rosa and Moses, who were brought by the Police and had so many jiggers in their hands and feet. We treated them and they are very okay now, they are playing the whole day and as you can see on this picture, happy children.

Simon went to their home on Saturday, he wanted to see the home and the condition of the compound. he talked with the community, the neighbours, and the community leaders. 

Today was the day to bring them back home. At first they were not happy to go back, but when they saw their home and mother, they were happy to show everybody their shoes and new clothes.

Here they ran towards their home 

Simon, Emmanuel, Esther and Ingrid (Dutch volunteer nurse) went with special spray for the home and medicines to treat the mother. On this picture, you see them under the mango tree, talking while Emmanuel and Ingrid are treating the feet of the mother. The situation is not so good, the mother is not lame, that was the first report we got, but she has one hand which is paralysed. Simon had already heard on Saturday that the community had done the spraying of the home several times, but that the mother was not so easy to work with. The talk with the mother was very important, but the clan had already decided to meet this coming Sunday, to talk about the problem and how to help solving them.

So our job was to spray the home, the mattress, the inside and outside and here is Ingrid spraying the outside of the hut. Simon, Emmanuel, Esther and Ingrid tried to spray as good as they could, but we all realise that this is only a short term help. The real help must come from the community and we are very happy that we could do this little step in the process.

So we said goodbye and we hope that the clan finishes what we began.

Rest in Peace, dear Julius..

The battle of Julius came to end, last evening at 7.30 pm. His little body was so tired, it looked that he was in constant pain and struggling for breath.. We had him on the oxygen machine since 2 pm yesterday, but that also didn't help him. His saturation dropped, his heart beat dropped and at 7.30 pm it was over.

I feel mixed, very sad because of loosing this little one, but also relieved that he is out of his suffering. We have the comfort that Julius is with Jesus, his pain is over and he is in the Father's arms!
We will lay his small body in a little coffin and we will bring him to the village, where he will be buried next to his mother, who passed away 2 weeks ago.

When we drove to his village, the road was so narrow at the end, we had to walk the last part. The coffin went on a motorbike. Many people from the neighbourhood had already gathered, waiting for the body to arrive.

The small coffin was put on a bed in the middle, under the tree. People sitting around it. This was a sad moment, the father came forward with his 5 remaining children. They all looked alike, just as Julius had looked. I had to give an account from all that had happened in Amecet with Julius and I gave the medical book to the father. Then we left the family to mourn and to bury the little boy next to his mother.
Dear Julius, rest in Peace!

Jiggers...

It was almost 6 o'clock in the evening, yesterday, when the Police brought two children to Amecet. The Police was called to a family. at first it looks like child neglecting, there were four children and the place was very dirty, all the children had wounds from the jiggers. but then they met the mother, who was lame and she couldn't really help her children. The Police decided to take the two smallest children, to bring for treatment to Amecet and they will see what to do with the rest of the family! Their home needs to be cleaned and sprayed.

Janneke and Simon were still there when they came, so they first put them with their feet in a bucket with water and anti septic in it. The oldest child is a girl, Rosa, she is around 7 years old and her brother is Moses, he might be 5 years old.

Moses' hands are also invested with jiggers. That are small larva's, which are often in area's where pigs are, but also because of poor hygiene, people have jiggers. They come in your skin, often the feet, but also the hands can be with jiggers, or the buttocks, when little children sit on the ground.

His feet were worse, it must be very painful to walk, It looks like the jiggers just eat his skin away.

Simon started yesterday evening already with opening the wounds and cleaning, then Janneke packed them with bethadine and after a meal, they slept....

This morning the job continued. Emmanuel started to opening and clean the feet and hands of them.

They were very brave, if you see the foot of Moses, you know that this boy suffered and still suffers. He had the worse wounds. It took a long time to treat all the spots and then we packed them again in Bethadine and we found nice socks to cover it all.

They were very okay with it!! They were running around on their socks, playing and they loved the swings and the meals!!!

We are struggling with little Julius. He came in Amecet on 15 January in Amecet, by then he was one week old. His mother died after giving birth. He was small, a bit malnourished, weighing only 1.9 kg. After 3 days, he started to get problems, some diarrhea and breathing problems, we have been at the doctors with him every day, for the past 3 days. On and off on IV drip, we feed him by NG tube. There are still breathing problems. When you see him on this picture with Eline, one of our short term volunteers, you can see he is very sick. Please join us in prayers for him.

Shaving time.....

It has been a bit quiet on our blog..... Not that we haven't been doing anything, or that nothing has happened.. We had a green wave going through the house... It is not nice to write about it, I mean we had a real green diarrhea going from baby to baby. Our big song was: Washing hands, washing hands!!! It was not good and you can imagine that I didn't want to write about this. Not a real funny thing to read about. But now we are almost through it. In the last blog I wrote about the new washing machine..... we were very happy with this machine!!!!! Many diapers were hanging on our clothes line during the last week!!

We still got some new children in Amecet, today we got baby whose mother died after the delivery. I wanted to ask the father to take the baby home and that we could help with milk money, but the father was really desperate, he didn't know how to care for this little baby. So we talked together and we decide that we could put two other baby's together in one bed and to give this baby the empty bed. It is hard to be so full, not having an empty bed left for an emergency for example. Many bottles and many diapers....

Saturday, Simon and Emmanuel did a good job on the heads from some of our children. When they come, many are malnourished and also their hair is not very nice. When they start eating well, their hair also starts to grow and it will be more black then. After some time it is good to shave all the hair off, so that the healthy hair can come out. 

 from left to right: Walter, Joshua and Justin (with snotty nose!)

 Joshua has still serious problems with his eyes, but he is handsome with his bold head!

 Gabdesia's hair was very thin, we hope with shaving it (a bit) it will grow back more thick. She has been without NG tube for some time, but last week she had lost so much weight that we had to put it back. She is now gaining again.

 Walter and Justin (at the back) play good together.

 Timothy looks really cute with his bold head. He is 18 months old and is not even crawling!! He was malnourished and really behind in his development. But he is lazy as well!!

Norah is one year old and she really wants to walk. The walker helps her to move, her hair was not very nice, But now the nice black hair can starts to grow!

Resettling into Prisons....

We have been extremely busy this first days of the new year! Lots of new baby's. The little twin, where I wrote about in the previous blog, are doing well, they are still fed by NG tube, but they are gaining!!Last week we brought Joseph back to his mother. Joseph has been with us for 5 months and his situation is very different than the other children in Amecet. He has a double cleft pallet and both of his parents are in jail. Normally we re-settle a child as soon as it is possible, especially when there is a mother. We come very regularly in the women section of the prison. we visit the mothers with little children and we assist them with porridge flour, sugar and soap. We took Joseph with us, several times, when we went to visit the prisons. 

His mother was so happy to see him. We have been talking with the authorities if possible, we would bring Joseph to be with his mother. There is still an operation coming up for him, but we will help with that when the time is there. So Simon, the Probation officer and I took Joseph to be united with his mother. the first picture is the official handing over in the presence of the Officer of the women section. After that, we all went to the men section and the father was called. He had not seen his son for many months, so he was happy to see him. But it was still a strange way of resettling Joseph into prisons.

 

 We get almost every week a child via the Police. Sometimes it goes about a simple thing, a child was wandering from home and couldn't find the way back. But there are also more complicating or sad stories. This week we got a girl from around 15 years old, she was beaten by her father. The parents were separated and she lived with her father. I had to take her to the doctor and she got treatment, she had several bad bruises on her back and arm. The police got in touch with her mother and re-settled her at her mothers home.

This little boy was also brought by the police, with a very sad story. the parents are separated and the mother came to town and dumped the little boy at his fathers' place and took off. The father didn't want the boy and also disappeared, leaving the little boy sitting somewhere outside. Concerned neighbours brought the child to the Police, who brought him to us! No name, no age, we don't know anything about him, only that he cries a lot. Every day, he chooses one of our staff as his "mother" and he follows that person the whole day, crying to be picked up and carried. But that is not always possible when there are 12 little baby's and 5 toddlers who all need to be fed and given attention.... Simon is pressing the Police to investigate more, so we can get him to his relatives.

And yesterday we got a telephone call from the maternity ward in the hospital. A mother, who was just operated and had given birth to a baby boy, had passed away. The family needed help..... Together with Eline, I went to the hospital and we came back with the baby. A big boy, weighing almost 4 kg!! His name is Gerard. So there was an empty bed, Gerard is welcome! 

Then, we also went to Kampala this week! We were in real need of a new washing machine. So we left Wednesday morning and came back on Thursday with this machine!! Emmanuel will install the machine and we hope it will serve us for a good time! We are all very happy with it!!

The new year begins....

We wish you all a Happy 2015!! And we thank you for your interest and support for Amecet in 2014, we are ready for new challenges, new blessings and new victories in 2015!!

Yesterday, we got a phone call from the probation Officer from another District, it was 2 hours drive away. There was a woman who was insane, she had given birth on the road. She spoke another language, was just wandering around. If we please could come and take the child, it was not safe for the baby to stay with the mother. Elias and Emmanuel went to pick the baby. It is so sad, but for the life of the baby, this was the only way. The mother was also HIV+.

 They called the baby Emmanuel. His weight was 1.8 kg and he around 1 week old. We started directly with the ARV's. It is a small little boy, we will care for him.

Then we also were busy this morning with preparing our New year meal!! It is nice to do something extra and we all worked together in getting everything done!

Helen helped uncle David with slaughtering the chickens. This goes all on a different way than I would do at home, we buy the chicken alive and we let them walk in the compound till the time we "need"  them. 

Uncle Elias is cooking the meat for the Pilau, that is a treat, it is rice with the meat through it and they use special spices. It is very tasty!

In the meantime others were feeding the baby's and keeping an eye on the toddlers and Ester and I were doing the laundry. As I wrote in my last blog, our washing machine broke down. There came someone to repair it, but this morning it broke down again and it sounded very serious. We do really need a new machine. I didn't count this time how many diapers I washed, too busy, but there were many!!!!