Amecet Investigators....

Today I want to write about our two Amecet investigators, Simon Orugon and Elias Iga Okiror! They are our Social Workers, but I often call them investigators. They do a lot of work in  Amecet involving tracing the families of the children, talking with the families and counselling the families.

 Simon Orugon

 Elias Iga Okiror

These two men are doing so much work for Amecet and in particularly for the children. They both have a heart for children and you can see that in the way they work and talk with them.

Many times children are coming into Amecet without the true story and to help re-settling the children, back in their family, we do need the truth!!

Yesterday, the Police came to bring a girl from around 11 years, they had a letter from the police office. It was a strange story, the girl had been living with a guardian in Soroti, (both her parents had died). Now the guardian had died and she was roaming around Soroti, she didn't know any other relatives... Simon had a talk with her and took her in the motorcar to the place where she had lived (she first didn't want to say where). They found the house, where her auntie lives, who was looking for her. So after talking, the girl was resettled at her auntie's home.

There was a little boy brought into Amecet, some time ago. The mother had ran off and left the child at the neighbours. We found the grandparents, but they didn't want to do anything to do with the little boy. They rejected him. But we got the contact of the brother of the grandfather, who lives in another town. He is very willing to receive the boy into his family, to him it was a shame that the boy would go to a strange family. It does costs some phone calls, talking and time, but this little boy will stay among his relatives and will grow up, knowing where he belongs!

Last year a little handicapped boy was brought to Amecet, he only weighed 4 kg and he must be around 5 years old! He is still living with us, doing much better, weighing 6,5 kg now. Through asking, investigating and searching, Elias and Simon found the grandparents, who are going to care for him. There are so many stories we have found the relatives of the children. 

When a child is abandoned, we always put their picture in the local Teso newspaper. It helped in some cases, to get to the parents or relatives of the child. Radio message over the Teso radio also may help in some cases
When the child can talk, we try to get names of relatives or maybe a village from the child. We had a child in Amecet who had been on ARV's, so we went to several clinics where they give ARv's to the patients, to talk with the nurses and to post a poster.

Simon  en Elias sometimes take the child to the village the child mentions, to ask around if people know the child and if the child maybe recognise the shops, road or other things. We feel that it is very important to trace the relatives of the children, so we can start talking with the family to bring the child back to them. It is sometimes a long process and  not always easy, when people reject the child  and you have to find another safe place for the child.