Bariki Bye Mary, Moses, Peter and Sagal......

Here we sing our goodbye song to Mary, Moses, Peter and Sagal (was on the empty little chair). They all left Amecet, with their new "forever" family. They are adopted to three families and left for Belgium. Amecet does give children sometimes for adoption, this is quite a process, it goes through the Probation office and the High Court of Uganda. It is the last thing we do, normally the children go back to their relatives, we search among their relatives to a fit person to care for the child, if the parents are not there or are not able to care for their child. If that doesn't work out, we look for a local, Ugandan family to foster and later adopt the child, if that also doesn't work out, we look to the international adoption, which we had to do in case of Mary, Moses, Peter and Sagal.

 Mary is 12 years old and we know her since 2008, when she came in Amecet for the first time. She was re-settled with her mother after some months, but her mother passed away in 2011 and because of the situation in her family, Mary came again in Amecet for some months. We keep in contact with the children who are HIV+, we visit them in their villages, when Mary was re-settled again, this time with her grandmother, we kept monitoring her. It did not go so well, we brought her back to her uncles, and that didn't work out, so we helped the grandmother, where she went back to. But things were not going well. Mary didn't go to school, was on the streets etc. We were worried about her. In October 2015, we took her back in Amecet. There was a family found for her in Belgium. It took still  9 months before it was all organized. Many trips to the village and a lot of paperwork. But now she is gone with her new mother. They lived for some time together here in Soroti, while waiting for the High Court, but she is very happy. We are also very happy for Mary, she has a future ahead of her...

Moses and Peter are twins. They came into Amecet in October 2015. You can read their story in the blog of October 2, 2015. It was impossible to re-settle them back with their relatives. Their mother is always "on the road". It was endangering the life of the children, to bring them back to her (which she didn't want), also relatives were not able or willing. We also had the solution of international adoption. This Belgium family is thrilled to take them into their home and heart. They are bonding well and we feel they are the right people for the boys!

Sagal was very weak and sick when he came into Amecet, you can read about that in the blog of 28th of August 2015. He picked up good and is a cute, stubborn little boy. he knows what he wants and what he doesn't want!! When he saw his new parents, he was happy and he knows that they love him and will care for him, from now on. Sagal's situation was also difficult, no one in his family was willing to care for him and because of his status, he needs a home which is able to care for him.  We wish him and his new parents blessings and I would love to see this little man in a couple of years!!!!! With his sweet smile, he has a way with people.....

We will miss the children, they were with us for quite a while, but we are thrilled that they have a family, a place where they belong and.... we keep in touch with them!

Anna Grace will go to school tomorrow!!!

Tomorrow she is allowed to go to school, we start with half days. Anna Grace is still a bit weak, a whole day school might be too much for her! Anna Grace came at the end of May in Amecet. Both of her parents died of AIDS and she is also HIV+. She was getting her ARV's from a Health centre in her village, but we found out that she is taking them wrongly for years.... The doses she took were too low and she was getting weak and sick.  She has gained 4 kg. since she came to Amecet, got stronger, at first she was laying down most of the days, but not anymore, she walks around, plays and colors and she is asking if she can go to school.... We refused at first, because she was still so weak, but now she is doing well, is more active, so we let her go for half days only (for now). When I gave her a schoolbag and books, she was shining!!!! It is such a joy to see her happiness!

This are our other three musketeers, they all came into Amecet at the way Anna Grace came in. But now they are all going to school and they are doing well!! Today they helped us with washing the dishes, on Sunday, several of our staff is free, so their help is very welcome. This is also so good to see, they came in sick and weak, now they are strong, funny and reaching out to help!

We still receive little baby's, this picture, I took this morning from baby Julius. He was only 9 hours old when he came into Amecet! He was born at home, in the village and the mother started to bleed after the baby was born, she died only hours later. The situation at home was not so good, there is a grandmother, but she has a mental problem, so it was not good to have him at home. They came for help to Amecet. Julius weighed 2.3 kg and looked a bit yellow. he was weak, couldn't suck from his bottle, so we had to give him a NG tube, to be able to give him the nutrients he needed. We changed beds, so that he would get more daylight, through the window and today he is doing good. He is with us for 3 weeks, and he gained 280 gram. Maybe that doesn't seem much, but now he started to gain, he will  gain more and more. It gives you also an idea how we struggle sometimes for 280 gram! But we believe in the small beginnings......

R.I.P. Amida.........

Elias came to Amecet, this morning, with the news that Amida had died last night. What a shock, I couldn't believe it.... Amida has been twice in Amecet, in 2005 and in 2007. During her stay in 2007 she was very sick, I really thought she would not survive. One moment she even saw Jesus, it was such a very holy moment, in that little room!!! I wrote about this in my little book (sorry in Dutch) "Jij bent geen dood ding.." (page 26).
We kept having contact with her and helped her with school fees, last year she did a course in hair dressing, because that is what she wanted to become, a hair dresser. She always came to the Amun weeks and even in between she sometimes visited us. And today, the news that she had died....

Amida comes from a Muslim family, so Elias, Dominique and I went to visit the family, the burial will be today, in the afternoon. It was sad, crying people everywhere and Amida was laying there, she didn't look very bad. Then we heard the story from the mother.... Amida had stopped taking her ARV's for two months!!!! Nobody knew, they only found out some days ago... Amida is 20 years, so she managed her own medicines. I feel so sad, so frustrated, so angry in a way...... I cried this morning, why did she stop taking her medicines??? She knew that she needed them, why did she do that?? All kind of thoughts go through my head, I am confused, what did we miss???

I want to remember as I knew her, a funny girl with a special sense of humor, I also want to remember that she saw Jesus, I pray that she remembered that too, at the end.....

Good news stories....

We have been busy the last weeks, but we are doing well! We have not had very sick children and several of the babies we have re-settled with their relatives!

One of them, or better two of them, were Emmanuel and Elijah.They are twins and their mother passed away after the delivery. They came into Amecet as two very small babies, they weighed both less than 2 kg. each. We struggled in the beginning, they were too weak to drink, so we had to feed them by NG-tube. But when you see then now, it is worth all the struggle!!!

 John (picture above) and Anna Grace (picture below) were both brought by an other organization, which works in the villages. They are do a lot of home visitation to HIV+ patients. They asked us to help John and Anna Grace. We also visited them at home and we felt that it would be good for them to be with us for a while, to release the family a bit and to focus on taking the ARV medicines better. They both do well, are still weak and need time to recover, but they want to go to school and they are smiling and playing (a bit). That are good signs......

 Lazarus was brought into Amecet in April, he was already 6 months old. His mother was HIV+ and after the delivery she was very weak, she struggled, but she passed away when Lazarus was 5 months old. The family asked us if we could help with Lazarus, It was all a shock to them. We took Lazarus and also tested him for HIV. We got the good news that he is HIV free!!! Lazarus is a cute little man and the family is now ready to take him back home!! 

Sagal is doing great, he is going to school and is all over the compound. I wrote about him before and also in the blog of 31/12/2015 you can read about him. 

And this is Jackson, I also wrote about him in the blog of 31/12/2015. He is almost one year with us, much longer than most of the children, we always try to resettle them after 2 or 3 months, back to their relatives. Jackson was very malnourished and sick, when he came, he could not even sit by himself. He picked up, but still every time he got sick, with high fevers and lost again the weight he had gained so slowly. Tests were done and more tests were done, then at the end it came out that he had TB, his lungs were good, but it was somewhere else in his body. He was started on anti TB drugs (now 2 months ago) and he is doing so much better now. He will be 2 years old in August, but he can't walk yet. He walks around the small table and at your hand, so he tries, and what he discovered now is the slide.... He crawls towards it, climbs up and slides down, then he crawls around it and repeats and repeats and repeats... We are happy with him, he will be walking soon.........

YES!!!!! Another kilo!!!

 Sunday is our weighing day... All the children are weighed and we can see if they do well weight-wise. The babies are weighed on a baby scale and the bigger children are standing on the scale. With some children it is exciting to see how they are gaining. This morning, we cheered for Charles. He is with us for quite a while now and he gained this week a whole kilo!!! You can see at his face, he is so proud of himself, and so are we!! Charles loves to go to school, he is in P5 and is very clever. Last year he hardly went to school, because he was too weak. We have let him go for half days, he is going with the Harmony School bus. And he did so well in school, but his weight started to come down. We talked and told him that it was too risky to go to school when he is loosing weight, He might get sick and over tired and go even more down. Charles was not happy with me, but we kept encouraging him and when he started to gain again, he was allowed to go back to school. He was so happy, I believe that the school made him eat again. The children got their report from the first term, last week,  He was number 2 in the class!!!!  And today he gain a whole kilo!!!!!

This is how we weigh the babies, actually it was a very good day today, because all the children had gained!! Moses weighs 5.7 kg he one of our biggest babies. He came into Amecet because his mother was very sick in the hospital, they thought she was dying. It was so hard to care for the baby inside the hospital ward, on the bed with the dying mother. So they asked us if we could help and so we did.

The mother picked up a little, she is now at home in the village and the family requested if he could stay a little longer, so that is the reason that Moses is still with us.

Sometimes children stay a very short time. On Wednesday the police called, there was a six year old boy, I wrote about him in my last blog, we had to change the room, to make space for him. On Thursday I took him to the clinic next door, we still had no clue where he was from, I wanted to do a malaria test on him and I asked for a HIV rapid test. The HIV test came back positive, the little boy was HIV+ We asked him if he sometimes or every day had to take medicines, he said no. I spoke with the Doctor about him and she told me to bring him to the HIV clinic, he had to start ARV's. Still we had no clue where he was from, but on Saturday, Simon and Elias went to investigate, the boy had said a name of a school, So they found the community leader and he told them that the mother was looking for the boy since Tuesday. Later they came to Amecet to pick him and we had to ask the mother privately if she knew that her son was HIV+, she didn't know, she was taken for a test as well and came out also HIV+, but after some talking she admitted that she knew she was HIV+, but she didn't want anyone to know. We explained the situation of her son and how to give his medicines, she was not upset, but didn't want her sisters to know about it (she had come with 2 sisters). We found that difficult and encouraged her to be open to her home people, it would help her. The family doesn't live very far, we will follow them up.

Always room for one more (?) !!!

As you all know, we have always a lot of babies in Amecet, many of the blogs go about babies, but we also have quite a number of bigger children at the moment. And most of them are boys. We have a room for bigger boys and a room for bigger girls. In the boysroom we had 4 beds, but the number grew, to 5, than 6. We changed a bed into a bunk bed, and we are full for boys, we said..... But then this morning, we got a call from the police, there is a six year old boy brought to them, he slept last night in the police post, they don't know where he is from, he only tells his name: Isaac. He is scared and he doesn't want to talk. What do you do then???? Elias and I went to the boys room, no place for another bed, but.... we could change another single bed into a bunk bed.... so we did!

This picture, I took today, it is a historic picture, because all 7 boys are asleep!!!! Most days we have to act like a police officer, trying to keep them in their bed, they are all over the place. After lunch we send them to rest for some time, many of the children are still weak and to have this time of rest, really helps them, and they sleep!!! At least this time :)

So Isaac first got lunch and then he was given a bed, a bed down, because he might fall from the top bed, in the village, many people sleep on a mat or a mattrass on the floor. After the rest they all got porridge and now they are playing and running around, I can just see outside from the office and I see Isaac playing, so I am sure that he will talk and we get to know more from his back ground and where he is from. 

It is holidays, so all the children are the whole day in Amecet. It gives a lot of noise, they  have arguments at times, but overall, they do well.

 Mary build a restaurant in our garden, they made little pots from clay and a compound made with the little sticks, just how it is (in big) in the village. They are cooking with leaves and sticks......

 Then suddenly we heard screams and they saw a snake....... Good that uncle Emma was around and he killed it, it was a green one, so not a poison snake, but still we don't like them around!!

 Drinking porridge, before going to

play again!!

But still, the children who are going to school, have some home work to do in the holidays. Auntie Lisanne and aunti Rosanne are helping them. We have some older children who didn't go to school yet, They just came recently in Amecet and we have to see how they are doing physically. When they are strong enough, we will let them go to school.

Baby Elias has got a family.....

 A happy moment: The Probation Officer from Soroti, hands over baby Elias into the hands of his new parents!!

 The Botting Family!!

In the beginning of January 2016, the Police officer from Katakwi brought baby Elias to Amecet. The baby was found at the side of the road in the early morning by someone who went to the borehole for water. They first asked the lady who found him, to look after him, while the police tried to find relatives from the baby, but all in vain. And on January 13 2016, he was brought to Amecet. Several attemps were done to find the relatives, by radio message, newspaper and community meetings, but no one was found. 

In the meantime the Botting family started the process to adopt Elias. They are living in the North of Uganda and are send as missionaries from Canada to live and work in Uganda. Elias is their first born child and they are very exciting about him!!

This picture is taken on January 13 2016, Elias is holding the baby, who we named after him, since uncle Elias also comes from Katakwi!!

Uncle Elias says goodbye to baby Elias. He has been busy with all the documents and paperwork for the adoption. We are sure that Elias will be loved and we pray he will grow up and be a blessing to his family and to many others!