Ruben will be Fred.......

In my blog of April 16, 2016, I wrote about a little boy, who was found on the road, dumped and abandoned by his family. In the blog of April 16 I wrote about the tracing we tired, we went several times back to Serere looking for people who knew the little boy, we placed him several time with his picture in the newspaper, but nothing came out. We got from the Police and Probation office the green light to look for a family who could foster and then adopt him. We found that family!!! And that is why his name is changed into Fred, after his new father!!!!

Today was the official hand-over...

 Mr. Ekallam, the senior Probation officer, came to Amecet to represent the government of Uganda and handed Ruben/Fred over to his new parents. They were very happy and we know that Ruben/Fred will be loved and cared for.

We will miss him, he was walking all over the compound, he starts to talk and makes us to laugh!! But his friend Jackson will miss him the most... Jackson is walking now and together they roam around and fight about the little scooter. Jackson will miss his friend, but at least he doesn't has to fight anymore about the scooter!!

Topista has a club foot...

We got two new children yesterday. In the morning a phone call from the Police, there was a little child found under a bush... Please can you come and help?? Together with Esther, I went to the Central Police station. The day before, on Sunday, a lady had found the little boy under a bush. She took the child home and cared for him. But her landlord told her that she should go to the Police. And the Police called us. They are a bit hesitated for children to be with people in their homes, so they wanted to place the child under the care of Amecet. The lady had called the child "Sunday", because she found him on a Sunday. I asked her if I could change it into Samuel, that was fine, she said, she will come and visit him in Amecet, she said. Samuel might be almost 1 year old, he was a bit scared yesterday, but today he is moving around and playing. The Police is going to trace for the relatives...

The second child is a girl of 9 months old, her mother died on Saturday and the father asked for help, we can help for some months, in that time he has the opportunity to look for a solution for the girl. Her name is Topista, a new name for me... She is a healthy baby, maybe a bit small, but she had a funny left foot. The father told us that she had been born with it and that they went for an operation, but he didn't know much more. 

We took her to the doctor and were advised to take her to the hospital, to the orthopedics. We did that this morning and it is a clup foot, the doctor didn't understand the operation she had before, but we are starting a programme with plaster around her left leg, which will bend the foot slowly into the normal position. I had to go and buy the plaster and the gloves, because there were none in the hospital. And they put the plaster around her left foot and leg. She cried and struggled and as you can see on the picture, she was exhausted when we came home..... We have to come back every week, they will renew the plaster, until the foot is in the right position. According to the doctor, we were a bit late, the younger the child is, the better.. In one way, Topista is lucky that she is in Amecet, otherwise there was probably not much done about her foot and she would be lame for life.....

Blessing of reading glasses

 We are receiving reading glasses from Holland and we give them out to people who need them. It is a blessing for many people. There are teachers, policemen, pastors and here on this picture you see three nurses from Soroti Hospital. They are very happy with the glasses, it helps them to be able to read the writing of the doctor(!). We give them a book with small letters or the newspaper and they just try out, which glasses are the best.

 We get the reading glasses send by people in the Netherlands, so sometimes we are out of stock, we have to wait until someone sends them again. It always amazes me, that when we have a new load of glasses, people know..... maybe the tam-tam goes, because then many people come and ask for reading glasses. As long as we have them... we are happy to give them out!

This gentleman also found a pair which helps him to read the newspaper again! I hope he doesn't forget to take off the sticker!

If there are people who wants to help us in sending reading glasses, we are happy to receive them and to give them out! But we only give out reading glasses, no glasses for far sighted problems. We mostly give out +1, +1,50, +2, +2,50, +3. Our address is: Amecet, PO BOX 792, Soroti, Uganda.

Eyalama noi!!!!

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.........