DAY
2:
"After having a peaceful and a wonderful night, the
children together with the team had the opportunity to have a
morning bath and it was at 9:30am when both the children and the team were
served with breakfast. In a bid to get acquainted with the work of the indigenous partner organization, we jointly held a brief meeting immediately after having breakfast through
which each of us on the team was made to know how the work was to be
accomplished during the week.
In this meeting, Angela
the Program coordinator and Janet the social worker all working for the
Community Development Organization thanked us for having traveled
with the children all the way to Karamoja. After Janet talking to the meeting, we also briefed representatives from the Community Development Center that
all the returnees had spent some good time of more than 6 months with the partner organization and assured them that the returnees had been well prepared to start
school.
They further added that all the returnees had
undergone medical examination and were found with no chronicle diseases and had
already been fully de-wormed. However, it was also made clear to the Community
Development representatives that among the returnees, there were some children
who had been brought back to Karamoja alone after their parents refusing to be
returned together with their children and hence those children returned without
their parents were to stay with their grandparents on resettlement.
With that said, each of us was assigned a different
task to handle within the various locations where the team was to minister
during the week. As one family, we were divided into the following main groups;
the Resettlement Group, Education Group, Medical Care Group and the Income
Generating Group.
With all that done, each group was as well assigned a
different task to accomplish in the field during the week. The Resettlement
group was to ensure that all the homes/families of the returnees had been
properly traced. In addition to this, the resettlement group had to talk to the
returnees very well how great it is for a child to be home, travel with the
returnees to their homes and share the joy together as the returnees were
welcomed and met their families again.
On the other side, the Education group was responsible
for ensuring that all the returnees were properly enrolled, resettled in formal
schools, provided with scholastic materials, beds and beddings especially for
those placed in boarding schools while the Medicare group was to take care of
the team’s health together with the children during the repatriation exercise.
Thanks to this group that took great care of the children and my eyes when they
were badly affected due to the harsh conditions there.
For purposes of sustainability and increased social
protection among the families of the returnees, the Income Generating group was
responsible for identifying, sensitizing and providing for the suitable Income
Generating activity that can best benefit the families of the returnees after
re-uniting the children with their families. According to the situation in
Karamoja, there is overwhelming need to economically empower not only the families
whose children are returned but to other families as well.
As someone from the Sweet Sleep Ministry, I was assigned
to be part of both the resettlement groups and the education since these interventions have a direct
linkage with Sweet Sleep’s work of providing beds/beddings to both children in
communities, homes and schools of the orphaned, abandoned or other vulnerable
children.
After receiving our assignments, I was given an
opportunity to share more with the team members about the work of the Sweet
Sleep Ministry in Uganda and through the same communication, I shared with them
the purpose of my traveling to Karamoja and hence emphasized that I needed
their maximum support.
Having heard from Sweet Sleep, Angela the Programs
coordinator from the Community Development Centre together with Diana the social
worker from the partner organization thanked the Sweet Sleep Ministry for the good work
that it is doing in Uganda. Pleased with the work of the Sweet Sleep Ministry,
the team members from both the indigenous partner organization and the Community Development Centre
pledged to provide Sweet Sleep with their maximum support and above all, the
opportunity to interact with the returnees together with their family members
as much as Sweet Sleep desired. With this good news to the Sweet Sleep
Ministry, the meeting ended and each of us started to interact with the
returnees and also to prepare them to get ready for joining their families and
school once again. We helped the children organize all their belongings, sort
and distribute their resettlement packages which we had traveled along with
and these included the following;
exercise books, pens, pencils, blankets, mattresses, soap, pangas, hoes, beans,
maize flour (posho), cups and saucepans to mention a few among others.
All the above mentioned resettlement packages were
procured and provided to the returnees by the indigenous partner organization together with the
Community Development Center.
Some
of the resettlement packages that were provided to the returnees
During the
interaction with the children, I got the opportunity to hold brief interviews
with some children to find out why they had left their homes and families to
come to the streets of Kampala.
INTERVIEWS:
Sweet Sleep staff holding interviews
with some of the children; Achiya Michael, Logiel Agnes and Logeer Paul.
ACHIYA
MICHAEL aged 9 years with both parents alive, left his village
because they lacked enough food to feed on in his family and hence decided to
board a bus with his mother to Kampala with hope for a better living. However, on their arrival in Kampala, Michael
together with his mother found life very hard as they had to spend hours on the
streets begging for money or something to eat. On many occasions they found
themselves being beaten by other bigger street children who had already got
used to the street life.
According to Michael, he had no particular place to sleep
in with his mother and the only option was to sleep in smelling places near
dust bins on the streets of Kampala. On a sad note still, some of the money
that Michael and his mother could afford to collect during the day through
begging ended up being stolen by the big street boys.
With all this kind of misfortunes, Michael’s mother
decided to go back home in Karamoja at Irriri village leaving her son behind on
the streets of Kampala alone.
Today, Michael is very happy to be re-united back to his
family in Irriri village after the indigenous partner organization found him living in Kisenyi area.
Kisenyi area is a place on the outskirts of Kampala City which is a very
dangerous area accommodating the most notorious street boys and girls here in
Uganda. After identifying Michael from the Kisenyi area, they
talked to him and he accepted to be taken away for rehabilitation and after to
join him again with his family and start school in Karamoja.
With beaming joy, Michael could not afford missing to
express how glad he was that he was yet to meet his mother once again and was
excited with the fact that he was soon going to join school in Primary One
(Grade One).
LOGIEL
AGNES aged 8 years old was the second to be interviewed and
shared with the Sweet Sleep staff that it was her mother who boarded the bus
with her and brought her on the streets of Kampala. Being the eldest child in
her family, Agnes still wonders why her mother decided to bring and dump her on
the streets of Kampala. One day, Agnes
just found herself alone in Kampala after her mother all of a sudden
disappeared from her a few days after their arrival on the streets of Kampala.
Agnes
cried, got scared and became so nervous with no other person to talk to and the
only option left for her was to look for friends among other street children
who had already got used to street life in her efforts to look for survival.
Fortunately, after a while when loitering on the streets
of Kampala, she was approached by some of the partner organization members of staff
who shared with her and after convinced her that they were to help her trace
her family back in Karamoja and that she was to be united with her family again.
Sagal Adele
At 31 years of age, SAGAL
ADELE is a proud mother of 6 children; Joseph, Michael, Martin, Paul, Lucy
and Maria who traveled with all her siblings all the way from Karamoja to the
streets of Kampala. In the efforts of Adele trying to take care of her family,
she managed to grow some food to help her feed the children but wound up futile
due to a lot of dryness in Karamoja, she completely became hopeless. With a lot of poverty and famine surrounding
her family, Adele decided to move around asking her friends to borrow her some
money so that she could raise transport fees to help her come to Kampala with
hope of getting an economic activity through which she could earn a living and even
pay back the debt that arose as a result of borrowing money for their transport
to Kampala.
Unfortunately, though willing to work, Adele was not able
to secure anything to do and she ended up resorting to begging in order to get
some money to feed her children. According to Adele, life on the streets of Kampala
became worse off as there are many horrible
things that one goes through each day that come by. There is a lot of child abuse in that so many children take drugs
and the big street boys do rape young girls while other street children are
involved in robbery of mobile phones and money from people walking along the
streets.
According to Adele, each morning was totally different
and she could get sick not knowing where to begin from and how to end the day
with all her 6 children on the streets of Kampala and at this point Adele broke
into tears. Sharing such heart breaking
stories with the children together with their parents was a very hard moment
and situation for me as a mother and I believe that you certainly agree with me.
Adele added that, much as she knew how hard it was to be
on the streets but had nothing to do apart from sending each of her children to
different locations along Kampala streets to beg for money. This money helped
her to buy some food for her children and sometimes could even send some to her
parents and other relatives way back at home to help them buy some food as well
for they lack food in the villages and only have to buy food brought from other
areas of Uganda.
With this walk of life, Adele one day somehow got
connected to the indigenous partner organization through a good Samaritan that has supported her to
go back to her home in Karamoja. She is indeed determined to settle back at her
home and has hope in that she will be supported with some
Income Generating Activities that will help her raise some income to continue
feeding her children even when the partner organization has left.
Adele is very
excited with the programme of placing her children in Boarding schools by the partner organization where she believes that her
children will be able to have daily meals with safe places to stay in addition to
getting formal education. She however seemed worried of as to how she was to
continue taking care of her children especially during holidays when all of
them are back from school.
When Sweet Sleep inquired about the sleeping conditions
of Adele’s family upon their return at home, Adele explained that her family
will be sleeping on the dried skins of cows and was happy that she had managed to buy two bed sheets that
were to serve as blankets. She added that it can be a big blessing for her
family if one day they are able to get a mat and mosquito net as there are many
mosquitoes in the area where they stay. Adele is a catholic and had a small
Bible which she had managed to buy while still on the streets of Kampala.
Sharing such heart breaking stories with the children and their parents was not
easy for me as a mother and to date I just can’t imagine how these families are
doing since we left Karamoja but I pray God blesses them as they once again
stand on their own."
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