Getting Involved!

Tuesday has been spent entirely with the African Street Children Organisation (ASCO) and The Aids and Orphan Rescue Program (TAORP). Got to ASCO for about nine to a room of twelve street kids all sat waiting to introduce themselves.

Some of them are sent from nearby villages into Jinja by their parents to earn money begging, but most of them simply don't have any parents and either can't or don't want to get into orphanages. The oldest ones are about fifteen and the youngest are about six.

This is Peter, he's wearing a 

girls top because his old

clothes hadn't been 

washed for a month.

ASCO was set up by Moses, a local artist, who grew up in an orphanage. The idea is to get street kids off the street for a bit and teach them art, as well as simple writing. I spent about half an hour teaching a boy called Michael to write his name. I failed, although by the end his 'M' had got a lot better. 

This is some of the kids having porridge,

oranges and biscuits, with Ollie looking

thoughtful in the background.

ASCO also offers basic things like food and a washing facilities (A courtyard here the kids scrub themselves clean in full view of the neighbours). As well as that, some of the boys (There are only boys, no girls) need to see doctors, two of them had bad problems with their feet because they have to walk everywhere and don't ever use closed shoes. 

All the kids were fantastic, they taught us a song that I've already forgotten, and they did lots of climbing around on top of us.

After the morning with them, we had lunch at a tiny little restaurant (It was more like food in tubs that you help yourself to) and then packed far too many people into an oven/people carrier to see some of TAORP's projects.

TAORP mainly does work with communities, helping by giving them means for an income, or simply a place to meet. The first project we saw was a village to which they'd donated lots of pigs, goats, and (I think) chickens that they could breed, grow and sell for money. 

A lovely friendly goat

Some not so pleasant fragrant pigs

After the pigs we rushed off to see Valley View Primary School. As we arrived it decided to ruin the otherwise fantastic weather by raining really, really, really hard. Which meant that we got a very speedy and very muddy tour of the school.

The school is mainly made of wooden huts, unfortunately these aren't very stable. So, when they were inspected recently they were told that if they don't rebuild the class rooms with bricks then the school will have to close down. In addition to this,  the head teacher was hit by a truck last week and is in a coma. What we saw of the school was really good though, with the exception of the class who's teacher was asleep when we walked in, and the classroom which had four children in, on their own, with overturned tables and chairs.

After that we went to see a project they've been working on helping widows giving them a community space and somewhere to learn skills.

This is a completely irrelevant photo of

this shop that was literally in the middle

of nowhere that fascinated me because

the men outside are all sat around

 playing cards.

This is Dom, Joe and Liberty, walking up

to see the widows.

When we got there at about four in the afternoon it turned out that the widows had been waiting since eleven, which meant that most of them had gone home, except for the 'head widow'! Basically, what seems to happen is that the building acts as a meeting place for lots of women who are all widowed and live nearby. They all come to look after the chickens they've been given and have lessons in sewing and knitting.

After that we went to a local village where some of the street kids live called Messese (Not 100% about the spelling). After about five or ten minutes of walking we were surrounded by possibly a hundred children all holding our hands and smiling at us. Then we just stood around for about ten minutes and played with the kids, and then we turned around and went back to the car. I'm not quite sure what the point was, but it was brilliant fun!

This is Joe lifting up children with just

the power of his huge arms!

And village children posing for a photo!