Overstaffed?

Our school is small by anyone's standards. Only 42 children are enrolled yet we employ 8 full time staff and 3 part-time. Our paid staff include day-time and night-time guards, teachers, cooks, cleaners and a home-school liaison officer. We also have a robust volunteer program in which locals and people from the UK and USA offer their time to improve the school and the children’s learning experiences.

You could be excused for thinking we are over-staffed. However, as always, even this is a question of relativity. One factor that I had not taken into account when we employed our staff was the issue of health. Whilst typing this I am aware that today I need to teach a full-time table. Why? The reason is because our head cook is off suffering with malaria and an infection in her finger, one of our teachers is also off with malaria. In addition 7 of our 42 children were absent from school yesterday because of malaria. This is not all. Nearly all of our staff and about 80% of our children suffer from serious tooth problems – decay, cavities, infected gums.

Today the bursar was supposed to meet with the cook to discuss ways to reduce our spending on food. Food prices have shot up and so the task of reducing expenses whilst ensuring we do not reduce on portion sizes (some of our children eat only one meal a day – at school). The bursar/head cook meeting has been postponed twice and today looks like it will be the third time. The first time because the bursar’s mother was in a coma, the second time because the bursar was admitted into hospital and put on IV treatment for a throat problem (the doctors did not give him a diagnosis and simply give him 5 injections and 2 drips as well as a course of anti-biotics – this ‘wrong’ treatment cost him more than his months wages).

So we who are holding the fort make up a bizarre looking band of not so merry men and women. There is the guard who has a terrible tooth-ache; the teaching assistant who has malaria but cannot afford to go to the doctors; the other qualified teacher is 7 months pregnant and getting heavier, bigger and more tired with every day that passes. I am suffering from itchy eyes and a snotty nose due to dust allergy – not such a problem in the face of malaria. This leaves us with the cleaner, the part-time kitchen assistant and Tom, the volunteer from England who can say they are physically at their best. Overstaffed? It doesn’t feel like it today.

I hope the pregnant teacher does not catch malaria because if she does that would be a casualty of two.

So today, despite the fact that my time here in Uganda is indefinite due to my husband’s employment there is no time for administration duties, detailed lesson planning, policy-making, responding to emails, report writing, managing the staff in a meaningful way or making resources for the students.

The sad fact is today there is no time for the children.

No time to talk to them about their lives. No time to laugh and play with them and marvel that children all over the world have a magical capacity to find joy and awe in the small things. No time to talk about their very real and often deep hurts – both physical and emotional.

No.

Today is about basic needs. Today is about hoping that everyone survives so that tomorrow or the day after tomorrow we will all be fit and healthy and strong. And when we are, maybe then we can move a rung up Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

The problem is hope is an inexact science.

For real development – development of the school, development of the staff, development of the children we need to move towards better probabilities of good health and away from the hope of a possibility that we will survive this malaria season. None of us at this school forget the day that one of our student’s sister died of malaria. Malaria is as common as a common cold but can be as deadly as death.

Today’s pressing question is not one concerning being over-staffed or understaffed it is a question health. It is a question of survival.

Holiday Party

Each year, Pastor Paddy holds a party in Kabalagala for all the children--i.HUG's kids, older kids, any of the kids, in fact, in need. This year, we donated toward the small children's party. And the results speak for themselves.

UCC Rocks!

A shout out to the Union County College of New Jersey for their generous donation. Coming after a talk at the school, the student and teachers group raised $300 to benefit the children of i.HUG

Lobbying for i.HUG

i.HUGgers working hard to help the community in Kabalagala, Uganda. Check out Jessica, an employee of Lyon-Heart advertising agency, volunteering to sell i.HUG's greeting cards at the News Building on 42nd Street. To purchase these cards, click here: www.ihugfoundation.org.

the hard lesson

I am here in Uganda. I am with children who are happy - so happy, at
least some of the time. But life here is unmistakably tragic. Tragic
and beautiful. Beautiful and devastating. It seems that life is
beyond our control - out of our control. Like the floods that ravaged
the harvest in Eastern Uganda last week. We wait and see what destiny
has in store for us - whether it will save us or spoil us.

One of the street children I teach ran away last week. We scoured the
streets. Instead of finding him I found over 400 other street people -
newly born babies, toddlers, retired men in search of the government
pension they had been promised, refugees, people in exile, mothers
with daughters, abandoned children, orphans.

After some days we found him in a disused house that was home to drug
addicts, drug dealers and street children. A pit. He was out of his
head. How old is he? His height tells me he is 10 but his hands tell
me he is a very old man. I don't know his age - neither does he. He
is the child of parents who fled the genocide in Rwanda. Uganda was a
safe haven. Except it wasn't. AIDS kills without borders. They died
in a foreign country leaving behind two children with no extended
family to take these children on.

The boy was so small when he became an orphan. His sister was forced
into a marriage with a man many years her senior - she was around 13
when she married - a child bride. Her husband, an alcoholic beat her
senseless on a daily basis. She finally left, taking her two small
babies and became a prostitute.

Meanwhile the boy was given to an old Rwandese lady who had no family
or children - she had been a coffee farmer in her youth and was
relatively wealthy. But with no pension, her wealth ran out and she
was left in the hands of poverty. A good woman but old. So old. The
boy was her carer - collecting water from the stream, cooking,
cleaning. At the same time he got sexually and physically abused by
the neighbour. It was then that he began running away. The old woman
died. He had nowhere to run from and nowhere to run to.

After some running he came and lived with me. He didn't run away
until the day I had to say goodbye and had to leave. Then he ran.
And he has kept on running since. What was an act of courage and
survival became a destructive habit. Living on the streets makes the
young die when they are old. A 10 year old, old man dying on the
streets. The streets make men out of boys. It robs children of their
childhood. It happens every day, every second. All over the world.

So when we found him he was out of his head. Not on drugs, just from
sheer exhaustion of fighting and picking through the scrap on the
streets and having no food and being dehydrated. He is with me now.
He sleeps in the classroom at the school until his new room is fixed
up. He will be staying with 5 other ex-street children. Will it last?
Can he break the habit of running to the dangerous yet familiar
streets? I don't know. I can't think anymore.

I love him.

I want his life to be restored but I know it can't be what it should
be. The hand he was dealt is really too much to bear, For him and for
those around him.

And I have learnt. He is my teacher and he has taught me that I need
to engage with pain. It is a principle that threads and weaves itself
through my life. When I attempt to ignore pain and suffering then I
help no one. If I turn my face away from pain I will also limit what
I see of joy. I don't know why or how but they are inextricably
linked. He has taught me that too.

from jane: first day, third term

There is a verse in the bible which talks about
> 'mourning with those who mourn' and 'weeping with
> those who weep' and 'dancing with those who dance.'
> In essence that is what I feel my job involves. My
> job at its best that is. Today, the children who
> came back to school had lost weight, were sick and
> were so so so sad. It was totally depressing to be
> around them. They were dejected. So, we talked
> about it. What made them sad - some were sick,
> Promise's sister had been badly burnt in the
> holidays, Pingu had been burnt. We talked and
> talked and then after acknowledging and allowing
> them to feel the way they felt we could make room
> for other feelings. Some were still sad the whole
> day but some of them had some space to feel
> something else. So, we all hugged. Stupid isn't
> it. But we hugged
> each other and said 'I am so glad to see
> you.' And then there were a few smiles. They
> knew. They knew that I really am glad to see them.
> And that their friends are really glad to see them.
> No matter how sad they are, no matter how sick they
> are, there is a place which has people in it who
> want to hug them, who want to hear about their pain,
> who want to share their joy and who are glad to see
> them.

Galleria de la Kabalagala

Bidders please stand in line.

Jacky and her Mango tree clinics

This photo is from the village in Mbarara where I do ‘under the Mango tree’ type clinics when I am up-country. This wee child had a colostomy made when he was born which should have been corrected when he was one year old. He is now three, nothing has been done, the mum has no idea of how to look after him and just ties a filthy rag around it. Weird looking colostomy.

I have managed to get a company in NZ to supply some colostomy bags and am giving the mum some education on how to care for the child while I investigate the possibility of corrective surgery.

Well I could go on, but there are just so many cases everywhere that need attention often through mismanagement by the medical profession. When and if you get a community clinic started it will be inundated with all kinds of people who desperately need help. I think there will be need for paying clients to cover the costs of the poor and still be able to make a profit.

Nurse Jacky, and the KCA Clinic

You just have to meet Nurse Jacky.



I first met her when I went to Uganda, back in June. Jacky has single-handedly changed the healthcare of our kids at the school. Her recent donation of an exam table, cabinet, etc., turned our spare room into a clinic. The work of one person...that is how our clinic was born! These photos show you how all this work is starting...



Jackie has also taken to giving home visits. "This has helped the parents have more confidence in what is being done for the kids at school in the clinic and they are grateful for the medication and the treatment for their wounds etc.," says Jacky "Often other neighbours come with their own little problems too. Sometimes over the weekends I have done dressings sitting outside their homes on the dirt! Very sterile I must say."

On clinic days, the children line up to see Nurse Jacky. And since she is a wound specialist, she is able to prevent infections before they start.

thank you, Jacky, for the work that you do. I hope you are sleeping soundly somewhere tonight.