Kisaakye Rehabilitation Centre

On the week starting the 10^th we headed off, after morning devotions, to a place in the village called Kisaakye Rehabilitation Centre. We would be there for a week and so were pretty squished with our luggage and aid in the small hire car we had hired for this purpose. As we drove up we were met with the sight of a scattering of houses and mud huts, and then pulled up into a cute looking building that we were setting up camp in. And ‘set up camp’ we did as finding a way of hanging our mosquito nets was the first challenge we came to in this place. The others were; fetching water from a borehole a good 500 metres away, having a mini barbeque without the meat, i.e. we cooked on a charcoal stove, and cutting up vegetables with a pen knife. We were feeling ready and excited for the next day as we went to bed, very early because of the lack of light around. 

Waking reasonably early, we made our way to the school that one of the volunteers, Charles, works at. After bread and tea, of course. I was really looking forward to this because the school incorporates both hearing and deaf children as well as the disabled. So I was eager to put my Level 1 BSL course to use. When we where arrived we were warmly welcomed. I was introduced to the sign language teacher, Sarah, who was born deaf. Over the cores of the next few hours I got to learn a strange but brilliant variation of BSL and ASL with their own stamp on it. For those who know a bit about sign language I will give an example, they used the ASL alphabet but when it came to certain words (for example – boyfriend) they used the BSL sign which is based off its own. To make it even more complicated they used neither the ASL nor BSL way of greeting and also had a different sign for ‘name’. Anyhow, it was all very interesting and was great fun watching a sign language lesson after lunch. Whilst we where there, we also gave out aid which included pencils, pens, toys, shoes and school packs. This was really rewarding but also hard, giving out shoes to children who don’t have any but about 1 in 3 children at the school don’t have any, and we couldn’t give them to everybody.

The next day was Susie Boxhall’s 19^th birthday and most likely one that she will never forget as today we would be visiting disabled children in the community. Our first step was to see a boy of 12 called Kato who had cerebral palsy and epilepsy. This poor kid had gotten into the habit of biting his hand when he was agitated or hungry, which because he was left for hours on end as his mother had to work, this was quite a lot. He had, in fact, paralysed his hand through biting it hard and for a long time. This meant that he was unable to feed himself which made it even harder for the mother to care for him. Since we have visited Kisaakye Rehabilitation Centre have managed to provide this little boy with a wheelchair making it a lot easier for his mother to take him places and hopefully he won’t be stuck inside for that long now. After making sure he had something to eat and giving him a hat and a top that Grace had been donated we went to the next home we were to visit. 

 

This was one of a boy called Abdul, he was so tiny and sick because he hadn’t eaten anything solid in two weeks. The mother was trying, desperately, but everything that went down came up again a little later, he had had malaria and during his treatment at hospital, been fed through a tube that they think this may have caused some damage explaining the reason for the problem now. We gave the family some baby porridge (donated by Francesca Over) and told them to make it milkier to begin with. It was scary because we were unsure whether or not he with last the night but, thank God, he next day we hear that he had kept the porridge down. Please pray that he will regain his strength and that the family will be able to pay to take him back to the hospital. 

The next little boy was called Kadu, he had a case of hydrocephalus but in all was a very happy child who laughed a lot. We did a bit of therapy with him as he needs to learn how to sit without toppling over. I gave him one of Evas bracelets. Finally we went to a house that was much better in size and furnishings then the others we had seen, here was another little boy called Abdul also with hydrocephalus. He was a new ‘customer’ and so we were asking about his treatment, etc. We were allowed to pray with the mother and child, which was such a blessing as we found out later that this was a home of a witch doctor. 

After these home visits, as a treat for Susies birthday, we went to some waterfalls which were located nearby. By the end of this trip we were all extremely socked as, not only did we get into a little water fight after soaking Suse, it also decided to rain on us. African rain.

 Thursday was a drop in day for the centre we were staying at so, after a clean we invited several people who came in for therapy or to seek advice. There was one boy, Stuart, who had cerebral palsy whose head was ‘stuck’ in a certain position so the therapy I was involved with was focused on moving it slowly. There was also a Muslim girl who came in after her hand had been paralysed through malaria. It was really interesting to see how they went about treating these people.

We were back at the school, Mt Zion, the next day and this time I was in P3 (year 3) with three deaf students, helping them out as much as I could. I also went through the alphabet with a little boy who was still learning sign. I found that really fun and that experience as well as a few recently have made me realise that teaching one on one is so much more rewarding (in my view) and less stressful. After break they had elections for prefects and it was great seeing children getting involved with democracy considering the way Uganda’s government works. 

We left early morning on the Saturday and so were only there for 5 days and had activities on 4 of those. During this time, however, I remembered my passion for Sign Language and have decided that in at least one stage of my life I want to work with or for the disabled. God has opened my eyes this week. It isn’t like I didn’t know there were children out their like Abdul and Kato or I was surprised that there were, it is more that it has been put on my heart more then I had thought it would. God has been awesome in what he has shown and given me and I’m sure he will build on this knowledge in the coming weeks, months and years.

Kisaakye Rehabilitation Centre are doing great work, if you would like to donate, you can talk to them through their FB page or talk to me and I can put you in touch.

More boring writing - Sorry

The week I left you on, surprisingly, didn’t actually turn out to be our first full one back to normal routine as although Tuesday and Wednesday saw us at Chosen, Thursday we didn’t go into the community. Instead we gave out a lot of books to schools we are in contact with and counted an awful lot of t-shirts in our, now finished, attempt at taking an inventory of the container. Friday was back on schedule though with me and Susie giving a great performance of Elijah being fed by Ravens at Blessed Word Kids club. The weekend went by without much occurring, which is now an occurrence in itself as the majority of weekends Anna and I are now doing something weird and normally slightly crazy with LTW.

The week starting the 24^th of Feb was defiantly our first normal week back into the routine. From seeing six six day old babies at the hospital on Monday to Susie and I helping small children colour in pictures of Jars of flour and oil being miraculously refilled on Friday. The only thing that differed from the routine was, rather than sitting in lessons at chosen, Tuesday morning was spent making posters such as ‘Keep the School Clean’ and Avoid Using Bad Language.’ Also we had a visitor that week, a woman named Trice, Alex’s half sister, who we had met in Rwanda came to do some research for a charity she is involved in. It was lovely to see her again. Oh and on Friday night I won an apple, which I never saw, by answering a question on anger management at TGIF. Yer, aint I cool.

Finally a weekend that wasn’t normal... did i just contradict myself there? Anyhow, I received a beautiful post card from my sister on the Saturday and on the Sunday the LTW crowd performed at two churches, which included two... interesting taxi rides and general amusing times.  

Monday came again, starting with us putting up pictures that we had made in the children’s ward at the hospital. In our previous visit we notice the blank walls and wanted to give it a bit of colour, thinking of the brightly painted, picture covered children’s wings of hospitals in the UK. We also prayed with a woman called Constance who we had seen and spoken with every week since starting that ministry. It was wonderful to see her looking so much better. God has shown his authority over that place and it is an honour to see.

Tuesday was the day we had been waiting for as it brought with it a new school. Smile had been contacted by a woman called Ruth who ran a small school close by.  She shared her vision of a school with interactive lessons where the children can get one and one help and enjoy lessons. The school was very small with only three shack like rooms of which only two of them where being used, and two teachers. Problem is, for more children they need more space and more teachers but for more teachers and space they need new kids. It’s a depressing circle. I must admit though, teaching a phonics lesson to a P1 and P2 class (they were in the same room) with the teacher staying in the classroom and actually joining in, went far better than teaching a P3 class with 20 children with only a textbook and no teacher to keep order. I really enjoyed going to Ruth Mother Care school and I hope and pray that we can make a real impact there.

After school on Wednesday I watched the Huger Games 2. I had to put this because the post is lacking some fangirlyness. It was awesome.

Tuesday was harder than a lot of community outreaches that we have done mainly because of one little boy called Michael. We had spoken and prayed with a few people before we noticed this boy with very large trousers hanging of his small frame and no shirt or shoes hanging around watching us. We got to know his name and he turned out to be the most hyper kid I think I have ever met. It was brilliant. Anyhow we where outside a door, (a piece of fabric over the opening) calling out to anyone who was inside, when we got invited to step in. There was a woman who didn’t look very old (maybe mid 20’s) lying on a sheet behind the door, inside a very small room, probably about the size of my bathroom at home. There was also a toddler lying next to her and a baby looking very ill opposite the door. She told us that she was a teacher but she could not go to work because she was ill with malaria. The two babies, we found out, where not hers but she was looking after them for a neighbour but she told us that the smallest one, who looked disinterested in everything going on around her when she had her eyes open, which was rarely, had either small pox or ???????? Whilst she was telling us this Michael was climbing all over Grace, not hilarious at all... *cough,* the woman called out to him in Luganda and he seemed to listed. Moses told us that this woman was Michaels mother. Somehow it struck me hard. A teacher, living in a tiny house with Malaria, looking after two children, one of which was extremely ill and having an extremely hyper child to handle. It was may have been the very slight parallels, my mother is a teacher and I was diagnosed with ADD when I was young, that made it harder for me then I would have thought.

Friday was a very unusual day, starting with normality in Susie and I directing the acting out of the story with Elijah and the Prophets of Baal. Afterwards, however Anna and I headed off to KBC where we met with the LTW guys and, after a hurried Bible Study, set off for a church a reasonable distance away to perform. Unfortunately, we got there late meaning we had missed our spot to perform, but they assured us that they can fit us in elsewhere. So we all got into our positions, ready to go on the stage when we get told they have no way of playing the music that was on the flash drive that we had brought with us. Someone proceeded to rush out to get it burned onto a CD but of cores once again we had missed our allotted time to perform. They said, once more that they will fit us in, after the next act, then the next. Basically it got later and later but by the time we said, this isn’t worth it, it was 10:30. The journey home, at night having the boys personally escort us through some of the rough patches, is a walk that I don’t think I will forget in a while. It was pretty fun though.

Well that’s it (I can hear that ‘YAY!’ you know). Please pray for us as a gap year team as this week we are heading to the villages and visiting a school for the hearing, deaf and handicapped. I am really looking forward to it.

Sorry about the boring style of my writing, next time I'll try to make it more interesting but I kinda just wanted to get this done. 

God Bless.