Hellooooooooo! How is everyone?!?!?! I'm doing great here, and things are going on well! The last two months have been relatively busy.....
One thing that you may be interested to hear about is that I'm doing some physio. I'm seeing two patients... one has a bad back, but one is a neuro patient, and I'm reeeeeally enjoying seeing her and doing some neuro physio! She's given me permission to talk about her to you, as we've become good friends over the last 6 weeks. Her name is Nampijja, and she's 24 years old. She was involved in a car accident just over a year ago, which damaged her spine, so she was left unable to stand or walk. She had some rehab at the time, but was discharged back to her village about a year ago, and for the past year, she has been lying on a mattress on the floor of her tiny room, with few visitors, and nothing to do but stare at the ceiling and listen to her radio (when she has batteries).
When I first saw her, she couldn't sit up in bed, she was very depressed, and she was doing nothing. I wanted to cry when I saw how awful her life was, and how little support she had from family and friends, and I could hardly sleep that night with thinking about her! Anyway, I've been going to her village once a week since then to do some physio, and she's gradually progressing, and, (most importantly!), she's getting some hope that her life isn't over, and she's smiling a lot more!!!! We've become good friends, as I said, and she's helping me with my Lugandan... actually during my physio sessions and visits, we speak in Lugandan only, because, (despite my limited Lugandan), she has slightly less English than I have Lugandan.
Most of our kids have been on school trips and had various parents days and fun days recently. Kitibwa and Mercy had their faces painted at their school fun day. They were soooooooooooo excited about going to it beforehand – Kitibwa talked NON-STOP for two and a half hours (from 6am onwards!) about what he was going to do and how excited he was!!! I wanted to gag him!!! Anyway, luckily it lived up to their expectations, (-apart from the cake... apparently they were all expecting a huge cake as on previous occasions, and it didn't materialise... but all was fine, because we'd baked a cake for my birthday, so Kitibwa and Mercy ate that and then decided that the day had been a success after all!!!)
There have been quite a few talks and things that I've done over the last couple of months too... I spoke at the River of Life's Schools Conference in June, where children and young people come to us from about 9 different schools for the day. All of the children love it because they get fed good food by us, and especially because we don't give them beans, weevils, and posho (which they all get EVERY SINGLE DAY for lunch and dinner whilst they're at school).
In June, the White Eagle Project joined in the Day of the African Child celebrations, which involved a march through Masaka and then various performances by different children. The kids all found it very exciting, but I found it rather stressful, as I spent the day chasing after 15 children, and trying to make sure that we didn't lose anyone!!! (-No matter how many times we told them not to wander off without telling us where they were going, they kept on wandering off because it was just too exciting!!!). Anyway, we returned with all 15 children and no injuries, so the day was a success in my eyes!!!
Anyway, that’s all my news!
Lots of love,
Sarah
No comments:
Post a Comment