THURSDAY 17th APRIL 2014

What a day it was yesterday!
First of all Joseph turned up with the books at 7:40am just as I was about to shower, but more of that later!
Then after breakfast Wamani drove me , 5 trays of eggs, the special oily crayons I had bought in Kampala and Janine's powder dyes ...oooh and the  vinegar  Sallie gave me permission to steal from the hotel (too lazy to go to Lucky Seven Supermarket) about 8 miles to Bujenje village where The School for the Handicapped is situated. We found a large group of children weeding and slashing the grass at the entrance to make the place look smart and they all followed the car up the hill to  a shady spot under a tree. The Headteacher had been called to a meeting, but her deputy, a lovely lady who herself had polio as a child, welcomed me. Ruth, an English volunteer who is also staying at Courtview Hotel , joined us and we perfected our plan. The Centre is built on a steep hillside, with the Office on the top terrace plus a few classrooms and the boys dormitory and other classrooms as well as the workshops for Carpentering and  Leatherwork, Cosmetology and Tailoring on lower terraces.  Thus  the terrain is definitely not suitable for  children who are either mentally or physically disabled to run around on an Easter Egg Hunt. We therefore decided to decorate and paint the hardboiled eggs in small groups - altogether 14!!!!! We were exhausted by 3pm when we had given 121 children an egg to colour!!!!!! I wish I could tell you of all the children there- one with terrible burns on her face whose ears and everything has had to be reconstructed and whose face is still a mass  of scars, the "autistic" ones who dribble and do not respond , the few in wheelchairs including "my " Harriet, the one with hydrocephalis and the many who are deaf and dumb! There are no facilities for the blind here - those are elsewhere.As we handed out eggs and explained how to first decorate them with the crayons and then to put them in the  pint mugs containing red, blue green yellow and orange dye for at least half an hour  plus 15 minutes drying time the children's personalities began to merge! "My" Harriet is SUCH  a smiler - so, so different from the crooked bag of bones Teacher George  first carried out of the mud hut over 15 months ago - other children had cottoned on to the fact that I am her sponsor and kept wheeling her around after me as I went into each classroom. One Deaf and dumb girl wanted to eat her egg there and then and got quite amusingly stroppy. I joined teachers and pupils alike for lunch - the same old same old   Beans and Posho which is the standard fare in schools in Uganda but could only eat a third of it. I gave the remains away to two big lads who I think are in the carpentry section and they gobbled it! Meanwhile one poor child - a girl- had an epileptic fit and  one of the teachers immediately  held her safe until the fit passed and she was able to go to the bathroom to change for she had wet herself.
After lunch, Ruth and I sat to rest in a  small room whilst Ruth handed out  two footballs she had bought for the children to play with. Two of the older deaf and dumb girls wheeled Harriet to  visit me and they were able to communicate by writing. Ruth - who was a tremendous help to me- and I could not have got the eggs colored etc if we hadn't had the help of the teachers who signed for us . I had attempted to explain the symbolism of eggs at Easter in a whole school Assembly at the beginning of the whole exercise.And I must clearly explain to you all reading this that those children VERY RARELY get an egg to eat - they live on  2 meals a day of beans and posho.
We must remember  that this Centre is a relatively safe and relatively stimulating environment for these disabled children ( have I mentioned my friend Ira who came back to visit a disabled child she was helping only to find that the child was near death - the grandmother had been STARVING him).
Tomorrow I will take Ruth to Harriet's village so she w ill see that Harriet sleeps on a mattress at school but not at home................Meanwhile to Lucky Seven to buy a nailbrush in an attempt to get the dye from yesterday, off my hands!