Early days at Amani

Hello dear family and friends,

I've had 3 days at Amani now, and am just beginning to settle in and feel that I have the start of a grasp on how things happen here.

The Amani Baby Cottage is a large, two-story building of the Colonial era, located on a large plot of land with grassy lawns around it (the whole lawn is cut by whippy-snipper, then raked!), tall shade-trees with white pelicans and maribou storks in them and flowering bushes with brilliantly coloured sun-birds... it's all pretty lush and attractive. The building is old and not in great repair, but they have done a lot of work on it, and are hoping to have enough money soon to be able to purchase it.

I believe that 63 children have passed through Amani since it first started in 2003, and that they currently have 47 children, from two tiny preemies of 5 and 6 months to 5 years old. I have been assigned to Baby Room A for most of the time ~ the littlest ones who have not started crawling yet. The Ugandan Mama in charge is Mama Lucy, who is very nice. She plays Ugandan gospel songs in the nursery, and loves her 7 little charges. My responsibility is to generally do whatever needs doing... feeding bottles or meals of rice and bananas, changing clothing and especially playing. The volunteers seem to provide most of the entertainment and stimulation. I'll tell you details about the babies in a later edition.

Amani is located about 20 min. walk or a few minutes on a boda-boda, or motor-bike taxi, to the shopping area of Jinja. It costs 500 Ugandan shillings one way, or about 30 cents!! I actually took my first boda-boda ride yesterday to go with some of the other volunteers to purchase "rolled-paper" necklaces (ask Heather...). I won't tell you how much I paid for them since I'll be hoping that you'll buy some from me for an outrageously inflated price!!

My routine: I work in the morning from 8 to 1pm, I'm off from 1 to 4pm, then I work again from 4 to 7pm-ish. A lunch is provided for everyone that consists of any of rice, matoke (non-sweet, mashed bananas), peanut sauce, greens, lentils, "Irish", or regular potatoes, sweet potatoes etc. ~ so, pretty healthy. I am very blessed to have been given the only private room, (assigned by a fellow grandmother!) which even has its own bathroom! Breakfast fixings and lunch are provided, but I have to purchase the food for my supper and prepare it. I am feeling somewhat guilty because it is all rather 'cushy' compared to my previous missions trips. I'm used to the rigors of sleeping in a tent in the bush with no electricity or running water etc. However, by the end of a day of entertaining 5-month to 18-month-olds, much of it sitting on the bare floor, I feel sufficiently fatigued to take the edge off my sensitive conscience! Also the electricity is off sometimes, as is the water..... (will that do?)

There are about 30 Ugandan Mamas who care for the children, do the cleaning, the laundry, including cloth diapers (imagine that mandate!), the cooking, overnight supervision and folding of the laundry and so on. They are lovely ladies, and I enjoy talking to them as much as I enjoy the babies.

Yesterday I sat with the Mamas to eat lunch, and we talked about malaria. Unbelievably, they have it on average twice every year... and they just try to ignore it and come to w0rk anyway... O boy! There is a cheap (free?) medicine available, but it has horrible side effects, so people don't like to take it. They can't afford the better medicine that is available, that most Mzungus (white people) use as soon as they feel the symptoms coming on. I asked about mosquito nets, and I think they all have and use them. The difficulty for them and their families is that the mosquitos come out when the sun goes down (around 7pm), and they are still outside cooking then. They can't afford anti-bug spray. No easy solution to that one.

Well, that's all for now. I'll try to attach some pictures tomorrow.

God bless you all,
Jill