".....and this one's Autistic...."

As if I'm nearing the end of my third week in Vihiga already. In some respects I'm glad, because it has been a boring week doing more sorting of the grant. And no, our report and all the receipts and photographs haven't been collected, so we're a week over the deadline which means there's pretty much no chance Yellow House will receive the same grant next year for Vihiga. SO frustrating!! One things a definate though, I will never change my job to be an accountant after all the money handling and receipt counting I've done this week! I think I'll stick with Speech Therapy..!!

Wellington took us to a Special Educational Needs (SEN) unit he was really proud of this morning. The main reason he's so happy with it is because it's attached to a mainstream school which obviously therefore means it's an inclusive school. This is a novelty here and very forward thinking. However, just because it looks good on paper, doesn't mean it's working.
The school itself has 550 pupils, of those 550, 17 attend the SEN unit. The unit has no pictures, is dark, has four wooden desks which all the children squeeze on to, apart from the little girl who always sits under the desk. She's 5 and has spent the whole of her 5 years up until recently tied to a tree.
There's another girl that often sits at the front in the middle of the floor, she's an exception to the class because she was ''allowed'' to attend the school even though she hasn't achieved the milestone of self toiletting. As I was going round to all the children in the class, I was being introduced to them by their name, they all welcomed me with big wide eyes, clearly thinking - 'who is this mzungu (white person) in my classroom??' I got to the girl that's on the floor, I don't know her name, she was introduced to me as "and this one's autistic"... For a child with Autism she had excellent eye-contact, constantly sought my attention and wanted to engage with me....
It's so difficult not to judge the teachers and whoever has made the diagnosis that a child has Autism. I know a lot of their thinking is as a result of a complete lack of awareness and education in the area of special needs, however it's hard not to get angry with them for labelling a child in a way that is going to be detrimental to their upbringing.
I got asked for money today. I knew it would happen, but I didn't expect it to be from a headteacher. I am gradually learning how to respond to the weird and wonderful things people say to me in the street, however to be sat in a headteacher's office and for her to just come out with 'well you're a mzungu, you must have some money I can have for this school'.... I found myself speechless.
Wellington keeps reminding me that the colour of my skin immediately makes people here associate me with wealth.

On the back of the school visit today, David, Wellington and I all sat and started generating realistic ideas of how we can run training sessions in schools. We want to do it in a way which means it isn't the Ugandan or the mzungu giving people information and them taking nothing on board, apart from the annoyance that we haven't paid for them to attend the training - oh yes, that's how it works here, if you want people to turn up to training you have to pay them... Not something I'll be reinforcing.... So instead Wellington and the other staff at the EARC are going to run the training and we're going to attend as a team. This will hopefully be a more sustainable way of keeping SLT awareness going after we have left..