It was a really interesting visit to Kampala last week and although I was sat for far too long on a bus to go for a one day meeting, it was worth it. Loved Kampala, I think that’s because it’s civilisation!!! What I mean by that is that it was a really buzzing city and I felt safe there. Plus, there was Pizza Hut!! Isn’t it ironic that you travel to a whole new continent and one of the highlights of a trip is finding a restaurant chain from home??!
The meeting was held at the hospital in Kampala and 12 people attended the meeting on setting up ASALTEA (Association for Speech and Language Therapists in East Africa) as well as me and Helen, the VSO therapist who is working at the university in Kampala. The people who attended were all the graduates from the first course of SLT in Uganda (and East Africa), they’re now working all over Uganda and East Africa. One of the main aims of ASALTEA is to work towards getting SLT recognised as a profession and a member of the Allied Health Professions Council. It must be so frustrating for these graduates to know that their new profession is not yet recognised...
It was a long meeting and everyone was very passionate about EVERYTHING to do with what was on the agenda. We managed to write a vision, mission and core values statement and discuss how the exec board will work. That doesn’t seem a lot, but when there are 12 empowered people in a room, building an association from scratch – what we achieved was huge!!
The next meeting is scheduled for the end of September when we are voting in the exec board members and starting to write the constitution. It will be a long process, however, what an exciting time to be working as an SLT in East Africa at the moment.
This week has been a planning week as we prepare for all the training we are planning to run from September. I’m off for the next 2 weeks travelling (hurrah!!!) so we needed to prep it all now. We’ve decided to run training in schools initially and are just going to run an introductory couple of hours to SLT, and then on the back of the questions asked, we’ll decide what topics to run further, more specific training on. It’s going to be difficult to get teachers to come on the further training courses because we are refusing to pay them to attend. It’s a mentality here that to go on training, you should be paid. Something that the ‘new’ set of volunteers (in Vihiga, Mumias and Kisumu) are refusing to do. I am not paying someone to have the opportunity to develop their skills.... for free!!
I learnt that the life expectancy in Kenya is 40 years old.
I met a little boy called Tony yesterday who literally broke my heart. Every time I meet a new child here I’m generally upset by what I learn about them. Thankfully – the ‘barriers’ are up and I don’t let it get to me. Crikey, if I did. I’d be home by now...
However Tony deserves to be spoken about. He’s 7 or 8 years old. His Grandmother wasn’t sure. However, if you looked at him, you’d swear he was no more than 5. The reason he looks so young and is so underdeveloped physically is as a result of malnourishment since birth. Tony’s muscles have no tone, the hair on his arms are white and his eyes are huge, protruding out of his sunken face. However, he is gorgeous! Tony is also deaf. It is unknown if he has been deaf since birth, or as a result of an illness.
Tony’s mother and father have separated: Grandmother can’t recall when this happened. What she does know is that Tony was under the care of his mother until he was about 5 or 6 years old. His father then came and took him and his younger sister away to Nairobi for a year. Tony’s Grandmother is now his guardian because his father brought him back to Vihiga a year ago... Keeping his ‘normal’ daughter with him in Nairobi. Tony’s mother has remarried and has more ‘normal’ children and doesn’t want Tony. The reason his Grandmother came to the EARC is because she had been to social services to see if they could send Tony back to his father in Nairobi. She was refused and referred to the EARC team.
Nobody wants Tony.
The Grandmother believes that Tony was born small, and that’s why he has grown up like it. She would not take on any nutritional advice that we offered her, the only advice she will be willing to take on is how to ‘cure’ Tony’s hearing impairment. It’s not my place to judge the Grandmother, she is so poor herself that it’s almost impossible to feed a child. So Tony will remain malnourished.
When Tony arrived he had no shoes. My cousin very kindly donated a load of shoes that her boys had grown out of. He looked so smart in his new shoes and his little face couldn’t believe it when the penny dropped that they were his!!
The only hope for Tony really is to attend a school for the deaf. However, school costs money. About £100 a year to be exact, plus books and uniform fees. We wrote a letter referring him to a school that could be ideal for him, however due to the neglect and abuse he’s so obviously suffered from he is extremely delayed in his development. However, he demonstrated to us that within a safe and kind environment he will interact and engage with others... So we are going to advice the school on how to support his specific needs and the goal would be for him to start school in the new term (September) gradually, i.e. one morning a week and then build up to a full week, hopefully to start the official school year properly in January.
We also wrote a letter to the social services for them to try and chase down the father for him to pay the school fees. I’m not optimistic that this will happen soon, after all, this is Africa and things take much longer than at home, but you never know.
We gave Tony’s Grandmother 50 shillings (about 20p) to pay for her transport back to the social services and for some food for her and Tony and asked her to come back as soon as she hears from the government.
I am hoping more than I have ever hoped before that things work out for Tony, if not, then I’m going to have to look into a means of supporting him myself...
No comments:
Post a Comment