Richard was picked by his grandmother at the end of November, Richard made us so happy, I am calling him our Miracle baby....... If you can read our blog from August 23, you can read his story.. It is again a sad story, but the ending is somehow happy. Look at the two pictures from before and after........

It is like a tradition, every year, on the first of December, we remember the children who died that year in Amecet. We speak out their names and we tell something significant about them, how we felt about them or what they taught us. At times it can be very emotional, because we cared for them and we felt the loss...... This year we had only one child we remembered, little Peter, a premature baby, who was only 25 days old when he passed on. 

We have 7 new children in Amecet, our social workers have been busy. We got several phone calls, some from concerned relatives, some from Police and Probation Officers (children protection). Every district has a Probation officer, most of them know us and have been referring children in the past. On the picture above,m you can see a meeting in one of the Districts near Soroti, where the Probation Officer asked us to come and asses the situation of a child. Other children come to Amecet because there is a problem in the family and the relatives ask us to come and look at the child. We always investigate the situation, ask input from the Local  Counselor, we see if there is a relative where the child is safe. If the child is in such a condition like, sick, malnourished or very weak, we take the child to Amecet. During the time the child is in Amecet, our social workers try to find a safe place for the child.

Today, a mother came to our door in Amecet, carrying 2 small baby's. She asked for help... We looked at the two little girls, they were twins and one of them was very small. I asked how old they were, she told us that they were 9 weeks old, the first born weighs 1.260 kg and the second born weighs 1.9 kg.... and they are 9 weeks old!!! Normal weight of that age would be 4-5 kg. The twins were born premature, but still, this is a very low weight.. We did the intake with the mother and got all her information and also the information about the baby's and her living situation. The father of the twins had ran off after the baby's were born, she got help from her neighbors. We asked her to go home and come back with the medical papers and the letter of the local counsellor of her neighborhood. 30 minutes later she was back and she wanted her children back... We had a long talk and I told her that when she wanted her children back, I would given them, she is the mother and it is her right to get them back, but I also told her that they really were in need of help.. I got the feeling that someone had told her that it would not be safe to leave her children with us. So we agreed that we would go with her to her home and talk with the people there and if she would still want them back after that, we would hand them back to her. Our social workers were all out in the village to check on two children, so Sharon (one of our nurses) and me went with the mother to her home. We found her land lady and soon several of her neighbors joined us. We had a good talk, we explained what we did in Amecet and then they had many questions... Some about if we ask money from them, or if we give the children back without payment, if the children got sick, what do we do then, do we take them to the doctor, do we give them medicines?? Do we take the children anywhere else?? So we had a good conversation with them and at the end they all told the mother to leave the children in Amecet...while they were the people who had told the mother to get her children back, "because you do not leave the children with strangers"...

On Tuesday, the Police brought baby Moses (at the right) to Amecet, we think he was only 3 days old. A beautiful baby boy, the umbilical cord was still there. And on Friday we got a call from the Police if we could come and pick an abandoned baby, he was found the evening before... We think that he is around 1 month old, we gave him the name Tom..

This is a picture of the new Greenhouse in our farm!! I wrote in our blog of August 9 about our first eggs of our chickens and about the plans we had in the future for the farm. Last month we got some men coming from Kampala to build our Greenhouse!!

Faith (5), James (3) and Jeremiah (2) were brought to Amecet around 6 weeks ago. Left, you can see how they came in. The two brothers were malnourished, they had oedema and they were miserable and unhappy. The older sister was not really malnourished, but it was better to take her also into Amecet, otherwise she would be alone in the house. The father was away a lot, trying to get work. At first, the boys lost weight, the oedema disappeared, after that they started to gain. We brought Faith to Harmony Preschool every morning, she liked it a lot. In the meantime our social workers tried to work with the father, together they looked to several options for the children, but it did not really work out well. The children went back to the father . They live in Soroti district, we will keep an eye on them by visiting them regularly at home.

Yesterday we had a long trip to the villages, we went for different issues, first we brought Grace back home. And it was a bumpy ride... You can see on the picture how small the "roads" are at times, not more than a bicycle track. Some of the homes are really deep in the village and we even had to walk at the end to come to the home. The car couldn't  reach.

Mercy is one of our new baby's, she was brought by her family because the mother had died after giving birth... She is a cute little baby, we have started her on the HIV medicines, because her mother was HIV+. When she is one month  old we will take her for testing. But with the good medicines we can give those baby's,  whose mother was HIV+, most of the baby's are negative!!

Two months ago, two family members came to Amecet with a newborn baby. Hellen's mother had passed away after Hellen was born via a Caesarean operation. She lost too much blood, the father was in shock, he couldn't come to bring his daughter himself. Hellen picked up fast, she drank well and gained weight and her father came to visit her many times... You could see that he loved his baby girl. And here he is, picking her from Amecet to take her home to his family. His sister will help caring for her. He was so happy, it is such a joy to us, to give her back to her family when you know she will be so loved!!! We prepared a bag with some clothes, a mosquito net, a drinking cup and we clothed her and put a blanket around her for the journey. This blanket is knitted with love by Dutch ladies who live in Spain during the winters.... A blessing for many baby's.....

Every month we have a meeting with all the staff, there is communication, we ask their opinion for certain things, they can bring up things they want to change or bring into a discussion. We also have every time some teaching, some of the subjects were Fever, Diarrhea, potty training, HIV, burping after drinking etc. This time we were talking about swaddling the baby. On internet there are very nice little teaching films and I had collected all the dolls in Amecet and we were practicing.. We had a lot of fun....

This morning we got a phone call from a village, it was from a police post. There was a newborn baby, born early in the morning, and the mother has a mental sickness and had walked away.. If we could help??  After some discussion, we decided to go and pick the baby, they were trying to find transport to bring the baby to Soroti, that would then be by a motor cycle and we felt that it would not be good for this newborn baby, the baby was not been fed either. So we decided that we should go by car and bring a bottle milk with us. It was  just over 1 hour drive, the roads were not so bad and we met the policemen and the Community Development Officer. We first fed the baby and we heard the sad story.