We celebrated Tom's first birthday!!!  Last year he was brought by the police as an abandoned baby of 1 month old. So we gave him as date of Birth: 10/10/2023..  I wrote about Tom a couple of blogs ago...  Tom was going to be adopted, but then he got the diagnosis "Sickle Cell" , the couple who was going to adopt him, changed their mind.  So now we try to manage him as best we can and we pray and hope for a family who is willing to care for Tom. We decided to celebrate his life, complete with baloons, party heads and a cake!! It was great to see him grabbing in the cake and his face was full with the (very sweet) icing. 

Baby Simon was born in the village on 22/8/24. His mother was home alone and gave birth on her own. She started to bleed seriously, and she died right there, next to her new born son. There was another complication, Simon's mother was HIV+, so there was a risk for Simon, especially because the birth took place at home instead of the health centre or Hospital . The next day, Simon was brought to Amecet, he was a small baby with a weight of 2 kg. and big, beautiful eyes.. He was weak and we had a lot of struggles with him, he was not doing so well, not gaining much, in the beginning not drinking good and he had several infections, which we had to treat him for.

On June 8th the Police brought a premature baby to Amecet. The baby was born in a health centre in the village. According to the letter, a young girl and her mother came to the health centre saying that she had an abortion after 7 months of pregnancy, She was admitted and examined and her labour started. the baby came out alive, a little baby boy. The mother and the grandmother disappeared and the baby was abandoned..  So the health centre called the Police and the Police brought the little premature born baby to Amecet.

I like to share with you the story of Tom. In the morning van November 10, 2023, we got a phone call from the Police that a small baby was found in a garden. He was abandoned, nobody knew him and nobody saw anything.... We went to pick the baby, he seemed to be around one month old, his weight was 4.6 kg. and he looked like a healthy baby boy.  he was brought to the doctor for check ups  and his blood tests showed a septicemia, so he was started on medication.

This team is the backbone of Amecet!! This are the people who are working behind the scenes, and when they are not there, everything goes wrong....

Today I would like to introduce our medical team. We get very often very sick children, who are in need of medical attention and extra care. I am not talking about a cold, some cough or malaria, but about seriously sick children, whose life is at risk.... That is why our medical team is very important. When a new child is taken into Amecet, the medical person on duty, will take the child to the doctor (next door). Tests will be done and treatment will be prescribed. The medical team works together to fulfil the prescription. It might be just oral medication, but very often it is IV medication. They will give the baby/child a cannula and the schedule for the times to give the medication, is made.  At the moment we have 3 people in our team (l to R) Sharon, Joanna and Immaculate. Immaculate lives in the Amecet compound, so she will give injections at night, if needed. She is also available to be called at night, if anything is needed. 

Meet our 3 Musketeers, our Social Workers. They are the back bone of our Home! We have 2 Social Workers, Pius and Simon) and 1 Counsellor (Andrew) On the picture they sit in the office (L. to R,) Andrew, Pius and Simon. They do a lot of work, often outside the home. When a child is abandoned somewhere, they go there and they talk with the people in the area, they hang up posters with the picture of the child and ask people who know the relatives to call us.

This is the present leadership of Amecet: (L to R)  Dominique, Andrew, Pius, Simon and Els.  We meet every Monday morning to discuss the present situation and to plan the week. Dominique is responsible for the daily activities in the house, she is like our home manager, Andrew is a Counsellor and he talks with people, the staff, but also people who come at our doorstep for help. He keeps an eye on the maintenance of the house and he goes also out to the villages with the social workers to visit the families. Pius and Simon are our Social Workers, They are going out to the villages a lot. And then me, I am a lot in the office, doing the administration, finances, the P.R.  organize the ALT meetings and the Staff meetings, keeping an eye on the medical team and in between........ cuddle baby's......

 For more than 22 years, the caretakers of Amecet cared for all the 1198 children, we had in Amecet. Of course the faces have changed, but the care is still the same!! Without these precious ladies, there would be no Amecet... They bath the children, feed the children, change the diapers, play with them, cuddle them, love them, sometimes do exercises with the children. 

In the last 3 blogs, I have shared how the Amecet Ministry started. Amecet helps children in the Teso region, in North-East Uganda. The Teso region contains 10 different districts and around 2,5 million people live here. The main source of income is agriculture, crops and cows.

2003 was a year full of importance events. In Uganda was Joseph Kony active. he had formed an army, which he called " the Lord's army" and his aim was to conquer the North of Uganda under his command. His army had a lot of kind soldiers, children he had kidnapped and changed into killer machines. Kony was dangerous and in 2003, he had come to the Teso region.  One evening I had talked our Amecet staff, and encouraged them to make a bag with important things and have that bag ready, in case that.... Together with Helen, I started that evening to pack important things for Amecet, the files off the children, medication, clothes, sheets etc. for " in case of that..." of course nothing would happen, but you never know... The days before, Simon and me visited several children deep in the village and every time we heard that the next day Kony had been there... It was scary. The people in the villages all gathered together in the centers of the villages, big camps were build and the local militia, the Arrow Boys, defended the camps. Sometimes people tried to sneak out to their gardens, to get some crops, they were killed by Kony's army, who even lived in the homes of the people.