Christine was brought in Amecet on 7th of Feb. 2019, only just 2 months ago, very weak, sick and malnourished. The mother passed after excessive bleeding after the delivery. Christine was very small, her weight was only 2 kg. In the beginning,  I was afraid that she was not going to live...... But she did!!!!!  We had to feed her by NG tube, she was on IV medication and IV fluids, but she fought and we could give back to the father and the grandmother, a lovely smiling baby, weighing almost 4 kg!!

Last week we were able to bring Faith back to her family, together with her 6  weeks old baby!! We love to help and take children in our home, but we even love it more to bring them back to their families!!!!  Faith was brought via the Police, she is 15 years old  and she was 5 months pregnant. She had not been living at home, with her family, for a while.. There were many issues to deal with and our social workers have been visiting the family several times, to prepare them for taking Faith back in. Last week was the big day, we were able to make a packet with some practical items, for her. Having now a little baby of 6 weeks old, to care for, makes a her extra vulnerable. Her uncle and his family welcomed her back in.. When we bring a child back to the village, we bring her back to the community... As soon as we arrived, a small crowd gathered and the baby went from hand to hand. It is the community that has to welcome her back as well.  We will visit her from time to time...

As Amecet, we not work only with baby's. We still follow a group of vulnerable children (HIV/AIDS and Orphans) even when they go to secondary school. They all have been living in Amecet when they were young and Amecet has helped them through the primary school, when they were living with their relatives and even in secondary school. There is a group of 5 girls in a secondary school in Soroti, they are in boarding and yesterday was the visitation day. There is one visitation day per term (3 months). So families come to school and everywhere people sit in little groups and eat together. Simon's son and daughter are also in the same school, so we were in a big group!

Maybe you remember the picture (left) from 17 days ago, 2 crying miserable little boys. They were weak and malnourished. Today I made the picture above. And we are all amazed about the difference we see in the two boys. They are smiling and playing and Francis, (at the left) is walking everywhere. They are eating good and they love to drink milk, which helps a lot when you are malnourished!!

These two little baby's do have their mothers, but they are not able to care for their daughters. Both mothers have a mental problem and the baby's are not safe with them. That is sad, because the mother would be the one to care and protect the baby....

Today is International Women's Day!! In Uganda it is a Public Holiday, all the school are closed.. But not for us, the women of Amecet, for us it is a normal workday,

Frances (left) and David are two new toddlers, brought to Amecet. They are both malnourished. David was brought to Amecet by his mother. She wanted to leave him with us, she came without any papers and we felt it was too risky to take him in, even he needed help. The mother was separated from her husband and had gone back to her own home. We talked with the mother and explained that she should come back with the letter from the local leader and a relative. She did and we talked and decided to take him into Amecet.  Yesterday, Frances was brought by the Police. His story is sad, his parents also separated and the mother left, Frances was left with the father and a new stepmother, who had abused him. He is also malnourished and has wounds on his body.

Today 4 children left us, to live with their new foster families, who were willing to give those 4 children a home and a future!!!! This is a real happy day, all 4 of those children had no family, they came into Amecet with sad stories, but now there is Hope, there is joy and there is a future for each of them! The Probation Officer, Mr. Oluka Amos (at the left on this picture) came to give them officially to their new parents. There was a process before, all the forms are filled, interviews are done, house inspected and today was the official handover.

On Tuesday baby Charles was brought into Amecet. A small baby, who was too weak to drink by him self. We had to feed him by NG tube. The next day we got all the medical papers and we saw that he was a premature baby, who was born 3 weeks too early. The mother had died because of severe bleeding, the health centre where  Charles was born, referred them to he hospital, but also there they could not help. The baby had already traveled a lot, before reaching Amecet. At first we thought he was doing well, he only vomited  every time after feeding, so we reduced the amount of milk we gave and fed him more frequently, but on Friday morning he had problems breathing.  We went to the doctor and he was started on several IV medicines and we also put him on our oxygen machine. It looked he was doing better, but this morning at around 6.45 am, he suddenly died. It was a shock, there was not much struggle, he just stopped, while still on the oxygen. We had to call the family and get a small coffin in town.

A lot is going on in Amecet. This is baby Christine, she was born in the hospital, where her mother passed away, after a Cesarean. The family brought Christine 18 hours later, to Amecet. By that time Christine was dehydrated and had fever. She was weak and miserable. We took her to the doctor and she was put on IV fluids and IV medication. We had to feed her by NG tube, because she was too weak to drink from the bottle. We are now one week further and she is doing better, the fever is gone, the skin is better, not so dry, we still feed her via the NG tube, because she can drink only 10 or 15 ml.by herself. But I feel, that we won this battle (don't know how many battles are around the corner...).

In the last blog I wrote about the 2 Raphael's, this blog goes about one of them, the small Raphael, who is still with us in Amecet. I wrote that we went to the hospital to let the doctor take a biopsy from one of his glands and we have been waiting for the result. The result I got back yesterday..... and it was very sad news, Raphael has Cancer and it is a very advanced stage.... We have been afraid of this, when he came in Amecet on November 20,2018, we took him even the same day to the doctor and the day after that, to the HIV clinic, where he was started on ARV's. There have been x-rays, scan's, blood tests and they "hoped" that it would be TB, Raphael was started on anti TB drugs, but now it came back to us, black on white, that it is Cancer.... According to the doctor it is advanced and too far gone to start treatment.. Raphael has no parents, his father was murdered and his mother died of AIDS, she never went for treatment or ARV's and never took Raphael for treatment either. At the burial of the mother, there was a clan meeting and the clan decided that Raphael would be given to his auntie. But they saw how sick he was, so they first brought him to Amecet. The auntie came to visit Raphael twice, she is a kind lady, but we don't know how she shall react when she hears how sick Raphael really is. I am so sad about him, he is starting to adjust, smile and talk. he plays a bit, but he is too weak to really play. Someone gave him this cap, which you see on the picture, he loves that cap, and even put it up when he sits on the potty!! It stays in his bed during the night!!  We have to talk with the auntie, to hear what she thinks of this, but Raphael might stay a bit longer with us and I pray we can love and care for him, give him a banana party every week (he loves bananas) and cuddle with him and pray over him when he is sick and help him when needed. Pls. join us in prayer for this precious boy!!

This is the first Raphael (12 years old), he was brought to Amecet in August 2018. He was very weak, sick and malnourished. He is HIV+ and we took him the same day to the doctor to do tests and to see how bad it was. His Viral load (load of the HIV virus in the blood) was over 3,000,000 (normally it should be undetected). He was really very sick. He got the right medicines and also medicines for several infections. At first we thought that it was going well, until we started to see strange behavior. We took him to the Psychiatric ward  and the doctor there diagnosed: HIV related psychosis!! He got more medicines and was now spaced out, so the medicines were changed. I was hesitated about keeping him in Amecet, with all the little baby's, was it safe??? We decided that we would give him a chance, but that we, as staff, always needed to watch him, where he was and what he was doing.... Now, looking back, I am so happy that we made that decision, it was tough in the beginning, but he picked up, got more peaceful, happy, started to eat himself, (we even had to give him a NG tube, because he refused to eat!)  Started to play a bit, we had to go back to the doctor several times and the medicines for the psychosis were getting less and less... He wanted to go to school, and we started with half days, we informed the teacher and everything went well!! He was part of the Amun week en he went back home to his father and sister. In February he will go to a boarding school and he is doing so well. I was in the hospital this week and the nurses called me back, they told me that the last Viral load of Raphael came back and it was only 160,000!!! This is amazing!!!