Sunbathing, Sleeping and Showering in Entebbe.

Could you resist this smile?

Life at Kasana is wonderful, but every so often it is necessary for one`s sanity to escape and get some rest in a place where you know there won`t be 100s of knocks on the doors! I am writing this from a lovely guest house in Entebbe where I have come with some other ladies from New Hope to do just that......and on Sunday, to collect a team from Tees Valley who are coming to Kasana for 2 weeks (yippeeeee!)

So, I am making the most of the hot showers to get clean and spent the day yesterday lying in the sun by the pool (and now have a rather pink chest!) And this morning, as it is drizzly and cool(er) I am making the most of the speedy internet and getting very excited about skyping with family and friends later. I am posting random photos throughout the blog just because I CAN!

In the garden behind Hassan`s House

Since my last blog, Carol has been discharged from hospital and is doing relatively well at home being fed through an NG tube. Please continue to pray that we get a gastrostomy tube for her soon and find a surgeon who is willing to operate (these ops are not common practise in Uganda!)

A class craft session

All of the other children are doing relatively well and Hassan has stopped his vomiting tricks for the time being (except for a little one which he produced in response to my goodbye kiss yesterday morning!)

In our class we have been so excited by Allen learning to feed herself almost independently from a two handled beaker (I know it sounds insignificant but for her it is a miracle!) She is also now 8.5kg which is the heaviest she has been in the 9 years of her life!

Precious Allen

I have been spending lots of time working on our special needs programme budget ......and those of you who know me well will know that figures are not my favourite thing and whenever I have to deal with them, I begin to feel quite sick! Thankfully I had quite a bit of help from Nancy and it is almost finished.....we only need to cut back on 1 million (shillings not pounds!) before it balances J Remember, if you know of anyone who would be willing to sponsor one of our children or our programme as a whole, we would be delighted to hear from them either on specialneeds@newhopeuganda.org or sponsors@newhopeuganda.org . We would also love to hear from anyone who feels called to come and serve in our department  either short or long term in the future.

Dorcas and Benon

Chest Distortions, Fits, Vomitting and the Happy Return of Kakulu!

Hi there again everyone. Thank you for your prayers over the last few weeks. Sorry for not updating my blog sooner but I was down with some mystery illness for over a week and since then have been dealing with some sick children, naughty grandmothers and a rather serious staffing issue!

I myself have now fully recovered with or without the help of some malaria medicine and antibitiotics and despite a caterpillar cocoon leaving me with a nasty rash on my arm which is still here after a week!

Carol enjoying the garden!

On Monday this week little Carol was rushed to and admitted to hospital as she had yet another chest infection which had caused her chest to stick out in a rather scary fashion and made her breathing rather laboured (to put it mildly.) And to add to this, she was continuing to have epileptic seizures despite two different medications. Thankfully the hospital responded very quickly and put her on Oxygen straight away. Her carer Christine and her Daddy Stanley have been taking turns to stay with her at the hospital (sleeping on mats on the floor!) with some help from others including Uncle Stu who received many compliments when he did a shift yesterday......the nurses told us that he had done a ‘wonderful job, just like a lady!’ I guess they are just not used to seeing men caring so tenderly for little children! So Carol is making small improvements and they have put a NG tube down which she is now using for feeding so that it doesn`t go down into her lungs and add to the problems there! We are planning to keep this in and in the near future to take her for surgery in Kampala to fit a feeding tube. Please keep praying that we are able to find a hospital willing to do the surgery. Hopefully a team from the UK will be bringing tubes for both Hassan and Carol in April thanks to a very kind doctor! Your continued prayers for Carol would be much appreciated. She is such a delicate little girl with so many issues!

Kakulu (left) happy to back with A.Jordanna and Brian.

On a happier note, this week saw the return of our dear Kakulu who has been away in Masindi with his Grandmother. After a lengthy discussion with the Grandmother (Jajja as we call them here!) we agreed that Kakulu will now being staying with us during school term times and just going home to the Grandmother in the holidays. She will be returning to Masindi as she has been able to find work there. As well as sorting out Kakulu`s care, we also had to resolve the issue of what had been done / has been done with the house that we had built for Kakulu in 2010/11. Obviously it had been built to help Kakulu and we were not happy that the Grandmother and he had moved away......especially when we began hearing rumours that she had sold it! However, what she told us on Thursday was that there were now relatives living there and taking care of both her house and garden and although they were not willing to keep Kakulu at weekends, they were prepared to bring a regular supply of garden produce to help feed Kakulu and his friends whilst he stays here with us. There were several other conditions which we made before we agreed t o keep Kakulu; we have learnt the hard way to be a bit tougher and not believe everything people tell us and so we had to ensure that Kakulu was not going to be ‘dumped’ on us and abandoned! It is a joy to have him back and he is certainly very vocal about how happy he is to be with us J

Hassan reading a sponsor letter with his favourite Auntie!

And finally, just to ask for your prayers also for Hassan who is presently vomiting a lot of his feeds because of a cough which he has had for over 3 months. He has been taking cough syrup 3 times a day for this but in the last week, it has ceased to be effective so we are having to explore other ways  to stop him!