Cooking with SALVE

You will need:

• 3kg of sugar;
• 1 tin of shoe polish;
• 2 tubes of toothpaste;
• 3 bars of soap (for washing oneself);
• 3 bars of soap (for washing clothes);
• 1 tub of Vaseline;
• 6 pens;
• 1 dozen black pencils (plus assorted colours for decoration);
• 4 toilet rolls; and
• 1 dozen exercise books.

Take all the above ingredients; add to one large steel chest and an excitable child and you’re ready for the first day of school!

Yes, the SALVE children are going back to school after 10 long weeks of holiday. The holidays have included the excitement of the SALVE Olympics, and the happiness of returning home to see families; but it’s fair to say that all the children are excited about going back to school. None more so than the latest additions to the SALVE family – Florence, Jude and Jeska – some of whom are going to school for the first time this year!

All the SALVE children passed their end-of-year exams, so are moving up to the next class, or in some cases a new school, so it really is a case of all change. Most of the children (except those who joined SALVE late last year) will be going to boarding school so the SALVE team have been busy ferrying them back and forth to various schools. SALVE children are currently studying at five different schools so this can be quite a logistical challenge! We choose the school for each child based on their strengths and needs, but also with a desire to keep SALVE children in the same school year apart, so they can blossom in a different environment to the SALVE family.

Meeting the requirements

The list above is a snapshot of what parents (and SALVE) have to provide for a child boarding in primary school for just one term. Before they set off more will be added to this list: reams of A4 paper, sanitary goods and even brooms. Every child going to school has to provide these requirements and that’s in addition to the school fees that many already pay. For a boarder the fees alone can top 300,000 Ugandan shillings per term, in a country where the average family income is just about two million shillings. For one child, school fees could make up 60% of a family’s income – it’s little surprise that many families only send 1 child to school at the expense of others.

Even where children don’t pay school fees due to Universal Primary Education (UPE) the cost of the requirements can still present a big barrier to going to school. Several children on the street whom SALVE works with cite their parents inability to meet the requirements, and the subsequent expulsion from school as one of the reasons for them leaving to the street. SALVE is looking for ways in which we can work with the local community to ease the situation but this is another illustration that, in Uganda, education is most definitely still a privilege, and not a right.

A farewell to Neil

This weekend also saw the SALVE family bid a fond farewell to Neil – one for the UK volunteers who has be out in Uganda since September last year. It’s fair to say that the children really enjoyed the chocolate cake that came out as part of his farewell party! Neil’s done some awesome work in his time out here – especially the great research into the use of drugs by children on the streets of Jinja. I know the children, and all the SALVE staff, will really miss him but maybe this isn’t the last Uganda will see of him…

(ps – you can see more pictures of the latest SALVE action on our Facebook page)