June 11th (the internet was out last night)

Today we went to Sanuyu baby’s home to play with the kids again. I wasn’t able to play with Raymond because Felix wanted me to do some therapy with a few of the kids there. It was extremely frustrating. The “therapist” that works at the baby’s home isn’t even really a therapist, but rather does something with bones. I couldn’t really understand what he does, but he only comes to the home twice a week. To be completely honest, he was kind of a know it all, and refused to listen to any of my comments or suggestions. I tried to be respectful and critique him without being rude, but I’m pretty sure he thought I was just some stupid American.

Again to be honest, nothing he did with the kids made sense, and some things were just plain wrong. I worked with 3 kids today. The first one, Francis, has cerebral palsy. Francis has very tight, or as therapists call them, hypertonic muscles. You aren’t supposed to pull or tug on the limbs of these kids because it makes their hypertonicity worse. Francis’s “treatment” with the therapist consisted mostly of pulling and tugging on his limbs. At the age of 2, Francis can still not bring his head to midline, can’t sit up straight, and is still drinking out of a bottle. It broke my heart to see him and know that if he had been born in America, he would be so much further in his progress.

The 2nd girl, Anita, is just weak and slightly developmentally delayed. She is about 8 months old and can’t sit up yet. Instead of doing exercises that would work on strengthening her trunk muscles, the therapist would only allow me to massage her shoulders, arms, and stomach with baby oil. I’m still trying to figure out the logic behind that.

The final child, Godwin, is 3 years old. Someone somewhere told the home that he has autism. I’m not a doctor, but I’m pretty sure this isn’t the case. Autistic kids never make eye contact, never initiate social contact, and rarely, if ever speak. When I walked into the classroom to get him, Godwin walked up to me, looked me in the eyes and said “Up, please.” He also responds to all the commands that his teachers give him the first time, asks for more food and drink when he wants them, and plays well with his classmates. He is a little slow (I think he has slight mental retardation) and some speech problems, but I really don’t think he is autistic.

Regardless of what he has, the treatment for Godwin’s “autism” was very interesting. At first, the therapist told me that they were considering cutting the flap of skin under his tongue to help him talk, but since he had started making some words, he didn’t need that anymore. Instead, I massaged his neck with baby oil while singing songs to him. That was the recommended treatment.

On a side note, on the board on the therapy room, the therapist had placed a list of symptoms of autism so that it would be easy to recognize in other children that come in. One of the symptoms of autism is “twinkling eyes”, another is excessive drooling. Please know that this is not really the case.

I’m not an expert on therapy by any means, but I did know a few things that we could have done to help them. It was so frustrating to not be able to say anything to him and to not have him listen to my opinions. It broke my heart knowing the kind of treatment those kids could have gotten in America.

Felix says that hopefully the next time we go the therapist won’t be there and I can show him some exercises. We are also going to work on adjusting Francis’s chair so that the nurses will actually sit him in it instead of having him lay in bed all day.

After the baby’s home we came home for a quick lunch and then went to Remand home. We sang and played games and Ty gave a message. Then we hung out with the kids again. One of the boys from last week, Moses, came and talked to me again. A bunch of the other kids from today were really fun too. Chris, David, Jared, Justin, and Moses were all in my group and they were great kids. Two of them (Chris and Moses) asked me to bring them Bibles next time we come, it was great to just have conversations with them, even though it was hard to communicate at times because of the boys bad English.

Moses loves to play Rock, Paper, Scissors and we also tore up the dance floor today. He taught me how to dance to some African drum and I thought him some lame white girl moves. It was awesome.

Today, Moses also told me what he is at Remand home for. Sort of, he said defilement, which here in Uganda means some sort of sexual crime. That taught me quite a lot. If I had know that before I had gotten to know Moses, than I never would have talked to him. But knowing him before I found out made it very easy to forgive whatever it is that he did. To be honest, it didn’t even faze me. He’s a great kid who made a mistake. Isn’t it weird how judgmental we can be sometimes?

Tonight we are just hanging out at the house. Tomorrow morning we are splitting up into groups and going to visit all the kids who are sponsored by Empower A Child. Each Ugandan has one or two MSTs going with them. Some groups are staying in Kampala and others are going really far away. My group is going to visit 2 children 3 hours away. We have to leave at 8 tomorrow morning. It’s going to be a long day.

Tonight the internet was out. It’s amazing what you can find to do for entertainment when you have no TV or internet. Tonight, Emily introduced us to a game called star tripping. Basically, you spin around as fast as you can for 30 seconds at the stars, then someone shines a flashlight in your eyes. For some reason, you immediately fall over. I think it’s the shock to your vestibular system. It is by far one of the funniest things I have done or seen so far in Africa.

Finally, I am thinking of getting my hair braided like the women do here. Over the next 3 weeks we are going on 2 different 4 day village trips. These trips will provide no opportunity to bath (or wash my hair). The braids would at least keep my hair from looking gross. Thoughts and opinions on this topic are welcomed.

Today’s Luganda word we learned yesterday when we took the kids swimming (they had to swim naked): Jamu engoye (jam mew en goya) or take off your clothes.

Keeping my clothes on,
Jenna