How Do I Leave the Sanyu Babies Behind?

After reading my last blog post, my cousin asked me how I could go to Sanyu and then leave without bringing all the babies home. I spend time cuddling and talking to and loving those little guys (even if it's only for a couple of hours) and then I have to give them back and walk away.


It is very hard to leave those babies behind. I had one little angel that I wanted to keep in 2009 named Solomon and he was just gorgeous. Every time I returned to Sanyu during that trip I would seek him out and carry him with me. Big eyes, calm, gentle, just go with the flow. He would have settled in nicely with the cats... But of course adopting from Uganda isn't possible (well, it is but it's a long and very expensive road) and we are not really open for adoptions. Anyway, Solomon had been adopted the next year when I went back which was a relief and a disappointment. I don't know if I could have left him twice. Adopted by a Catholic priest. That make me sad on a whole different level.

The way I deal with it is that I connect with the older students and stay in contact with them. Corey and I are sponsoring a boy attending secondary school and there's an orphan girl that I will talk to about going to secondary school as well. Corey and I have talked about us being her "parents" if she went to boarding school and we are living in Uganda. Who knows if that will happen but it's things like that that keep me going.

This is all why it's so incredibly hard for me to come home. I always curl up into a little ball and rage for my first week back in Canada. I hate it back here after my time there. Takes a while for me to close that little part of my heart and keep living in our overindulgent society. Poor Corey has to deal with a blubbering and angry mess for a week and then I start to become human again.



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Sanyu Babies Home Report

Volunteers with Niteo (who have not been working in schools) have spent a lot of time at Sanyu, a special orphanage in Kampala for abandoned babies.

When I visited Sanyu my first time, I was unable to stay inside the building. I was so overwhelmed. Everything that was 'wrong' with Uganda was in a concentrated form at Sanyu: AIDS, poverty, rape, abandonment, loss of hope... It was truly heartbreaking.

I forced myself to return the second year and shifted my perception. Yes these babies came from the worst conditions and represented everything that was wrong with humanity (how can you leave a baby in a latrine in the hopes it'll drown?) but Sanyu works so hard to give these babies hope and a good future.

The babies come from a terrible past but that past does not define their future.

I share with you the June newsletter about what has been happening at Sanyu. It's screen shots of the pages so hopefully you can read the reports. I'd you want the full newsletter, email me and I'll forward it on to you.






















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Meet My Ugandan Friends Part 1

One month today I will be sitting at Heathrow airport eagerly awaiting the third and final leg of my journey to Uganda. The 8 hours we spend at Heathrow always seem so long but they help build up my excitement and anticipation. One month and counting. Yahoo!

Ugandans are amazing, genuine, kind and welcoming. It takes no time to forge a lifelong connection to these wonderful human beings. Despite only having been in Uganda 10 days last year, my mother is putting together care packages for the people she met in 2011 for me to take and deliver from "Mama Erika." In such a short time these people have become like family to her. I wish I could see them more often and spend more time with them; they have such a serene way about them. Some of them I don't see each year and while I am so sad that I've miss them, for them it's just part of what happens and they simply say that we will meet next time. No expectations; they just accept everything as the universe presents it. So unlike us who have our predetermined expectations that we focus on and that disappoint us when they don't develop as we want them to. Such a simpler and gentler way of accepting the events in life.


I met Muhamad in 2008 when I "worked" at Kawanda Secondary School just outside of Kampala. I was assigned to work with him as he is a Biology and Chemistry teacher and I was a Science teacher at KLO Middle School. I didn't teach much in his class and spent more time teaching and talking in other classes but I did sit in on many of Muhamad's classes while I was there. 

We exchanged email addreses and have kept regular correspondence since my first trip despite the fact that Niteo has not returned to Kawanda to "work." In 2010, Muhamad invited me to his family home to share a meal and meet his relatives. He applied to come to Canada for Christmas hat year but was refused entry by the Canadian government. It ended up being a blessing as it was the year of the tremendous storms in London and he would have spent his holiday in Heathrow.When we first met he told me that he really wanted to see snow but that he gets cold induced asma if he is in an environment below 15 degrees! I think he would have enjoyed watching winter from the inside of our condo.

I had not intended on going to Uganda in 2011 due to my summer univeristy course schedule but on December 26th, 2010, Muhamad emailed me to invite me to his wedding on March 19th, 2011. Mum, always ready for an adventure, agreed to accompany me to this incredible event.

In the year leading up to his wedding Muhamad taught full time at Kawanda and spent his spare time building a home for him and his bride to move into after the wedding. He studied Science at Makerere University and was involved in research to find a new and environmentally friendly form of energy for Uganda but the funding ran out and he had to leave his research to teach. He is writing a biology textbook (over 400 pages at last count) and he hopes to return to school in 2013 to study to be a pharmacist. He is a very dedicated and intelligent man.


Hanifah, Muhamad's wife, has a degree in IT. She is a lovely woman. She is expecting their first baby this fall.

I feel so fortunate to call these two amazing people my friends. I am looking forward to seeing them again!