St Jude's: A wee slice of happiness

There's something about St Jude Children's Home that gives you a warm fuzzy feeling as you walk in the gates. It might be the brightly coloured buildings or the murals on the walls or maybe it's the swarm of children that RUN at you the minute you walk in, shouting MONO MONO MONOOOOO!, excitedly waving their hands and weaving themselves under your arms and legs. I had the pleasure and privilege of visiting the place a number of times during my stay in Gulu and every time I went I felt the happy atmosphere was highly infectious and contagious.

St Jude's is home to around a hundred Ugandan children - some of whom have disabilities and some who have been orphaned by war, poverty or disease. The first time I went there, I met with Monica, a lay Comboni missionary who explained the children live in houses, maybe 10-12 in each house, and are looked after principally by a foster mother, usually a local woman who may have a child with a disability herself. This means each child belongs to a family which is consistent and stable. 

When my friends from Sligo who have volunteered in St Jude's described it to me I was so excited to go and see the place. They also said I'd have lots of work to keep me busy in the clinic as there was no nurse there and it wasn't the most organised place on earth. I expected to roll up my sleeves and busily help organise the place, develop protocols with the woman who ran it (not a qualified nurse) and maybe do some training with her to help her with treating minor injuries and identifying the sick children who need to go to hospital. 

Physiotherapy room

Physiotherapy room

I got the most pleasant surprise when I arrived and met the new team of Comboni missionaries who are dedicating one to three years to working at St Jude's. Monica is Polish, qualified as both a physiotherapist and nurse and arrived there seven months before me. To say she has completely transformed the place is a massive understatement. The clinic now has two nurses (Monica and Brenda, a lovely local Ugandan woman), and over the past ten months they have been working extremely hard to improve both the consolation home and the clinic rooms. They have worked so hard there was barely anything for me to do! 

They've turned an old office into a bright and colourful physiotherapy room, where Monica gives proper physiotherapy sessions, vital for the patients with cerebral palsy and other forms of paralysis. They have organised the children's medical notes into neat folders filed under each of the mother's names, documenting their vaccination status and all hospital and clinic visits. They have bought new filing cabinets and shelving for storing the medications, and restocked many of the shelves using some donations I brought over from kind family and friends. They have an emergency shelf with an Ambu-bag and emergency medications.

While I was there last Tuesday, a young girl came in who had fallen the previous day in the yard at the primary school. At the clinic, Monica and Brenda see not only the St Jude's residents but also the children from the village who attend the attached primary school. Monica had advised her the previous day to go to the hospital and get an XRay because the wrist looked broken, but she had not (possibly didn't have the money to pay for it). She was in a lot of pain, so Monica found a splint in a storeroom she had recently organised and we immobilised the wrist, gave her a painkiller and sent her home with a note to say she would have to attend the emergency department. There's a good chance she won't go, but at least splinting the wrist will give her some relief and allow the wrist to heal. The next person to stroll in was Mercy, a young girl with autism who is a complete hypochondriac and loves taking medications so much they sometimes have to give her multivitamins as placebo! She thought her toe was falling off but after some reassurance and a hug from Monica she was smiling again. 

Monica and Mercy

This guy was absolutely devastated when he finished his banana. 

I made the almost fatal mistake of bringing a bag of bananas to the kids last week. The second Auntie Pamela and I opened the bag and started handing them out we were bulldozed by a swarm of children, clamouring on top of each other to get one. There was laughter and tears as many suffered crush injuries (myself included). Both the children and the mothers were delighted because they don't often get a little treat - although it only cost around 30,000 shillings (the equivalent of around €10) for 100 little bananas, that's a relatively large sum in Uganda and they simply cannot afford to buy fruit very often for the children. I was also delighted to be able to give them a large container of G-nut paste (like peanut butter) that a friend had made for me. Anyone who has been to Uganda will confirm that this stuff is the tastiest thing on the planet and is therefore LETHAL to have lying around the apartment. It is so loaded with calories it is used in developing countries to treat malnutrition and starvation. I suffered from neither of these conditions but managed to get through a fair amount of the stuff, I found it was a good cure for my own personal affliction of gluttony.

There is such a happy and positive atmosphere, and most importantly lots of love and laughter, it's not hard to see why it holds such a special place in the hearts of so many people from Sligo!

This guy knew how to put filters on a selfie.