It is almost a tradition.... 3 weeks before, we all draw one name and for that person we buy a present. On the day of the party, we all sit in a big circle, the music is on and one by one we give our present to the person whose name we had drawn. People dance and tease people offering it first to the wrong person, sometimes they dance around with 2 or 3 people, everybody is clapping, there is joy, shouting, singing and a lot of laughing...... 

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Many years ago, we started the tradition of remembering the children who died that year, during the World AIDS day. Amecet started 23 years ago with the main target of HIV+ children. In the begin years we had many HIV+ children in our Home. And on December first, we named all the children who had passed on that year, we lighted a candle and shared something about each child, as a last honor to them. This year we had 4 children to remember, and none of them died because of HIV/AIDS!!! We are very thankful about that, seeing children dying from AIDS is so sad, they all got the infection through birth, their mother was HIV+ and gave the virus to their baby.  Because of the good prevention the government of Uganda set up towards the mother to child infection, are there not many babies born with HIV anymore.

We lost a small baby today. You never get used to it... It is always so sad and painful to see a little baby, like Sekundina, fighting for her life, not able to get enough air in... It all started yesterday, everything was normal, she got a bath and was fed in the morning. But  2 hours later, when she was due for her next feeding, she had difficulties with breathing. They checked her saturation (level of oxygen in the blood) and it was low. They put her on the oxygen machine and the doctor form the clinic next  to us was called. he checked, they took some blood. he listened to her lungs and prescribed  IV medication. During the day her saturation was going up to normal again, but the difficulty in her breathing remained. Joanne, one of our medical team, stayed the whole night with her. In the morning she was a bit stable, untill she crashed again, without a reason. Her saturation was dropping and even when she got extra IV medication, it dropped untill she slipped away...

Two days ago, this little girl was brought to Amecet by the Police. There a quite a number of small lodges in Soroti, where you can sleep when you miss your bus or so. They are very simple. And in one of those lodges, the cleaning lady went to clean the rooms which were occupied during the night. In one of the small rooms, she found this little girl... We think she is 1,5 years old abandoned by her mother. The Police is involved, and they found pictures of the mother on the security camera of a neighbouring shop. We call her Esther, for now. She is doing well, eat and drinks and even sleeps without many problems. We just heard today that the police arrested the mother. We might be able to find the relatives now.

In the last 8 days, we received 3 preterm babies, very small, very weak. You see them on this picture, the oldest  is at the left , she is 5 weeks old, than in the middle the baby of 3 weeks old and at the right the baby of 2 weeks old. Two of them are fed by NG tube, because they are too weak to drink themselves. Let me tell a bit more about them....

Sometimes people ask me, "how do you get the chilldren in Amecet"? On very different ways, 3 days ago, I got a phone call from the Hosptial in Soroti. There was a preterm baby born and the mother was very critical sick. The baby was in the Neonatal ward and the family was so busy with caring for the mother, if we could help??? Of course we could, I went to the hospital with our nurse and talked with the family, did the intake and we left with the baby in our arms. The baby is called James and we feed him with a NG tube every two hours. He is too weak to drink himself. But he is doing well. His weight is 1.4 kg.

We celebrated Tom's first birthday!!!  Last year he was brought by the police as an abandoned baby of 1 month old. So we gave him as date of Birth: 10/10/2023..  I wrote about Tom a couple of blogs ago...  Tom was going to be adopted, but then he got the diagnosis "Sickle Cell" , the couple who was going to adopt him, changed their mind.  So now we try to manage him as best we can and we pray and hope for a family who is willing to care for Tom. We decided to celebrate his life, complete with baloons, party heads and a cake!! It was great to see him grabbing in the cake and his face was full with the (very sweet) icing. 

Baby Simon was born in the village on 22/8/24. His mother was home alone and gave birth on her own. She started to bleed seriously, and she died right there, next to her new born son. There was another complication, Simon's mother was HIV+, so there was a risk for Simon, especially because the birth took place at home instead of the health centre or Hospital . The next day, Simon was brought to Amecet, he was a small baby with a weight of 2 kg. and big, beautiful eyes.. He was weak and we had a lot of struggles with him, he was not doing so well, not gaining much, in the beginning not drinking good and he had several infections, which we had to treat him for.

On June 8th the Police brought a premature baby to Amecet. The baby was born in a health centre in the village. According to the letter, a young girl and her mother came to the health centre saying that she had an abortion after 7 months of pregnancy, She was admitted and examined and her labour started. the baby came out alive, a little baby boy. The mother and the grandmother disappeared and the baby was abandoned..  So the health centre called the Police and the Police brought the little premature born baby to Amecet.

I like to share with you the story of Tom. In the morning van November 10, 2023, we got a phone call from the Police that a small baby was found in a garden. He was abandoned, nobody knew him and nobody saw anything.... We went to pick the baby, he seemed to be around one month old, his weight was 4.6 kg. and he looked like a healthy baby boy.  he was brought to the doctor for check ups  and his blood tests showed a septicemia, so he was started on medication.

This team is the backbone of Amecet!! This are the people who are working behind the scenes, and when they are not there, everything goes wrong....