ST.JUDE CHILDREN'S HOME

(St Jude May - July 2009)

After 3 months of frustration and heart ache in Kampala - volunteering for a fraudulent NGO that I had found on the internet - I met some dishevelled Aid Workers in a bar who told me of a fabled place in Northern of Uganda. A care home that provided a new start for orphans and disabled children who were victims of war, illness or misfortune. A place run by the legendary Brother Elio, who spoke Acholi and once rescued a group of kidnapped nurses from the Lord's Resistance Army! I gasped. Then with a map they had sketched for me on the back of a brown scrap of paper (and a contact number) I climbed aboard a bus to Gulu the next morning.

I was not disappointed. An Irish volunteer named Mairead met me at Gulu bus terminal and drove me a little way out of town, past banda villages and wandering herds of cattle, to St Jude Children's home where I would begin two very memorable and rewarding months of voluntary work. As an EFL teacher by profession my job was to teach 3 English classes at the primary school each morning and mark text books or play with the infants at the orphanage in the afternoon. I found the teaching conditions at St Jude's to be very good: The classes were large and spacious with sturdy furniture; there were good black boards and sufficient teaching materials; the students were punctual and well motivated. There was even a photocopier available in the administration office!

It was complete submersion. Myself, Mairead and Silvia lived in a guest house nestled in between the other residents of the orphanage. Power cuts and water shortages were frequent - as is the case throughout all Northern Uganda - and we became accustomed to the sound of laughing or crying children. Often we would hear a tentative tap at the door to find a small huddle of nervous kids asking for an old newspaper or the use of our refrigerator in return for some household chores. Later as they grew in confidence and familiarity mobs of smiling boys would knock on the window to see if I would join them for another game of football.

It's true that interesting people are found in interesting places so I immediately got on with the other volunteers. On the weekends we would take motorbike taxis into Gulu and meet other Aid Workers and ex-pats from around the world for drinks and shared stories. During the week it was not uncommon to find doctors, nurses, psychologists, wealthy foreign donors, TV producers of even an ambassador walking around St Jude compound. Their clean ironed shirts contrasted sharply with our grimy crinkled ones. But always a look of admiration in their eyes as we came out of the guest house or a classroom to meet them.

For me St Jude will always be a little oasis of calm and good work in a country beset with 'challenges' and dubious NGO's that claim to want to solve them. It is a place where contented little infants flop around in the sunshine after a large cup of porridge; where hoards of uniformed school children receive good primary education and where disabled youths smile as they scoot about in wheel-chairs between classrooms and bedrooms. A truly wonderful place which I'm going back to next summer!

Tristan Stutchbury (26, UK)