Hello everyone and the very best and warmest greetings to you all.

Every blether has to start with a blether. It's a quiet Sunday afternoon and I'm listening to some mellow Van Morrison tunes. I had wanted to write this first blether for so long, and to be honest I was waiting for the 'right' moment, to feel settled, rested and in the mood for writing. Well, that has not happened for weeks now so I'm just going to begin, warts and all!

The main reason for these blethers is to write more freely and openly and regularly than before. I do want to share what is happening here, for lots of reasons; so you may know a bit on what my life and work here in Uganda is like, to give you some day-day impressions of Africa, to share with you about the very special group of people I work with, the street children. There is a lyric in a song I heard recently "we want to break dividing walls", and I guess thats what I would like to do. If you feel separate from me, can you imagine how separate I feel from you, and if you feel separate from street children can you imagine how separate they feel from you. There is a chasm or a wall but we can build bridges and break dividing walls. I hope to do a little of each of these in my blethers.

I need your patience and your understanding, even if you don't understand, please don't judge quickly, either myself or these children.

If anyone wants some history to my work here, it may be best to check my previous newsletters on www.marsali.co.uk Otherwise I will assume everyone knows some of my background, although I know there are many gaps, I will try and fill in the holes.

So I have been in Uganda for 6 months now! In some ways it has passed in a flash, and in others it seems like 6 long years! My days vary alot and that up/down rollercoaster has been one of the most challenging parts of being here. When I say I will share about living and working here, it seems to me that they are inextricably intertwined and I know that is not always healthy. I am in the constant process of trying to get a right balance with the huge amount of work and having a life outside of Open Door!

Yet I still feel I should start by sharing about my work. We have just had our first 'Management' meeting at Open Door, so hopefully by my next blether I will have more of the paperwork side of the ins and outs of Open Door. My brief description is that we work in 3 main areas;

1. Street outreach - this is where the work began and in many ways that is where our heart is, with the children on the streets and yet with the very real desire to see them ALL of the streets. Open Door has been on the streets of Kampala since 1996, so there are many relationships already there, so we try and build on them, and start building with the new ones that seem to come daily to the streets.

2. Transitional Rehabilitation Home - there is a huge need to meet just the very basic requirements to help these kids come of the streets, e.g shelter, clothing,food. We have 91 children at the moment, all ages from newborn to 15/16 years, both boys and girls. The estimates in Kampala are that there are more than 5,000 still on the streets, that figure saddens me deeply. These are not anonymous statistics to our team, they are children that we know individually.

3. Katwe Family Empowerment Programme - Katwe is a large urban slum area here and if anyone has seen the film 'City of Joy' set in Calcutta, it is so like that. I had the privilege of visiting Calcutta and it is both a blessing and a challenge to see with your own eyes the depth of poverty some of our brothers and sisters have to live and raise their children in. Many street children have come from such poverty, and as the team recognises that, they began to work with 'Families at Risk' to try and prevent children going onto the street. We try and help families in Micro-finance projects and Adult literacy. Another hope/plan is that we will have a health clinic there, both to help in Katwe but also for the street kids themselves.

My work as a nurse is at the rehabilitation home and that is what I will talk most about. I love the street work and my heart is with the great need in Katwe but my days are already full and busy with my kids at the home. I'm now struggling how to tell you about it. I'll tell you about the geography so you can picture something. First we have the girls and baby building, which has 2 bedrooms with 3-tall bunkbeds crammed inside for the girls, and also a baby section which has our little ones aged from newborn to 3 years. We also have a sitting-room in between where we often have our meetings. Then we go down to the boys building which also has our office in it, and a room that will hopefully be my health room very soon! Next building is a 'shack' which is our interim school, more about that later. We have a 'kitchen', which is a small brick outhouse with very poor ventilation, next down in our nursery building. Further down again we have a cow,a dog,pigs and piglets, and some chickens. We try and cultivate a bit of land, and we also have a free space for the kids to play, which the boys usually monopolise with football!

The health needs of these kids are huge and varied, when I studied tropical medicine last year I did a 2500 word essay on just that subject so it would be impossible to describe it all here. Briefly we have alot of malaria, tuberculosis, HIV, diarrhoea, respiratory infections, wounds and skin infections, and the worst dental decay in the world! My day-day is mostly taken up with seeing who is sick and assessing what I need to do, can I treat them at the home, do I have the right medicines, do they need hospital today or tomorrow, or do I need to find a specialist Doctor? In amongst all these questions is time and energy, and also whether our pick-up vehicle is available, working, has petrol or can get back up the hill if it's the rainy season! Before I paint a bleak picture of problems, I have to say when I arrive there in the morning I love to see my children, and they run and greet me and tug each other for a finger or some clothing to grasp, and that's not just the wee ones, it's also our 'tough' teenagers too! My growing relationships with these children is just great, I love to see them off the streets, settling physically and emotionally, and smiling again. These children have each had unimaginable lives to most of us. Life at Open Door is not perfect by any means but we are trying, and that 'trying' can be the most draining experience of my life!

OK, back to day-day. I stay in a 2 bedroomed flat with a 60 year old AIM American missionary called Norma. For those who did not hear about my initial accommodation, will 'Vermin Olympics' suffice to describe it? Therefore I am very thankful for a clean room to myself, it helps hugely to come home here at the end of the day. Unfortunately we have dogs around here that can bark ALL night, and the dreaded mosquitoes, and then the Muslims and cockerels start their chorus at 5am!

This blether is already long so I think I should stop blethering until the next instalment. Well, I'm glad I've started it, I'm cautious to reread it, but I will send it out 'warts and all'.

MUCH LOVE TO EACH OF YOU AND GOD BLESS YOU RICHLY

MARSALI