Christ School’s newest bunch of Scholarship Orphans showed up for their briefing on Monday. Most are Senior 1′s, freshman, but a few are older students.

Out of all the sponsored students, my heart was most taken by Amesi, a 14 year old peanut who clearly put his early childhood nutrition towards brain growth rather than body growth. He’s slightly bigger than Naomi and awfully cute. My first thought on seeing him was that he is going to get SQUASHED by the bigger boys, but so far he seems to hold his own with the right mixture of deference and humor. I’m sure it’s not an easy thing.

As part of the briefing we have our orphans fill our forms including their hobbies, career goals and biography. We send this information to sponsors so that they can know their child better and pray for them well. Another student, young Friday’s biography particularly caught my heart as I typed it up this week. His father died when we was only four; an accidental drowning while drunk. If that was not enough, his mother died a few years later due to lung cancer from highly toxic local cigarettes. In Bundibugyo, the land of improbably high mortality, having two parents die from self-abuse seems a little too much. Seems counseling will be needed for this kid.

Loreen on the other hand, lost her mother to AIDs and her father, a soldier, to malaria in Northern Ugandan where he was fighting the LRA rebels. A sweet, soft-spoken and humble girl; she is determined to continue her education and while not a genius she is certainly bright enough to make it. She’ll need boosts to her self-confidence and injections of wisdom to keep her naievety from landing her in trouble with boys.

What a great bunch; some sweet, some strong, some just scared . . . . . I feel so privileged to walk beside them for a few years and call myself their “mum”.