Leaving your homeland, learning two completely new languages, setting up an organisation abroad, or buying a car in a foreign country. These are all major milestones, but especially so when in the late 80's you decide to stay in the middle of a Ugandan bush forever to single-handedly take care of street children. It didn't stop a missionary from Poland, Father Ryszard Józwiak.

Father Richard with boys

A boy who wanted to go to 'Amerique'

- Faza Richa! Faza Richa! - you can hear on entering the premises of a house called called CALM - Children and Life Mission Centre, situated 20 km outside Kampala, Uganda. A 7-year-old boy is shouting from behind a tree.

- If you want something, come here - father says with somewhat peremptory but still very temperate tone and smiles warmly.

Himself together with a small group of guardians created a home for kids picked from the streets of Kampala. The place - sponsored now from Distant Adoption Programme of individual Polish donors - has been established for the most disadvantaged ones: former children of the street, orphans, children threatened by violence from the closest milieu and HIV/AIDS positive. Each of the boys has a unique but similarly tragic story.

Here you can listen to a story of one of the boys from CALM, a 16-year-old Michael Kigozi:

His Ways
The idea is simple, to help street children attain vocational training as means of enhancing their technical and scientific skills and enabling them to get a decent job; a pipeline to get them back to their communities. Not only are the kids sent to school but they also have extra time filled with different activities: from soccer and volleyball to dance and drama, from farming and playing in a brass band to being a part of a group of acrobats.

On the way to the beach. Going via Kampala

Father Richard doesn't like to call them "street kids". He always underlines they are already taken from the street and now it is a question of pulling street out of them. His tactics is pretty simple: to be relational; he underlines the importance of getting to know each child individually.

After 23 years in Uganda father Richard speaks the local language, Luganda, perfectly. Without it, he admits, it would be impossible to help to listen to them and reconcile after arguments. A group of guardians is there to develops boys' talents and is responsible for their education, catering and hygiene.

'Faza Richa' over the years has gained a lot of respect here. He is like them and they want to be like him. Not many white people would be able to handle over 170 difficult children from another country. Well, the group of guardians is there to help, but there are times you need to convince everybody to an idea...

Like the one Father Richard came up with last year - to stage artistic performances with their Polish peers. 'Yes' - he said - 'We are going to bring the group of Acrobats to Poland. We are going to express our gratitude to the Poles who sponsor our education and, at the same time, we will campaign for our new school.'

I have to admit I was very skeptical - bringing a group of 15 children to Poland sounded to me like a waste of money and showing the children things they will never have. Well, it turned out I couldn't be more wrong. The success was so immense that the costs of their flights were already reimbursed after two days of their stay and the president of one of the Polish cities, Bialystok, went so far as to sponsoring the arrival of another group of - this time young dancers - this year. He justified it with a statement that he 'firmly believes in the impact that the last years' visit had on the reduction of racist behaviours in Bialystok'.

During a monthly stay the boys from CALM had chance to visit more than a dozen of Polish cities and towns, they attended a movie show at a 3D Warsaw cinema, played bowls in an amusement park, ate pizza and ice cream, took part in theatre, dancing workshops and sightseeing tours, and went for go-cart race. For the first time they went by bus, underground and tram or went up by cable car on the top of Kasprowy Wierch in Tatra Mountains (1987 m above sea level) to see a breathtaking panorama of the mountains stretches and have the first snowball battle in their life. Moreover, on the occasion of International Children Day a meeting was organized at the White House with the Polish first lady. They also took part in real TV and radio shows and gained popularity in the Polish media.

Soon, all of my doubts over whether it is right to plunge the kids into what they themselves call as 'another planet', and grasp their imagination to later on take them back to their homeland where they stay on posho and beans on daily basis - were gone. Quite surprisingly, the boys' educators observed that following the stay in Poland their motivation boosted with the majority of them performing better at school. Some of them, instead of being sent to a technical school, could go to a normal secondary, their English (and Polish) improved as they experienced its usefulness.

As I am planning my next visit to Uganda, I can’t wait to spend some more time at the Children and Life Mission.

An outcome of the dancing workshops was a short video that you can see here:

Street kid in Kampala