As Emma Bunton invites us to visit an amazing Comic Relief project in Kadama, Uganda, we witness first-hand the plight of children living in the shadow of Aids
As we approach the place we’ve been talking about for hours, the nervous energy in the truck rises palpably.
The kids we’re about to meet at the Comic Relief-sponsored project in Kadama are struggling more than anyone we know – many are infected with HIV, others have been orphaned by the disease and each one will probably eat only once today.
So when we turn off the road and are greeted with 1,000 smiling faces and a chorus of gorgeous, welcoming voices, the shock stuns us into silence.
Whatever we expected, this wasn’t it.
The children help us down from the truck, all the while singing and waving flags they’ve made especially for their guest of honour, Emma Bunton.
And after a heartbreaking welcome, where the children’s huge smiles and excited eyes almost fool us into thinking they’re OK, we start to meet them one at a time.
Brothers George and Jimmy are the first to say hello, along with their grandmother Margaret.
At first glance, the boys look around five and six. Jimmy has stunning eyes, but unlike his older brother it seems impossible to make him smile.
Looking closely at George as he hides a smile behind his hands, we see dark lesions on his skin. Part of his ears are missing. Jimmy is in fact 10 and at 12, tiny George is almost a teenager.
They were both born with HIV and received no treatment for the disease until earlier this year, when the Comic Relief-sponsored project in Kadama, Uganda, got involved.
Emma, a devoted mum to two-year-old son Beau, is visibly shaken. “I cannot believe how old they are,” she says later.
“They’re such beautiful boys and they’ve already had so much tragedy.
“I know how energetic little boys should be, so to see these gorgeous brothers so weak and ill is heartbreaking.”
The sad details of their short lives are even more moving.
“They were babies when their parents died,” explains Margaret.
“I have taken care of them since and when they got sick, they were tested for HIV.
“George’s ears became full of holes, they were almost falling off. They lived most of their lives with no treatment but are getting medication and nutritional support now thanks to the project.
“George and Jimmy can now come to meet other children around once a month at the project and go to school if they are well enough. Often they are too sick. We are afraid they might die, but we try to make things easier. Jimmy is responding well to the new drugs, but it is not working so well for George.”
A few miles from the project, crouched in the dirt outside the hut he shares with his little brothers, 15-year-old Sedulaki talks about life at the head of his household.
Orphaned at 11 after watching both his parents die from HIV, Sedulaki has been forced to grow up fast, shielding his brothers from the bitter prejudice they’ve faced as kids left behind by the disease.
“When our mother died, our uncle wouldn’t let us bury her on the land,” he recalls.
“He said her body would poison the crops. So we had to carry her for miles to bury her somewhere safe.”
With brothers Asman and Joseph at his side, softly spoken Sedulaki tells the family’s story with serious eyes and glances constantly at the others to make sure they’re OK.
“We have no family apart from each other,” he explains.
“We have a little land, a few goats and we look after ourselves.”
Until six months ago Sedulaki and his brothers were isolated, miles from the nearest village and with no support.
Now, thanks to the project, the boys have been given the chance to enrol in their local school.
“Before, we spent all our time here,” explains Sedulaki in slow, but perfect, English.
“Now we go to school and meet other children. But it makes it more difficult to get food because we have to leave for school at 7.30am.”
Like most of the other kids in their 1,500 strong primary school, the boys do not receive any food during the long days they spend there. Either they bring their own from what they manage to scrape together at home, or they go without.
While Sedulaki battles to remain strong in front of his brothers, in a rare moment without them he lets his guard down and reaches out for a way to break away from his life.
“Will you come back for me?” he pleads.
“I’d like to come to England. There is nothing here.”
After struggling to hide her emotions in front of all the children she’s met, it’s Sedulaki’s story that finally becomes too much for Emma, 33.
“He broke my heart,” she says later.
“He’s such a brave boy. He’s managed to cope with all the tragedy in his life, losing both his parents so young and being turned away by his own family. But as brave as he seems, he is only 15. No boy of his age should have so much tragedy, never mind the responsibility of having to look after little ones.”
But Jimmy, George, Sedulaki and his brothers are the lucky ones. As they sit in a cramped, hot classroom with their teacher the following day, dozens of kids stand dressed in rags at the doorstep, dying to join them.
One boy, who looks about nine-years-old, sits next to us and stares up with sad eyes, but tries his best at a smile.
He is wearing just a filthy beige shirt, and his dusty feet are covered in cuts. Through one of the teachers at the school we ask the boy his name.
He tells us he is called Samson, but also thinks that he’s only two. After years standing on the steps outside the classroom little Samson has never made it inside.
As keen as he is to learn, his parents cannot pay for his uniform or his books, and the project doesn’t have enough cash to fund every child. It has other objectives in the area which is scourged by HIV – providing support to adults already living with the disease, teaching them skills in healthcare, agriculture and business to improve their families’ lives, and teaching sex education to as many people as they can reach to curb the spread of the disease.
Red Nose Day this year raised an amazing £82.3million. More than £7.5m of that was raised by schoolchildren across the UK and another £5m, including the money for this project, came from the Department for International Development.
“Becoming a mum to Beau made me so aware of what children need,” says Emma.
“I know how little and vulnerable he is. But here I see babies not much older than him standing outside the school and on the side of the roads. “It is heartbreaking and to see it for yourself is more shocking than I’d imagined. The children here have so little, but they are so sweet and polite.
“They seem to appreciate any little thing, even a smile seems to make them happy.
“What we worry about at home makes me embarrassed now. I see what these gorgeous kids face every day, and they still manage to be so welcoming to us.
“The project does a fantastic job, and Comic Relief has played an amazing part in that. But there are so many kids still on the outside and the project needs more support to bring them in.”
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