It was November 2008 and I unexpectedly found myself standing in front of Amani Baby Cottage in Jinja, Uganda. A beautiful yellow and white colonial style house overlooking Lake Victoria, the long sought after source of the Nile. I had come to Jinja to be with my husband who was working at the Bujagali Hydro Project, about a half hour outside of town. Travelling and living overseas has been a large part of the last 20 or so years of my life. Both my counselling and teaching background have opened many interesting opportunities in all of the countries I have lived in and Uganda is no exception.

So there I was, standing on the front lawn of the Amani Baby Cottage, watching the hustle and bustle of orphanage life wondering what life had in store for me. The journey to create and bring 'Young Voices of the Nile' to the world was not yet born. Over a year and a half later, I am still doing volunteer work at Amani but now have the added job of promoting 'Young Voices of the Nile' within Uganda, Africa and around the world as a great way for children from all walks of life to get to know another culture and another beautiful country, as seen through the eyes of a handful of young Ugandans who, like all children, dream of a better and friendlier world.

The idea for the book came about after many conversations I had with the ‘mamas’ who work at Amani and take care of the abandoned and orphaned babies and toddlers. The ‘mamas’ told me that a big part of their salary goes to pay the extra school fees for mandatory items such as: uniforms, lunch, notebook & pencil, etc…but if unable to pay those fees their children cannot attend school.

During my volunteering months, many ‘mamas’ had to withdraw their children from school because they were unable to pay the fees. We are not talking about an enormous amount of Ugandan shillings…30,000/per term which is about $15.00CAD or 90,000Ush which is $45.00CAD for the school year. However, the reality is that the financial burden of coming up with $15.00CAD per term routinely causes children to be removed from school when the money is not available. For most workers at Amani and their families, living is a daily struggle just to cover the bare necessities of life: shelter, food, and education.

One day I asked the ‘mamas’ if they would allow their sons and daughters in P5 to P7 to write about cultural issues and personal issues that are important to them at this time in their young lives. I received a resounding ‘yes’ and from that moment on the book came alive. My goal was to give these 'young voices' a chance to have their voices heard by children all around the world.

We asked Jacinthe why she took the time to try to bring 'Young Voices of the Nile' to life? For what purpose? Why do something like this at this time in her life?

My many years of living and working in the developing world has influenced my thinking and my views about ‘our children, our most precious resources’. Seeing what I have seen in the various countries in which I have lived (Sri Lanka, Dominica, Sudan, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Uganda...), those words sound hollow, void of any real meaning that drives people to action. There is a saying that resonates deeply with me: “our children are our reflection”.

Here I am at Amani, sitting on the floor and holding a skeletal baby girl who was abandoned in a field on  a sugar cane plantation.  Her sunken eyes are saying: “Who could do such a thing to me; I am an innocent baby?" I am not here to judge the mother’s or the father’s action but to ask myself: what do I do? What am I able to do?

Am I responsible for the guardianship of this one child. When power and greed trample the health and welfare of one baby, what value does a baby’s life have? When a baby’s spirit is broken; when one child is robbed of his/her childhood because a powerful person, an adult, decided that the need for guns or for wealth comes before the child’s health and safety. When one child is raped, abandoned in some ditch with water up to his waist, what do I do? When millions (perhaps billions) of dollars aimed at improving the lives of thousands of babies and children are stolen by private individuals or worse yet, government officials charged with their welfare. What value am I putting on that one child through my inaction?

Therefore when I volunteered at Amani I remembered that I can make a small difference in a child's life by taking one small step. After working with and listening to the 'mamas' of Amani talk about the importance they place on a good education for their children, I realized there was something I could do. I could help give some of these children a chance to freely express, see and hear their own voices. It was only after I started the project that the idea to turn it into a book that might have the potential to impact theirs and other children's lives.

My hope is that 'Young Voices of the Nile' keeps reminding me and readers that children are our precious resources and they reflect what we value in life.

It took almost a whole year from the time I had the idea for this book to when it was published in March 2010. The following is a summary of the ten (10) steps that breathed life into these 'Young Voices of the Nile':

1. A meeting with the 'mamas’ whose children would be writing stories for the book was held. To kick start the creative process, several topics were suggested and a translator explained each topic and each mama received a copy of the list of topics.

2. Each child was given a pencil, color crayons, an eraser, and a booklet all in a plastic envelope.

3. Each child chose a topic either from the list provided or one of their own interest and then had 2 weeks to write and then their mothers return their written work to me at Amani. (Note: the reason for only 2 weeks was that the children were on holidays and most lived too far to travel safely alone).

4. It took another few weeks to receive all their work because some had gone back to schools in far away villages and could not hand in their work until their mother visited them.

5. After having all the stories on hand, I started reviewing them one by one. This is when I decided not to touch their ‘voices’. As a teacher , I was tempted to correct their grammar, sentence structure, expressions etc. but in the end, only made spellling corrections. Their 'voices' remained unaltered from how they were written in pencil and crayon. In rare instances when the story or parts of it were very hard to understand, I would ask the author's mother to ask her child to rewrite that part or parts.

6. I organized a day where she invited all the participants to come to Amani and work together on their stories.

7. Once each child’s story was on the computer, they were printed out and given back to the mothers so they could give them to their children and correct any local spelling or improve on their stories etc… Then the children would return their stories and were told that this was the final copy that would be going into the book.

8. By this time we had a manuscript and approached Crafty Canuck in Vancouver, Canada.

9. Between myself, Amani and Crafty Canuck, the book went through several revisions, layout changes, and eventually the final proof.

10. In March 2010, Young Voices of the Nile was published.