A benevolent woman is touched by the plight of Uganda’s street children. Wishing to help alleviate their need, she establishes Cornerstone Development, a rehabilitation organization for street children.
But the children hardly stay in spite of free food, accommodation and free education.
She cracked her brain exploring ways of making the children happy enough to make them stay and enjoy her freebies.
In 2000 during a visit to Makerere University in the company of the Norwegian Ambassador to Uganda, she hit upon the idea of using music and dance to lure the street children back into her rehabilitation centre.
She walked up to one of the performers in the Music Dance and Drama Choir that was entertaining the guests and requested him to help her make the distressed and stressed Former Street children stay and be happy at her home.
Milton Wabyona, the performer, accepted to offer some help although he knew he was venturing into virgin territory. Today, this has become his full time commitment – helping street children to reform through music.
He decided to create and use traditional music and folklore to rehabilitate street children, who are rejected by society.
“If your child is a problem, you (parent) will pay the price,” Wabyona says, “It is our responsibility to ensure we include street children back into our community.”
Ronald Sseruyange, a helper at Cornerstone and a former street kid, will never forget how one of the big boys dislocated his jaw as a way of introducing him to the harsh life on the street when he was barely six years old. He quit the street after 10 years in 2000 after two of his friends Alex and John, who had quit the previous year to stay at Cornerstone Development, a rehabilitation organization for street children, convinced him to join them.
He did and became an agent, to help the homes get street children because it was difficult to convince them that it would be safe. Mistrust is a street child’s first instinct of any person who says they want to help.
“I lived in Cornerstone for two years but it was a home where studying the Bible was the only activity with no bearing on a traumatized soul like mine,” Sseruyange recalls, “About six children went back to the streets yet the home had food and free education.”
In 2003, Wabyona founded his own organization Ugandan Heritage Roots (UHR). It is nine years since he last received a grant from the Norwegian Embassy and other donors to support UHR, but that has not stopped Wabyona from training over 400 youths.
Though it was not his original idea, Wabyona, who narrowly went on the street too, housed over 45 children in the beginning but currently has 15, because he depends mostly on his salary and income generated from performances.
Losing his parents at a tender age, Wabyona studied at Hoima High School without paying fees except in Senior One due to his academic excellence. However, he could not proceed to ‘A’ level; school fees was very dear and his previous school had only up to ‘O’ level. He left Hoima Town and started fishing on Lake Victoria but returned a year after due to frustration. He went into farming.
When African Village Cultural Dance Group held auditions to get traditional dancers; he participated and was selected. Unfortunately or fortunately, Wabyona was the only one who never went to school among his peers at the centre and his situation compelled management to pay his school fees till 1997 when he finished his ‘A’ levels.
Again, he was lucky to secure a government scholarship to pursue a diploma in music, dance and drama at Makerere University. While most of his peers laughed at his choice, by mid semester his lifestyle was beginning to change. He had a stint with Annet Nandujja to train her dance group – The Planets – in other traditional dances since Nandujja’s forte at that time was Kiganda dance.
He would earn Shs 20,000 per week. By the end of his course, he got a first class and was sent as an exchange student to one of the Universities in Norway to help people with disability, mental disorders, and drug addicts. It is from this centre that Wabyona says he learnt about music therapy.
“Music is not just entertainment but a discipline that can shape the human mind in the direction the composer of the music intends, “Wabyona says, “Music acts as a stimulus to other abilities, it can make you happy or sad.”
So as a care taker, he had to ensure these people lived like other human beings. Even when he returned in 2000 to pursue a Bachelor’s degree in music at Makerere, he started thinking about transforming lives in the country. This is about the time the Norwegian lady asked Wabyona to make the children in Cornerstone happy.