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Photos from the January Trip (over 300) click on the various headings
New children (8pics), The visiting team (65pics), Villagers (105pics)
Inividual children (108pics), Groups of children (19pics), Activities (9pics)
Dining room (17pics), Singing (45pics), Awards (9pics), Letters (70pics)
January Trip: Dave, Duxbury, Simon Earnshaw, Joanna Pellet, Daniel Hughes and Graham Pountain returned to the Uk on Wednesday Feb 1st. Jo was occupied with doing a ‘risk assessment’ for a proposed trip in July-August for members of a young people’s group from St. James’s Church, Clitheroe. Both Jo and Daniel helped the children with their English, letter writing, lessons, games and singing. Daniel also donated a small but effective video projector together with an amplifier and speaker. The children will now be able to watch a video every Friday and Saturday nights 7.30pm to 9.00pm. Dave Duxbury was on his third visit to Bethany and this time he helped with various plumbing problems (mainly leaks) and also fitted a new shower, wash basin and WC. Simon (dentist) spent a week with us and in that time checked all the children’s teeth as well as helping with the rewiring before he left to assist at Ian Wilson’s dental practice in Mwanza. Click here to see the members of the team.
Pen pals group: This group goes from strength to strength. Over 50 letters have been received from all over the world during the past two months. Novembers visiting team had two long afternoon sessions helping the children reply to their new friends.
Click the following to see pics; Letters received etc,
Click here to see the web site and apply to join.
Sponsorship website: Shana who runs our penpals web site has also started a web site dedicated to helping those who want to know more about sponsorship.
Click here to join the sponsorship web site.
FAMINE: For the first time since the start of Bethany in 1991 we have felt we needed to respond to the famine which is taking hold in the area. During the last rainy season no rain fell and the start of this rainy season has seen a few short showers insufficient to produce sustained growth. Many of the surrounding villagers are now in a desperate plight, some just drinking a watery porridge made from maize once a day and drifting in and out of sleep as they have no energy and little hope of survival without help. It is sometimes difficult to appreciate how these people live. There are no jobs and they survive by eating what they grow. If they are unable to grow anything then they have neither food nor crops to sell to buy other needs. Bethany of course exists from the generosity of those people back in the UK and so to a great extent is unaffected by the drought as we buy most of our food. However, as the children all know off by heart the first part of Bethany’s aims and objectives states: Bethany’s aim is to help the most underprivileged, deprived and vulnerable members of society. We are therefore duty bound to help and have started a process whereby we hope to help up to two hundred of the most vulnerable villagers. Only those who have no job, no cattle and no income of any kind will be eligible. We have already started to identify those in the greatest need which are often older women who are sometimes being looked after by their grandchildren (their parents often having died). Paulo, a member of the Tanzanian team who has lived in the village all his life is proving a great help along with the older children who will also help delivering the food. The children have also contributed their own food giving up Sunday’s main evening meal so that the food saved could be distributed. We have already purchased 68 bags of maize (each weighing 120kilos gross, 100 kilos de-husked) and have been told that 4kilos of de husked maize should last each person one week. We have realised that even if the rains came tomorrow then it will still be several weeks before the crops have grown enough to be harvested. Presently each sack of maize cost £18 which is enough to feed 25 people for one week. We are hoping that supporters will help fund this appeal so as not to affect the work we are doing with our children. We feel that we may have to spend up to £2,500 on food before the situation is back to normal. If you would like to help fund our initiative we would be so very grateful. We can now accept donations in a variety of ways including by credit card and also by paypal. Click here to go to our supporters page. We have also been out in the village taking photos and also to the lakeshore which has seen an explosion of activity as the villagers congregate hoping to barter firewood for fish.
Mkula Orphanage: This Children’s home is helped by Ruth Kingsnorth who also supports Bethany. Having told Ruth about the famine she has donated £50 (from funds she has been collecting). We contacted the Bethany Tanz team who have emailed the following: “Dear Graham I hope that you are fine. Every body is ok at Bethany, but the condition in the village still very bad no rainfall at all people still suffering of famine . I got the message from Eliada she told me about 100,000/= which had been donated by Ruth kingsnorth to support Mkula children’s home. I bought three sacks of maize for 107,100/= which cost 35,700/= each and I and Paul took them to Mkula. I took several photos some had been attached on these email. Thanks, greeting to the UK team and we continue to pray for you all.
Click here to see the pics of 3 sacks of maize being delivered to Mkula Orphanage.
Click here to see pictures of the village and lake shore
New children: 4 new children joined Bethany in January 2006 bringing the total number to 86
Winifrida Mathayo (8yrs) born on 10th of October 1997 has been admitted to Bethany, Her father died recently but her mother is alive but unable to look after her.
Jesca James (13yrs) born on the 14th February 1992. Jesca’s father died in 2003 and her mother last year.
Twin Brothers Kulwa and Dotto Malomele (11yrs) born on the 17th March 1994. Both mother and father have died and they were being looked after their elderly grandfather until recently when he could no longer cope. Click here to see our new children
Children’s health: We are pleased to report that most of our children are well at present with only a few suffering from malaria and other common illnesses. We hope to be able to eventually provide mossy nets for the new girls dorm when we have worked out the most cost effective way of doing this.
Children’s singing: The children practice almost every afternoon after school. They have been to record some of the songs they sing in English at the local recording studio at a cost of £80 (sponsored seperately). Click here to see the pics.
Click here for songs (audio) download,
Click here for video download.
Children’s awards: Eliada has introduced awards for a variety of achievements for such things as good behaviour and hard work. Click here to see the pics of our first batch of award winners
Proposed New School: The Tanzanian team have started the conversion of our old clinic into three classrooms which will be the start towards eventually providing full time education.
New Girls Dorm: Working well.
Crop growing: No rain.
Return trip to England: No further progress. We are still looking for FREE or nearly free accommodation for up to 30 children (including 3 adults) for 6 weeks through September and into the first two weeks of October. If there is anyone out there who knows of, or who owns a very large house or hotel/guest house and would consider the possibility of us using it then please let us know. It would need to be around the Blackburn area. email here.
Monthly Supporters / Enquirers Meetings: The dates for the next three meetings which are all on Saturdays and are: 11th March, 1st April and the 6th May 2006. They are held at the Hope Centre, Ossy. 10am-noon. Everyone welcome. (click here for details)
Future trips -----------------------------
February- March Trip: Both David Borland and Graham Pountain were booked to go on this trip. Sadly however David has suffered a heart attack and is presently in hospital - he needs our prayers for a full recovery.
Easter trip: 8th to 21st April. There are two groups going, Group 1: Ian Kelly (joinery lecturer), Gary Nolan (joinery lecturer), John Brindle (joinery lecturer), Dave Thomas (plumbing lecturer) and Graham Pountain. Group two: Graham and Elaine Earnshaw, Rebecca Smith (administrator), Wendy Whitaker (teaching assistant) and Sarah Duerden (dental hygienist).
May June trip: Nothing yet booked (email me if you want to go)
July 2nd to 19th trip: Eddie Jeffery (UK team) is leading this trip and there is still time to book. Also David Borland (UK team) is hoping to go.
July 24th to August 8th trip. Youth groups from St. James, Clitheroe and Christ Church, Accrington are hoping to go on this trip.
No further trips are planned due to the possibility of some of the children visiting Sept - Oct.
Staff changes: Tanz team - none, UK team - none
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Sponsorship - Finance: As ever - finance is an ongoing concern. Whilst there has been a lot of interest in our sponsorship program few have actually converted that interest into action. In short of the 86 children only 9 are fully sponsored (by 6 donors). A further 11 are partly sponsored leaving 66 children with no support. The good news is that the other 17 regular donators who give a total of about £600 per month between them have for the most part indicated that they are happy to continue to donate for the ongoing development of Bethany. We are grateful for many one off donations which appear every month from a variety of individuals and organisations. Last month we received a donation to buy two more bunk beds + clothes etc.
To those not yet making regular donations we hope you will consider sponsoring or
co-sponsoring one of our children. To learn more about sponsorship we have produced a 4 page Question and Answer sheet (click here).
Supporting Bethany
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Money boxes: As you can see our total collected from the money boxes is over £1021. We have a few boxes yet to open and so the total will be more than this by the end of January.
Publicity cards: We still have the postcard size flyers (financed by separate sponsorship). These are now available and are ideal to give to everyone (e.g. school children, congregations etc etc.) They are ideal in the sense that they advertise the web site address and show some photos of our children. Please E-mail me with how many you would like and I will either post them or bring them to you. Click here to see the cards.
Pen pals group: Going from strength to strength
Click here to see the web site and apply to join.
Proposed work
1) Refurbishment of the old dormitory not yet started.
2) Provision of accommodation for volunteers (visiting and permanent) and staff. Not yet started
3) New School. As mentioned above we have plans to convert our clinic to provide 3 classrooms. We hope this will be the start with more classrooms to follow.
Live Link: It is now possible for us to arrange a phone link (prearranged) whereby the children at Bethany could answer questions (in English) over the phone from children in the UK. The cost of the phone call using a special prefix number is 15p per minute. This may be suitable for all sorts of groups. Please remember that only the older children can speak English and we would need to have the questions beforehand. The day and time would have to be prearranged. (We can arrange this only because recently mobile phone coverage has been extended to cover our area and the Bethany team now have cheap mobile phones). We had applied for a ‘land line’ over ten years ago and now with the advent of mobile phone coverage it is unlikely that provision of land lines other than in the cities will be pursued.
Satellite Internet: No further news
Photo Album: Click here for details.
Possible bore hole: No further news.
Mains Power: No news, no change. Still patiently waiting
OTHER NEWS
And Finally: Thank you so much for being interested enough in our work to be reading this. Even more if by your donation you have made this work possible.
N.B. (Please note that this web site is accessible world wide and so we are very careful to only publish the bare facts as truthfully as possible. There are often circumstances upon which decisions have been made which we feel unable to publish. Please contact us directly if you need to know more)
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