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Photos from the November trip (over 600)
Trip to Bunda via the Serengeti (27 pics), Cooking and eating (30 pics),
Making the curtains (13 pics), New dresses for the new girls (2 pics)
Farming (37 pics), The flight (39 pics), Groups of Children (9 pics)
Individual Children (51 pics), Letters received (58 pics), Letter writing (42 pics)
Letters sent (14 pics), Microscope (2 pics), New Girls (24 pics), Playing ( 32 pics)
Rain (3 pics), Refurbishment (26 pics), Singing (25 pics), Sunrises (24 pics),
Views - scenery (15 pics), Views - buildings (15 pics), Washing (16 pics).
Volunteer - visitors (73 pics). Inside the new Hope dormitory (35 pics)
The November trip: On November 29th the following visitors returned from their visit to Bethany: David Borland, Rebecca Smith, Jemma Turner, Jenny Ryan, Alison Davies and Graham Pountain
Graham spent the first couple of days helping Onesmo re-wire the refurbished accommodation block which was once part of the old kitchen, store room and dining room. We have had to replace the roof damaged by 100’s of bats. Much of the roof timbers were damaged beyond repair and had to be replaced. This time we introduced a few translucent roof sheets to allow light into the roof space to deter the bats from roosting there again. So far it seems to be working and the awful smell has also gone! Daniel and Eliada have moved into one of the rooms as temporary accommodation whilst other rooms are refurbished. Click here to see pics of the refurbishment.
David battled with the budget once again and now feels more confident that everyone has a better understanding of how it should work. David also helped with drawing up plans for further refurbishment of the old dorm now used by the boys and also the Clinic building.
Alison, Jenny, Jemma and Rebecca were involved with the children helping them with their English, bible studies, games, drama, singing and letter writing. They also started making 30 pairs of curtains with the help of a new sewing machine that refused to work!
Click the following to see the pics: Volunteer - visitors, Bunda trip, curtain making,
New children Following Paulina’s arrival last visit 11 more girls have since joined us making 12 new girls in all. They are:
Paskazia Evarist (11yrs), Prisca Evarist (6yrs), Christina Evarist (8yrs),
Njire (Grace) Robert (10yrs), Stella Magulyati !10yrs), Mpelwa Juma (10yrs)
Balole Samson (8yrs), Lucy Juma (7yrs), Paulina Wambula (7yrs),
Luja Maragu (9yrs), Anna Samson (5yrs), Nkamba Exekiel (10yrs)
Notes: 9 girls are from local villages, Paulina is from Musoma, Several sets of sisters as follows:
Paskazia, Prisca and Christina all sisters. Mpelwa and Lucy are sisters. Anna and Balole are sisters. Details about the girls will be posted on the ‘meet the children’ page in the near future. Click here to see pictures of the new girls.
(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)
Village Primary School: All the children are doing well and working hard supplemented by extra education provided by Bethany after school
Secondary Education: Our five children at Bulima secondary boarding school have finished their exams and are now on holiday until January 2006. They are helping with the chores at Bethany including the cleaning cooking and field work (growing crops etc) and also in helping the younger children who are still at primary school with their studies.
Click the following to see pics of children: farming, letter writing, singing, playing, washing
Proposed New School: We are still looking at the best way of providing extra education at Bethany and have some new ideas which we are discussing with several parties. If you are a teacher and would like to give up a year to teach English to our children then please contact us.
Health: All our children are well at the moment with only the usual coughs, colds and the odd case of malaria.
New Microscope: Eddie Marshall has been in touch with a Janet Marshall (no relation) from the Manchester Cytology Centre Laboratory, Manchester Royal Infirmary who have donated a beautiful used microscope which the staff at Bethany say is so much better than the one they were using. Thanks to Eddie and Janet and the Manchester Cytology Centre. Click here to see the pics
Bethany Choir: Still singing and practicing hard! We have some video the children practicing. Click here to go to the down load page. The songs now include: ‘In the jungle the lion sleeps tonight’, ‘Blessed assurance’. ‘I the Lord of sea and Sky’, ‘Lord I lift you name on high’, ‘Any dream will do’. So far we only have amatuer video of the children practicing but hope to be able to have the songs in MP3 format early next year. Click here to see pics of the children singing.
New Girls Dorm: We now have 39 girls in the new dorm as well as some of the smaller boys. We also have two full time female carers
Click here to see pictures of the girls by their beds,
Click here to see a 5 min video tour of the dormitory
Crop growing: Mr Matiku our project’s manager has a plan of cultivating 5 acres of land to grow maize and beans during the present rainy season. He intends hiring a tractor to do this work and then the children would have sow the seeds, keep the land weeded, look after the crop and also bring in the harvest next March. The cost of the project is £180
Return trip to England: The children are all very keen to come on a second visit to England and we have provisionally looked at the possibility of bringing over 24 of the children. They are already practicing singing English songs and dramas. Other then the cost of the trip our second biggest problem is 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.
Next Meeting: Saturday 7th January 2006, Hope Centre, Ossy. 10am-noon. Everyone welcome.
January Trip: Not yet planned. If you wish to be considered please apply ( email )
Staff changes: Tanz team - none, UK team - none
Sponsorship - Finance: As we have 12 more children we have had to increase the budget from £2,000 per month to £2,200 per month (82 children in total). This does not include school fees or school uniforms and any capital expenditure or major repairs. Our regular giving is still under £700 per month, so the rest is made up from non regular giving by individuals, schools, churches etc. We know many people are supporting other charities so are grateful for what we do receive and hope we never reach a position that would mean that we had to cut back on the number of children we can support.
Sponsorship, Supporting Bethany.
Money boxes: As you can see our total collected from the money boxes as we publish this Nov update is over £841.
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: 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, Letter writing, Letters ready to send
Click here to see the web site and apply to join.
Proposed work
1) Refurbishment of the old dormitory which housed both the girls and the boys but will shortly only accommodate the boys as the girls move into their new dormitory. This old building needs reorganising to make it more usable. We intend to provide more windows, new interior design to give a central corridor with rooms off either side. The building will need its roof redesigned which will need some new timber work and roofing sheets as well as new interior walls and doors etc. We hope to do this work in several phases.
2) Provision of accommodation for volunteers (visiting and permanent) and staff. We already have plans drawn up some years ago which were put on hold whilst we completed the new kitchen and dining room and the new girls dormitory.
3) New School. We are looking at various plans for the building work but have no clear picture yet as to what would be best.
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.
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