A report by the orphanage staff and Mrs Catherine Oreta
Jan and Truus Veldkamp recently funded the improvement of the play park, which they also originally set up. This is a heavily used and much enjoyed facility for all children who spend time at the centre.
In addition, Jan and Truus have purchased a music centre for the orphanage and a television. Together with a donated video recorder the children now have a good range of entertainment facilities. Access is rationed!
The nearly 40 children in the Village are growing up very fast and they are doing generally very well.
The children are doing very well in school, Esther Chisenga was again top of her class.
We are very happy we bought a big new pot and new washing line on which we can hang all our washing.
We had, as has now become usual, a party on St Nicholas Day. It was a very happy occasion with the children singing Zambian/Dutch St Nicholas songs at the tops of their voices!
A friend of Makeni Ecumenical Centre, Mrs. Dodd, offered to make all the preparations for Christmas presents for each child this last Christmas. Children of members of staff living within the Centre were also invited to the Christmas Party. House mother, Mrs Passmore, was Mother Christmas. She was also asked to be Mother Christmas at the end of the year parties for the whole primary school!
A positive development in this project is the introduction of the HEPS ( High Energy Protein Supply) food supplements. We approached an agency, Project Concern International, for HEPS and soya cooking oil donations and we are happy to report that these are now being received regularly. The Orphanage staff were taught how to prepare the food. The children are now eating the soya porridge every morning instead of mealie meal porridge. Happily, there will be a constant supply of HEPS, soya cooking oil and maize grain or whole wheat from now on. The expenditure for food has gone down considerably and the children’s health has improved a lot.
Closely connected with the orphanage is the Home Based Project, supporting orphans outside of the centre. We support 12 children with school fees, 4 at Secondary School and 8 at Primary School. We also supply a bag of mealie meal every month to 8 families. The requests for support are very high.
AAA Support
We have received another donation of CS$2000 from the Afirica AIDS angel project in Victoria, including a private donation of CCS$500 by a recently unemployed couple, which will partly go towards the orphanage and partly towards other deserving MEC projects in the fight against AIDS. We are very grateful to our friends in Canada for their continued and generous support.
Other friends recently sent a number of boxes with gifts, including teddy bears for the children. The Housemother, Judy Passmore, reported:
“The children were delighted with them and would not be parted from them. They slept with them. The next morning when I came to the Home, I found all the children clinging to their teddies. We have not yet decided to whom to give the rest of the teddies in the community. Say thank you also to your group ‘AIDS Angels of Africa’ for all the good and hard work and the money that they donated. Your ladies and donors are great. All the clothes are nice to wear – skirts, T-shirts, trousers, dresses, warm clothes and then football shirts. We all, even me, put on a football jersey. Thank you also for the medicines! You are so good. May you continue to work for what is good. Giving is a gift from God. Read, Roman’s 12: 6-8, Acts 22: 3-7, Corinthians 9:6 and Galatians 6:10. Thank you also for the toys and books I pray that our wonderful God will continue blessing you.”
The children themselves wrote:
Greetings in the wonderful name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. We hope God is richly blessing you. Here we are all fine. We children of St Nicholas Orphanage would like to express our hearty felt gratitude to you for the various gifts such as clothes, teddies, books, toys and many more that we received. Each one of is really overwhelmed by these special gifts. We even took photographs while having them unpacked from the boxes and receiving them per child. The toys are beautiful and very colourful. We have never seen so many toys in our lives. What can we say? The young boys, Maybin and Christopher, played and played with the cars. They could not even put them down. We have already been told by ambuya and the aunties not to leave toys all over the place but to put them back in boxes. The girls also had some soccer jerseys given to them. We shall use them when playing other games like net ball. Yours Sincerely, Bertha Kabwe, on behalf of my brothers and sisters in Christ at St Nicholas.
