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Updated Friday 11th April 2003
On Wednesday 9th April Graham and Sheila returned from Tanzania together with Daniel Bujiku. The trip has been very eventful and we hope you enjoy the many photographs.
- Our most exciting news is the arrival of Daniel who is here to promote the work of Bethany and is available for talks/presentations from April 18th to the end of May. Please contact me on Graham@bethanyonline.org if you would like a list of available dates etc. (please see below for details of Daniel’s background).
- We have now 32 children ( two attending secondary school).
- We have also made contact with another organisation ‘Fonelisco’ who are working with street children in Mwanza.
- The children have also visited a local recording studio and recorded several songs.
Daniel Bujiku is 26 years old, a volunteer and a member of Bethany’s management team and he played an important part in Bethany’s reorganisation in October last year. He speaks good English, has been to secondary school and has also attended Nassa Theological college where he hopes to return one day to complete his studies. He also worked for a short time at the Tanzanian Children’s Rescue Centre. Daniel is from a big family with 6 brothers and 1 sister. His Grandfather was a witch doctor and he has interesting insights into the power the witch doctors hold over the rural population in Tanzania. He has been instrumental in providing stability at Bethany and has built up a very good ongoing relationship with the children, other team members, staff and villagers. Daniel speaks good English as well as Swahili (Tanz national language) and also the local Sukuma tribal language. Please call Graham on 01254 822767 or even better email on Graham@bethanyonline.org for more information about Daniel and a chance to meet him. We will advertise where and who Daniel will be visiting after his return from Spring Harvest on Thursday 17th April. It is hoped he will be available to visit all those churches, schools and individuals who have supported the work of Bethany over the years as well as those who want to know more about the work of Bethany. If you would like to contact Daniel directly please email Daniel at daniel@bethanyonline.org
Daniel is also preparing the ground ready for the proposed trip to the UK next year by some of the Bethany children where they like Daniel will present the work of Bethany. At present the children are practicing songs they hope to sing when they eventually visit next year. (see children’s recording below)
New Children We are pleased to tell you we have four new children staying at Bethany. They are Ntare Zacharia (male aged 7yrs), Bujimbo Zacharia (male aged 10years), Emmanuel Charles (male aged 13years) and Bugumya Kitantia (male aged 4years). Each child has a story to tell but Emmanuel’s story is slightly different as he is from Rwanda where his father was killed by the unrest there a few years ago and Emmanuel and his mother escaped to Tanzania. Sadly his mother died recently and he has no other family. He lived for a while helping local fishermen but was finally brought to Bethany by a local Pastor. When he arrived he could hardly walk as he was suffering from malnutrition. We are pleased to report that he is improving daily and is a really lovely gentle little boy and it is very touching to see him quietly pray a private prayer of thanksgiving every time he sits down to a meal. We believe that God guided this boy to us as he would surely have died if had been left to his own resources much longer.
Street Children’s Work: Whilst in Mwanza Gill Luck and Sheila met up with an organisation by the name of ‘Fonelisco’. This organisation was recently registered in February this year is supported by finance and volunteers from Sweden. We met with four of their people, Joseph and Richard (Tanzanian leaders) and two Swedish volunteers, Caroline and Eda. Caroline is the treasurer and for more information she can be contacted by email on caroline.andersson@webaid.nu
They are involved with displaced, abandoned, orphaned children in and around Mwanza. They help out in many different ways with support wherever possible. We explained the work we did and they told us of several girls they supported who would benefit from joining Bethany. We arranged for their team along with three of the street girls in most need to visit Bethany the following weekend. The three girls were Anna Mashaka (7years old), Jane Mashaka (10years old) and Jane Fredrick (12years old). The three girls enjoyed their stay at Bethany and Joseph is arranging to visit the Social Welfare Office in Mwanza this coming week to arrange their admission. You can contact Joseph in Mwanza on his mobile phone 0741416292 or write to him at P.O.Box 870, Mwanza, Tanzania. East Africa.
Children’s Recordings: On Monday 7th April 13 of the Bethany Children visited the recording studios at Bulima (about 8 kilometers away) and recorded 12 songs - some of them in English, they included the Millenium Prayer, Father we adore you, Amazing Grace, Be still and know, Be thou my vision, Father in Heaven, Oh Lord my God, Soon and very soon, To God be the glory, We are marching. Presently these songs are in their raw recording format and need mixing. We have copies of the songs on CD with the separate tracks (4-5per song) and we’re looking for someone with the equipment to mix them so that we can then copy them as stereo sound tracks which we can then put on the website or do copies on CD or cassette tape. If you can help then please contact us via email at Graham@bethanyonline.org
We are treating this recording session as a practice session to encourage the children ready for their hoped for trip to England next year.
The Bethany Team: We now have five members, Onesmo, team leader, Daniel (now in the UK), Paul (busy preparing for the building work), Feleshi (helping with the child care work) and Jane (looking after the Clinic). Gill Luck is helping facilitate the team and hopes that by the time she returns to the UK in June they will be able to manage without her.
RAF building work preparations: Paul is busy preparing for the RAF team to come in August. He has already purchased 65 bags of cement, 143 roofing sheets and had two brick moulds constructed. The day we left Paul was instructing two of the locals how to use the brick moulds. He is hoping they will be able to make 25 blocks per bag of cement and product at least 50 blocks per day. All this work is being done as per instructions passed on by Keith Pittson who is in charge of the building project. We hope to see some of the RAF group at our meeting on Saturday April 26th in Oswaldtwistle.
New Bunk beds: Brian Bancroft (UK team member) made two steel bunk beds on his last visit and on this visit Paul made the lats and headboards and Sheila varnished them. They are now proudly in the dormitories - making room for new children.
Bulima Secondary School for Rehema and Mwita: We visited the school and were made most welcome. This is a boarding school about 8km away from Bethany and both Rehema and Mwita manage to come back to Bethany most weekends. We were shown round the school on our visit and allowed to take photos. Here we show some of those photographs. The full cost for a years education which includes accommodation and food is 140,000 Tanzanian shillings (approx £90 or $140). On top of this we had to provide Mwita and Rehema with a mattress, school uniform and some exercise books. Next year we are told the fee will increase to 250,000 Tsh (approx £166 or $250). However the accommodation is very basic and the food is also basic. The children have to share bunk beds, by that I mean 4 students to one bunk bed (2 on top and 2 below). There are 85 students to a class and if you arrive late for food there is often none left. The school is looking to ‘twin’ with a school in the UK so if you’re school is interested then please contact me.
Future trips: We hope to have two trips out to Tanzania before the large RAF group go in August. They should be led by Brian Bancroft in May and Graham Pountain in June and perhaps July. Please get in touch if you are thinking about the possibility of coming along on one of these trips.
Sunday trip to Church: On Sunday the Bethany family attended Paul’s church which is approx 5km from Bethany. Sadly since there are over 30 children at Bethany they will no longer all fit in the Land Rover and so the trailer was utilised and we waved to the people as we passed by!
Problems at Bethany: It is over 6 months now since we underwent a ‘renewal’ at Bethany after the return of one UK volunteer and the resignation of our Tanzanian volunteers to start another children’s home supported by two of our other UK volunteers. Since our new team have been in place various allegations have been made against them by those who do not wish the ‘new’ Bethany to succeed. Part of our new structure is to involve more people in helping Bethany succeed. Rather than rely on individuals (who have in the past tended to work for their own self interest) we now deal directly with those we come into contact with. As part of this new communication we now meet with the village elders on a monthly basis. They are very supportive and have given us a great deal of help and advice concerning keeping in touch with what goes on at Bethany. Through this new openness and communication we have amassed a great deal of information and have built up a very clear picture of the past administration at Bethany. We now have a much clearer picture of the money which was missing from Bethany and thankfully it is less than first thought. We have done a thorough audit (end of year) and now have a figure of just over a million shillings (£666). This will be entered as ‘missing money’ in the accounts for the year ending March 31st 2003.
More photographs not included under the above headings (click here)
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