Dear all
The construction work is going on in full speed
Two of our children has got pox their in leave all other children are OK.
Its very hot at day time and last night is cold. we have send one boy with double club feet for operation in the Zibontory flooding Hospital run by an NGO as a test one we have lot of children with club-feet.
Lots of love from your children
My recent visit to Ali and our children was extremely happy and relaxed. The weather was perfect – hot during the day, cool at night. Everyone was waiting for me to arrive and throw the first trowel of cement into the first six foot hole for the first steel pillar for the new tailoring building.
That was the easy part. This new building was to be sited on the larger of our two ponds, filled in with sand last year. The eight outer pillars presented no problems – up in no time. Ali knew the internal pillars would need deeper holes, being over the middle of the pond. But nobody expected the water to come in so resolutely. Holes were dug, water was pumped out and carried out in buckets, sides of the holes were shored up with specially constructed walls – I have never seen men, boys and girls work so hard. Eventually it was decided to remove all the sand from the middle of the site, carrying it on heads to the lower pond which had been drained. This was happening on my last morning and I had a depressing vision of leaving everyone with this mammoth task, coming back to London and asking Ali daily on the phone if they had managed to hit terra firma. Then we looked at the dry land between the proposed site and the existing old buildings, decided to measure it and found it was exactly wide enough to use one row of pillars and move the building across. This has many advantages – fewer foundations, and we might even dispense with an internal staircase, since access to the first floor rooms for married staff can be from the roof of the adjacent old building. In addition, the infilled land will make a wonderful extra vegetable garden.
Because we had so much building work, there was no time for our traditional picnic – disappointing for the children but a reprieve for the last of the ducks which had been destined for our main course! We did have one full day out, but with only a handful of the children representing each disability. This was what Ali calls his awareness programme, when we visit a school or college in the hope of educating them in the hope that fewer will give birth to children with disability. Ali speaks for well over an hour and never loses the audience’s full attention. This time we visited a high school in the south of the island, and hope to spread the word to parents of other disabled children in the region. I was delighted, in any case, to welcome three new boys in as many days while I was there, and several other children look as if they will join us. We often need an older sibling or parent to stay until they are settled in, which we are more than happy to fund.
We now have an excellent playground for the children in front of the hostel, and it was a joy to watch all the children, young and old, play games of every kind after the last lessons of the day. Together with the work they are doing on the foundations, they are getting plenty of exercise!
The children also thoroughly enjoy Valumia, where all the vegetables have flourished since the floods of last October. Our land at Valumia is a magical, beautiful and peaceful place especially now that the boundary resembles a building site! We also love visiting Supari Bagan, our new plot of land a ten minute walk from the boundary where, in due course, we will build our wood and metal workshops.
It was a joy to see Ali, the staff and all the children so well and so happy! I have come back full of faith in our project, only sad that it will be more than eight months until I return.
Thank you all once again for your support,
Children has get 3rd set of warm cloth in this winter its very cold
now in Bhola. Its impossible to walk with out shoe socks are cold too
in the building. small children has 4 blankets and sleeping together
but at night one or two is on them other is you know how it is.
Children are getting some vitamin tablet so no one is sick or catch
cold thanks to Almighty and all of you are helping to the children.
The last cloth was send by Zakirvhbi from Dhaka.
Children are working in the Velumia field for growing vegetable its
very good that their getting very good training so they can grow
themselves in home in future.
Lots of love from your children
Your children are also with thousands of children in the field at the day of Victory and get prize
I went to Bhola on 15th November. I had made the mistake of arriving just before Eid, which meant chaotic travel arrangements – I will cast a veil over my journey from Dhaka to Bhola – and rather a lot of dead cow. But much more disappointing was the fact that there was no school my first week and many children chose to go home after Eid. Although this meant I had time for all the necessary meetings with staff and fellow Bangladeshi trustees, I did miss the children until most of them returned before I left.
Bottled gas ran out on the island, so I suggested to Ali we take the remaining children and some staff to the district town of Barisal, 37km away on the mainland as the crow flies. Few of them had ever been there, so it was an exciting excursion which turned into a long day for some. All went well on the outward journey – around 2 hours with the car on a ferry, then a short drive over to the next ferry which takes 20 minutes to Barisal. We bought bottles of gas, had lunch with Ali’s relations and then went to the children’s park. Unfortunately we then missed the first ferry, arriving at 5.30 to see the next one disappearing towards Bhola Island and to get the news that it would not be back until 10 p.m. I had a slight sense of humour failure, but luckily Ali agreed that I and the smaller children plus a couple of staff would take a speedboat to the island. We were home by 7.30 but poor Ali and the others didn’t get arrive until 3.45 a.m! The water levels were so low in the river, the ferry didn’t return until after midnight.
We had our usual wonderful picnic at Valumia last Friday. This involves taking sacks of rice, all food and cooking utensils in the tractor trailer – quite a production. During the day the boys cut down a large tree and the wood was piled onto the trailer, along with children and cooking utensils, for the return journey. We girls of course did our ladylike gardening, weeding the newly planted vegetables which, we hope, will survive any weather now.
On Saturday we had a sports day which was huge fun. Ali really is a star at organizing all the competitions. Many of them took place on the sand laid where the tailoring building will go. This gave us the idea of putting sand on the land behind the boundary, where we have already filled in a pond, so that the children can use it as a playground while builders are at work.
The children are all well and happy. A couple of teachers have left and we are looking for replacements, but the number of small children hasn’t increased since last time I was there, so they seem to be able to cope. We have now promoted the teenage children to the role of ‘helper’: each will receive a small amount of money each month and each has been given an area of responsibility. They continue, of course, with their further education of tailoring for the girls, woodwork and metal work for the boys. Once we have built the tailoring building, above which will be accommodation for married staff, we will be looking forward to building workshops on our beautiful new land. It is a ten minute walk away and has been called Supari Bagan, which means Nut Garden. The nuts have already been harvested and will be sold when the price is high…
My bangla and sign language improve very slowly! We all have fun teaching me..
