Photographs taken by Dinah in February

Dinah's report on her visit to Bhola

Dear friends, I returned last week from possibly my best ever visit to our children. I’d forgotten how rewarding it is to go alone – not that I would want to deter any of you from coming with me, but it is easier to bond with children and staff on one’s own. Ali and the children were in great form, and relishing the improvement in both the political situation and the weather. Almost the first thing I did was to travel to Valumia in the wonderful auto-rickshaw, with all the small boys. Valumia is flourishing, with lots of vegetables, fruit and fish. I was able to authorize the building of an access road so that we can get vehicles onto the land, and this is well under way – I myself helped pass 2000 bricks from the trolley to the land where the road is taking shape. As you know, it has been difficult to travel during the past year but Bangladesh seems to have calmed down since the election. I had told Ali I wanted as many awareness programmes as possible, and he had arranged three in primary and high schools. These are not only to instruct the young on how to reduce the danger of giving birth to disabled children, they are also to find new children who could benefit from coming to live with us. At present we have only 44 children aged between 6 and 13, and we have space to double that number. An Australian friend had discovered Fred Hyde, a truly remarkable man from Brisbane who – aged 95 – spends six months each year in Bhola. He first went out in 1980 to run an orphanage of 100 boys in the south of the island. Since then, in the last 20 years, he has built 41 schools. Last summer we talked on the telephone and briefly discussed the possibility of working together but soon realized this would not be an option. Luckily, though, Fred was in Bhola and agreed to summon the head teachers of all his schools, along with staff from the orphanage, to meet Ali and some of our disabled children. Fred, bless his heart, had told me he’d only heard of about 3 disabled children in the years he’d been in Bhola and figured his part of the island was healthier than ours. It came as a surprise to him that all his head teachers knew of at least one child who could benefit from our care. These schools are all south of Bhola’s largest town, Char Fassion, and therefore over 100 kms from us, so it was good to have introductions to so many schools in a part of the country Ali does not know well. Ali and I took a busload of teenagers, as well as Sima and Sonali, to Barisal, to visit Valerie Taylor’s local Centre for the Rehabilitation of the Paralized, which opened last July. It is an impressive setup and we were treated royally. Our older children go to CRP in Dhaka for training but we hope, once the Barisal centre has accommodation, they might start in Barisal and move on to Dhaka. I always worry about our teenage girls going from tiny, peaceful Bhola to the enormous and busy Dhaka, although Ali always makes sure there are at least three going together. Our day in Barisal was a joy. We lunched, as usual, with Ali’s nephew’s family and I was amazed to see Ali enveloped in a bear hug on arrival by a tall and beautiful woman. Turned out to be his older sister, of whom I’d never heard! Since we had no small children, we were spared the childrens’ park and went straight back to the ferry – over a wonderful new bridge so there is only one ferry involved, rather than the previous two. Having said that, it turned out the ferrymaster had gone home to rest, deciding there were insufficient vehicles to warrant running the ferry, so we still had over two hours to wait before leaving the mainland! However as I said to Ali, the bonus was we caught the sun setting on the river and still got home in good time. All the children seem to enjoy the primary school. The small children have a couple of hours each morning, the older ones go from 12 till 1.30 and again from 2 until 3.30. I always enjoy walking the little ones to school. All other lessons at home seem to be going well, although our busy schedule interfered with most of Ali’s famous and noisy lip reading classes. Judging by the performance our three best lip readers put on at awareness programmes, however, Ali does appear to have worked miracles with many of the deaf children in the last year. Sima’s physiotherapy, assisted by the blind girls Rozina and Supia, is thriving. She has a number of outpatients, although it is difficult to persuade mothers that regular visits are essential. At home, Sima gives two sessions a day to those in need and the two small CP children, Nayan and Ruma, have made huge improvements since last year. They are two of my very special children, always happy and smiling. I was pleased to see that the 6.30a.m. exercises, which I had introduced a year ago, are still taking place and Ali said they are especially important now: March 26 is Independence Day and our children always shine in the parade! Our own babies are growing fast – Shathi’s Nabanita (Ripa) is over three but is being overtaken by Monira’s little boy Kador at eighteen months. Ali told me the children of deaf mothers are usually late talkers, but Kador has definitely bucked that trend! We decided it was time for these two mothers to return to work so we asked them to do the cooking three times a week, freeing the teachers to teach. I suggested whichever was not working could look after both children. After initial rebellion, they agreed to do this and everyone seems happy with the arrangement. I celebrated my birthday with the children. I bought an enormous cake and ice cream for 70. Asma and the girls were up late making decorations and a fantastic montage on the white board. I was dressed in a beautiful sari belonging to Surma. There was lots of singing and dancing, and it was deemed to be the best party ever. I’ve certainly not had a birthday party like it – the only thing missing was the champagne! We had our traditional picnic at Valumia, combining it with catching all our fish. All the men and boys, and a few of the girls, spent several hours trawling a net up and down the pond, while the girls cleaned and gutted the harvest. It was a long, wet and messy morning and I was happy to sit in the shade with my kindle for much of it! We had our customary drawing competition, with prizes for the best small boy and girl and the best older boy and girl. I always hope for another little masterpiece such as Tasnur’s picture several years ago, which became our Christmas card. This year there are two possible contenders, from Hassan and Salma – I need to consult with fellow trustees but hope to have another Bhola’s Children card for next Christmas. Watch this space! It is always hard to leave the children, but they are already looking forward to seeing Anne and Simon in April. Meanwhile I am pleased with progress on the business side of the operation and hope it will not be too long before our excellent committee in Bangladesh find a deputy manager to relieve Ali of some of the work and responsibility. Please keep your fingers crossed for us in this endeavour.

A worrying message from Alibhai

Dear all, > > Plitical situation is very bad, Police,Bangladesh Rifels Bouder > guard, Army, Navy force are in the fields, on the road in the river. > We don't know what will happen today. 20 children are at School now > other is at home. > > All the food price are gone high. So cold we, can not go out, one of > our friends son 18 month is died for cold sicknes, in the house can't > walk with out shoue, children non't have socks, not good worm cloth > too. The nigt is very cold at the day is very fogi can not see the > sun. > > So you know what is going on in Bangladesh. We needs medicine for cold > and the sicknes from cold. The children are in the boundray are doing > well. > > Lots of love from your children > > Alibhai >

Freda's first visit to Bangladesh

My first impressions of Bangladesh are of a busy, frantic industrious and wonderful country. To travel through Dhaka is taking your life in your hands as your little 3-wheel car competes with pedal rickshaws, buses, smart motorcars and very ancient buses. The purpose of my trip was to visit Bhola’s Children’s and it is exactly as Dinah says - it is a very special place. Because Dinah broke a bone in her foot two weeks before we were due to travel there together, I went with Sandy and then spent some time alone with Ali and the children. The children are so happy, busy, independent and very friendly. There are such a happy family supporting each other, just the way it was planned by Ali, the Founder. Ali has a superb way with the children, they will be loud and boisterous one minute and a look and sign from Ali and they are as quiet as mice. At the moment they are deaf, mentally retarded and children with cerebral palsy (CP) living in the home and all are attending the local school for a couple of hours each day. They get extra tuition in the home, the deaf have sign and lip reading classes and the CP children have physiotherapy according to their needs. The children are so eager to communicate and it is so much easier to learn sign language than Bangla! Many of the older children from the home have now got jobs in Dhaka and are leading independent lives. These are children who were discarded by their families as being useless. It is thanks to the hard work of Ali and his team, and of course the support of our many donors, that these children are now independent and send money back to Ali to save for their future. Sadly the political situation was no better and our plans to get to and from Bhola had to be changed to fit in with the hartals (the political strikes). On the island we just stayed within the Boundary (the home) and we were very safe from trouble. We did venture out on a couple of occasions. We walked part of the way to Valumia, to visit the farm where some of the crops had been planted, the rest had to wait until the water dried up after the rainy season. It is wonderful the way the home grows much of its own food. I was impressed by Ali’s planning, the way he watches the weather in the Himalayas and northern India and when heavy rains are predicated, he knows there will be flooding in Bangladesh and the rice and potato prices will increase. So he immediately buys in stores cheaply to feed his large family. I was very impressed with the very busy tailoring department run by Asma. During the time we were there she made over 40 outfits, one for each of the children. It is a Muslim tradition that everyone gets a set of new clothes at the celebration of Eid-ul Fitr. Many of the older girls learn dressmaking skills and even the blind girls learn embroidery with the help of glue, which outlines the pattern. Thanks to the wonderful support for a recent appeal to buy a battery-powered vehicle, Ali bought this magnificent car. It will be so useful to transport the children and collect shopping. The battery can be charged overnight in the boundary. Soon after we arrived Ali, Sandy and I set off into town to collect it but, in true Bangla fashion, the battery had not been charged ! After a long wait standing at the side of the road, Ali put Sandy and me into a bicycle rickshaw and eventually drove our car home. Unfortunately, due to the hartals, I myself wasn’t able to ride in it but Ali reports they have driven it to Valumia as well as Bhola town, - full of children, needless to say! Many thanks to all those who financed the rickshaw on which all your names have been painted.

Visit to Bhola February - March 2013

Although it was headline news there, few of you will have heard about the unrest in Bangladesh. Death sentences were imposed on war criminals from 42 years ago (War of Independence). There was rioting on the streets of most major cities, even the burning of tyres outside the boundary, and constant hartals. All this made our trip more difficult than usual, but Peter and I achieved much of what was on our agenda and it was lovely to be with the children. All the children now go to school: classes 1 and 2 from 9.30 to 11.30, class 3 late morning and again after lunch. The English teacher comes every day, and Ali continues his very successful lipreading classes. The deaf children have taken to ‘speaking’ with enthusiasm and are now very noisy. Sima mother of CP child Sonali has been taken off teaching duties and is in charge of physiotherapy. There are at least 8 resident children and teenagers with CP or other balance and mobility problems, not to mention outpatients. Sima, assisted by Supia and Rozina, is giving morning and evening treatment. We now have a lovely large physio room accommodating equipment. Valumia is flourishing, although we will yet again have little surplus produce to sell, We made fewer visits than usual because of the hartals. We did, however, manage a couple of awareness programmes (again inviting parents of children with disability) and Ali has had another since we left, so the number of school children continues to rise. Because of the hartals, we had to take bicycle rickshaws instead of the car – no vehicles allowed on roads between dawn and dusk. We discovered, to our joy, that there are now battery-powered rickshaws on the island and our dream is to get one. Petrol is expensive and there are so many journeys, into Bhola to collect rice or potatoes, over to Valumia to bring back vegetables, for which a powered rickshaw would be ideal, cost nothing and available for any of the men to ride. We are hoping that there might soon be a little cart, rather than a two-seater rickshaw. We were given an estimate of around £550 and so far we have received £120 – so please do consider contributing to our rickshaw fund! We could put all donors’ names on the sides! Now that our other car driver Ronazid has left us, the tractor has come into its own. Montu is able to drive it, so our departure for the ghat was quite a merry party: nearly all the children and staff, together with our luggage, Peter and I on comfortable chairs, set off up the road followed by three friendly policemen who had been detailed to keep an eye on the children during the unrest! They all love playing with the children and I think they will be sad when life returns to normal. No sadness from me, however: I suspect I will not be returning until after the election, when with luck things will settle down.

The weather was terrible when I arrived in Bhola. The rains had been late, and we were still getting downpours. On my second night there was a mighty storm in the south of the island – 31 dead and a thousand fishermen lost at sea, although I understand 700 of them were rescued. We felt nothing at our end of the island, and our only casualty was the television lines. Since I depend heavily on Al Juzeera for my sanity when I go to Bhola alone, I was rather fed up until the aerials were mended!

Once the rain stopped, it became extremely hot and humid, and the third floor was like an oven under the flat roof. Fans simply moved hot air around, and the nights were not great. We may have to invest in a couple of small air conditioners for us visitors.

The disappointing news is that Chandan Cruze, the manager of whom we had such high hopes, is not right for the job. Apart from the fact that he can’t drink the water in Bhola and appears to dislike the island, he really does not have managerial skills. So I had to give him his marching orders, and the hunt resumes for a director.

Before we both left, however, we had regular evening lessons in sign language. He may never need to use his newfound knowledge, but I hope to put mine into practice on my next visit.

The staff and children were in good form. Montu and Monira are thrilled with their new baby boy, and Shahti’s daughter Nabanita has become a little beauty.

I walked to the primary school with our deaf children one morning. They have settled in extremely well and no longer have a signing interpreter – the whole class looked at her instead of the teacher! Ali plans to send all our children to school in January, even the slow learners, since they will all receive the government curriculum school books which we can use in the boundary.

Several of our deaf teenage girls and boys have been training in Dhaka, and four of the girls start work in a garment factory this month. They live and learn free of charge in the Centre for Rehabilitation of the Paralyzed, founded and run by an English physiotherapist called Valerie Taylor who is a good friend of Ali. Sadly I didn’t get to meet her this trip but hope to do so next time.

So we seem to be achieving our aim of educating and training many of our children to lead a normal and fulfilling life.

As usual I brought home a suitcase full of the beautiful embroidery – pillow cases, table cloths and napkins – made by our teenage girls under Asma’s tuition. I sell them here for donations and hope to have a pre-Christmas ‘embroidery party’ in my house, to give friends a chance to find unique and lovely Christmas gifts.

We took a mixed bag of disabled children out for an ‘awareness programme’, this time to a girls’ secondary college in a very rural area. Ali had asked the principal to invite parents of disabled children to come and meet us. We had not expected 61, from an area not much larger than Chiswick… By the time I left, we had half a dozen new children – mainly CP and Downs – who will come daily for physio until they are able to look after themselves enough to live with us. I have asked Ali to do other such awareness programmes, since we have space for more children.

Due to the rain, planting at Valumia is very late – in fact, we only ploughed two days before I left. We usually manage to plant early so that we can sell surplus vegetables in the market but sadly, this year, they will only be ready at the same time as everyone else’s and we will have to eat or store them ourselves.

We had a wonderful picnic on the estate belonging to the politician whom I met on the overnight launch to Dhaka several years ago. It has a beautiful avenue of trees – very welcome in the heat – and runs along the bank of the river. Ali and the younger children had a lovely swim before lunch. One of the better picnics as far as I was concerned – perhaps not as adventurous as the one Peter and I enjoyed in March, but all the rivers were too high for us to attempt another island visit.

I left just before Eid. Most of the children went home for the holidays, and I always feel sorry for Ali who has to stay in the boundary with the few who have no home or whose parents do not want them. He tells me they had a good time, they shared a cow with other families and went out on some visits. School has now reopened.

Dinah's report on her visit to Bhola February - March 2012

On my recent trip to Bhola, I had a new traveling companion who had decided to visit Bhola before going on to India. His name is Peter and I think he enjoyed the experience very much indeed. The children loved him, of course – and not only because of the wonderful bags, caps and pens he produced from Surrey Cricket Club, as you can see from the photograph. He is also rather good at cricket, so he and Ali became quite competitive – and he even got me batting! At the farewell, Peter said he had intended to stay only a couple of days but he had stayed two weeks and didn’t want to leave. Watch this space!

Because we had a new visitor to Bhola, Ali and I tried to show him as much as possible. At our first roof meeting we picked 22 of the smaller children who had never been to Barisal, and set off at 6 a.m. a few days later. I warned Peter that my previous trips, involving two ferries each way and some low tides, had always lasted considerably longer than planned but this one went swimmingly – even if we did have to park right behind a small truck with a cage containing at least 500 extremely distressed chickens with a similar one next to us. I will spare you that photograph, suffice to say it has put me off eating chicken. Otherwise we had a lovely time, did a scenic tour of Barisal Centre Ville – of limited cultural interest – then visited various relations of Ali for lunch, followed by the usual Childrens’ Park, before just catching the two ferries home (someone had given us the wrong times but we persuaded Ali to get there early, just in case!).

We had a splendid picnic on the second Friday. Everyone, together with food and water toys, crowded into the tractor trailer and minibus and we drove to the Meghna river, the other side of the island from Barisal. There we jumped – or, in my case, was helped – into a battered motorboat which already had a couple of calves on board. We had a brilliant picnic on a small island of 10,000 inhabitants, after which many of the children swam and played in inflatable boats, carefully guarded by Ali in his rubber fishing clothes. It was an exciting journey home in that the tide was low. We had to walk through the mud and then wade through thigh-deep water to get to the boat. As usual, the older girls had dressed to kill in their best saris, but I firmly wore my oldest salwar kameez! Reaching the boat, I was presented with very steep, very narrow and very slippery gangplank up which I flatly refused to climb. Luckily we had a small wooden classroom chair with us, which we set down on the river bed and I could clamber aboard in a rather undignified manner, to the cheers of family and strangers alike although I don’t think the goats were very interested.

That day was Ali’s birthday. We had ordered the cake and icecream so, after a quick shower and change, off we went to collect the goodies while the staff decorated the room. This was the third birthday Ali had actually celebrated with me – he was in the orphanage till age 17 – and the children really enjoy the occasion, but it was a long day. Peter and I were very pleased to pass on supper afterwards and crawl up to the third floor for much needed vodka and cokes!

Our final major outing, on which we took another variety pack of children, was to the very southern tip of Bhola on the Bay of Bengal. On the way we passed a sixth form college where classes had just ended so they were happy for Ali to talk to the students about disability and how to prevent it – part of his awareness programme. Afterwards we reached the coast, along 3 kms of the worst road I have ever driven, where we gazed out on the choppy sea. Remember that Bhola lies between two large rivers so, although they had seen plenty of water, this was the first time many of the children had seen the ocean. No swimming this time, but a good picnic of hardboiled eggs and other goodies purchased on the way.

The new tailoring building is almost finished and is fully occupied. Apart from Asma and her tailoring classes, all the married staff are in residence including Shathi and Dipak with their gorgeous baby girl Nabanita. Six of the older boys and single men live in a couple of rooms and there is still space. We will be taking on new staff so it is good to have such accommodation to offer.

As far as I was concerned, the high point of the visit was taking five of our brightest deaf children to register in the local primary school. We undertook to send a teacher with them every day – school is mornings only – so Susucki and Masuma are taking turns. Ali tells me the children, two girls and three boys, are loving school and several of the slightly younger children want to go too, so it looks as though one of my dreams might be coming true.

Rozina and Supia telephoned almost daily from Rishilpi, where they are happy and learning their physiotherapy. I hope I will see them when I go back in the autumn.

It is always sad to say goodbye to the children, especially at this time of year since I will not be returning for so long. But I know they are well and happy.