As the Orbus Community Centre for Orphan Care moves toward completion we
continue to familiarize ourselves with the local community and try to
ascertain the orphan situation and the needs of these children. We came
across a family of 4 orphaned children living with their grandmother Stella
in a very basic little mud brick hut about 500 metres from the Orbus site in
Kameza village. We enquired as to their situation from neighbours and found
that they were in need of assistance with pre-school fees for the 5 year old
boy and clothing and blankets. There are 4 children: Florence is almost 2,
Archangel is 5, Stephano 10 and Musolini (an unfortunate name) is 13. Their
parents both died of HIV related illnesses almost two years ago, both in the
same year. The mother died during child-birth giving birth to Florence.
Orbus is in a very blessed situation of having an abundance of lovingly
chosen and packed clothes, toys, blankets, towels, toiletries and Christian
childrens books to distribute to orphans here. These goods were donated by
incredibly generous and caring Christians from throughout mostly the
Presbyterian Church of Victoria and sent in the two sea containers received
recently from Australia.
Having obtained the ages of the children we put together a package for each child including clothes, towels, blankets, books, soap and toys and some gifts for the grandmother (including money for Archangels pre-school fees) and had the joy of giving these goods to the family this morning (14-7-10) on behalf of the donors from Australia. They were extremely grateful, stunned even, and Stella requested that we pass on their sincere thanks to the Australian donors. There are some photos attached showing the family surrounded by neighbours looking on.
Additionally, the recent Orbus backpack project in Australia resulted in approx 40 backpacks generously and thoughtfully filled with all sorts of goodies for school-aged children. We distributed the first of these today to Stephano and Musolini. We were able to give Florence and Archangel a trolley case each too which were sent in the containers filled with childrens clothes. We took most of the clothes out and filled them with clothes, toys, jumpers and teddy bears hand-made by caring Christians in Victoria and books.
We have recently also been distributing some of these goods to orphans in
various other villages further away from Ngumbe and will continue to do this
over the coming weeks. We have lots of photos of this distribution work and
if anyone is interested they can email me. Eventually I will hopefully get
some of them on the Orbus website.
The local Ngumbe area Chief, Daniel, and his wife (from Daniel Village in
which our Ngumbe project is located), are coming to the Orbus site this
Saturday and are bringing 10 local orphaned children and their guardians
with them so we can distribute some of these goods to them.
These children are not accustomed to such demonstrations of kindness and
generosity. To be able to do this for them on behalf of the Australians who
have given these goods is a real privilege for us. On behalf of Orbus I
offer sincere thanks for your generosity.
In Christ
Craig