Daily life at the pilot house

The kids are all settling in really well

I am so happy to be writing to you about the daily life at the pilot house.  Life there is quite simple yet we are all so excited to see the six children settling into a family-style home.

All the little things - breakfast before school, having them return to the house each night after their first days of school and all the new things they are learning, their doing their homework together and having dinner - are all wonderful.

I hope you will enjoy reading and seeing some pictures of life there.  After all, it is all of your support that has made this possible!

The house has a lovely dining room where everyone can share dinner together

The house is lovely - very light and airy!  It has a nice big bedroom for the children, as well as room for Mamas and for Pendo, Mama Pendo's daughter who, as a qualified social worker, has joined our team of pilot house staff!

Here they are hard at work, coloring in and practicing their letters!

As you may know, the children are going to the Amani Primary School during the weekday mornings.  At lunchtime they come back, have lunch and do their homework.  During the afternoon (from 2pm til 5pm) we are also lucky enough to have volunteers come down to the pilot house to help with homework and play with the kids.  They have a great dining room and dinner table they all sit at at meal times.

Pray and Isaak, new buddies! 

At the moment they are learning numbers and how to write letters, which they've been practicing.  When Emma (one of our new and fantastic interns) went down to visit they were colouring in, doing some puzzles and playing with balloons. Auntie wanted to be in every single photo and they were each trying to gain possession of the sunglasses!  They all seem to be thriving and it's great they get more attention.

Queen looking cool in her sunglasses

We are hoping to take the pilot house kids on a field trip to a kite festival in Arusha this Sunday so w'll keep you posted!

Project Riziki

Over the past several years, The Small Things and our partners have been able to vastly improve the living conditions, daily care, and survival chances to the beautiful kids at Nkoaranga Orphanage, thanks to your support. Our one-to-one care program for premature infants has made a difference for Peace, Ebenezer, and Hope and the other babies who came in with her, but sometimes the outcome is out of our hands. No matter how much we love them and care for them, it is not enough to keep them from all harm.

Hope was one of the babies that benefited from the '7-baby challenge'
which funded one-to-one care for her when she arrived at Nkoaranga

 As I am writing this to you, one of our tiny girls is fighting for her life. After several weeks in the Lutheran referral hospital in Arusha, Hope was believed to be on the mend. However, after just a few days back at the orphanage, she had to be rushed to a larger hospital in Moshi with a high fever. We are hoping she will be released again soon, but the doctors are very concerned about her long term health and prospects, due to her prematurity and failure to thrive. As a result, we are working with other organizations to secure funds for her long and short term care. 

Hope is still very small for her age as has been given special formula
to help her to gain weight

In moments like this, we remember the fights we lost, and pray that this will not be one of them. In early 2011, our little boy Riziki was unable to defeat the illness or malformation that kept him from holding his food down and gaining weight. Then again a year later, in 2012, Rehema was taken from us before her time, due to diseases contracted during the unsanitary conditions of her birth. These things happen everywhere, but the problem is exacerbated in Tanzania, by poverty and stigma which can prevent women from seeking or receiving adequate nutrition or prenatal care. Compounding the problem are a lack of specialists and most hospitals' insufficient funds to attract qualified doctors.

Emily Butler has given up alcohol for 6 months to raise money for The Small Things
and has decided to donate this towards The Riziki Project

With the memory of these losses in mind, we now ask for all of your help and support in our struggle to give our kids the best possible medical care they can receive here in Tanzania, when circumstances require. We don't want to remain in the position of having to scramble for funds each time medical needs occur, as we have in the past. We instead seek to create a standing fund for hospital bills as well as any necessary transport, food, and overtime for Mamas accompanying the child, in memory of our little angels Riziki and Rehema, so that money will not be an obstacle to receiving the best care available.

Click here to donate.

Thank you for anything you can give!

Guest blog: Dorothy and David (aka Mama and Baba Bekka & Bibi and Babu Saimon and Zawadi!)

This is a very special month for Bekka, our on the ground director and chair of The Small Things, as her parents are visiting!  We are very grateful that Dorothy and David have taken some of the precious time with their daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren to write a little for us about their visit so far!  They are both also board members of The Small Things and need little introduction, so I will hand you straight over to them (after a quick picture of the reunited family!)!

Dorothy, Bekka and David reunited!

"Guest blog from the oldies. Dorothy and David - aka Mama Bekka and Baba Bekka, aka Bibi and Babu (to our almost adopted grandchildren, Saimon and Zawadi)"*

"We arrived a few days ago for a four week stay in Nkoarnaga. Tanzania is as beautiful and as challenging as ever. The weather is a contrast from the cold of New England, hot and equatorial, but with beautiful fresh mornings, and bright sunny hot days."

Babu David with Zawadi

"The team here are doing an amazing job, and the progress since we were last here is quite stunning, and confirms that this is not your old Mom and Pop start up, but a real operation with real systems, and real staff. Bekka has assembled a team here of talent and dedication with Web master, driver, husband Riz, volunteer coordinator Emma, fundraising coordinator Mac, and the team of Tanzanians from the ever wonderful Mama Pendo and her orphanage staff of Mamas, the pilot house staff of her daughter, the eponymous Pendo, and Mamas Linda and Rose, and driver Frank. And we have hardly seen our friends from previous trips: Dr Sam, Jeremiah and Ombeni. The kids in the new pilot house are going to Amani primary school in their smart yellow and green uniforms, and returning home with homework and smiles. Pray was a little tearful at the start of the first few days, but cheerful by the end of school, announcing it was “nzuri”- good! (For those catching up on events here, the pilot house is the rented property functioning as the first house of our planned “Children's Village”- which, in time, will sprout homes for the children who age out of the orphanage and have no family they can return to.)"

Ugi (a drink) for the little guys

"The orphanage is as cheerful and noisy as ever as the smaller of the small things play with their much appreciated Christmas toys, and the Mamas and volunteers provide love and care. One of the smallest of all

right now is Baby Hope who we brought back from the Pediatric ward in Arusha Hospital where she had been in for weight loss and pneumonia. She is on the mend and gaining weight though still tiny with a residual cough*. It is thanks to the generosity of our donors and support from sponsors that the kind of care she received could be given. The Small Things took care of her hospital bill for her two week stay, as well as the cost of the 24-hour care of Mamas who stayed with her every moment. Without your support none of this would be possible. A few years ago, she would have had to stay locally with what services could be provided at the Nkoaranga hospital and the orphanage, and might well have not made it."
(*Unfortunately, since this was written, Hope has been re-admitted to hospital with a fever.)

Baby Hope

"We will update with more news as our month here progresses!"

*Some translations for those who would like to learn some Swahili!

Mama - mother

Baba - father

Bibi - grandmother

Babu - grandfather

Thank you so much for giving!

This week the blog is about you - all the supporters over the last couple of months who have become sponsors of our children.

Our Give to Receive Sponsorship drive has been a wonderful success, and as we officially close it we know that there are so many people out there who really care for the kids. Your money will allow the orphanage staff and us at The Small Things the peace of mind of knowing that our work is sustainable and that the funds for the children's care will keep coming. We are all very grateful.

Sponsors of children who have just moved into our pilot house can have the satisfaction of knowing that these kids are now in school and coming to the end of their first week. Here they all are outside school on their first day - we hope to have a picture of them in their uniforms very soon:

From left: Issak, Pray, Saimoni (Bekka's son), Auntie, Loveness, Queen and Anna.

Sponsors of the younger children are helping to sustain the work done by the mamas here at the orphanage, making sure that these under-5s get everything they need to keep growing up healthily:

Over the last few months, since we rolled out our sponsorship program in earnest, we have gone from having 21 monthly sponsors to having 58! We are delighted to announce that after our last minute appeal the other day we have achieved our target - every single one of the orphanage and pilot house children now has at least one sponsor, and the pilot house kids are fully covered so they could start school. We also have a sponsor for Fanuel, making it possible for him to continue living with his mother in the community. The sponsorship drive has been a huge success, so thank you to everyone who has made it possible.

We're very excited by the fact that our new sponsors are from all over the world, making us a truly international organisation. We have sponsors in Australia, Canada, Germany, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Italy, Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates, the UK and the US. Riz Kaiser has kindly created this wonderful map for us that shows how widely our supporters are now spread - asante sana to you all!

My Dolly - Part 2 (Christmas update!)

Happy New Year from all of us at The Small Things!  This has been a hugely exciting year for us with a lot of changes, and we are so grateful for your continued support!  Before we move onto everything that is happening in 2014, we thought it would be nice to share some images from Christmas at Nkoaranga with you, and, as you may remember, on Christmas Day, each child was presented with their own unique and beautifully handmade doll (more on that just below!).  But firstly, here are some generally Christmassy pictures for you to enjoy!

Everyone tucking into Christmas lunch!

Fanueli with new toys (and cake!)

Lulu trying (potentially her first ever) cake!

Mama Linda and Peace with the beautiful cake
which was donated (thank you so much!).

Now, you may remember 'My Dolly - Part One' back in July (you can find it by typing 'My Dolly - Part One' into the search option on our blog page!)?  For those of you who have forgotten, it was a guest blog by the fantastic Anna Black who had the idea of giving each child at Nkoaranga their own doll at Christmas to treasure, and then set about contacting some equally fantastic doll-makers to make this idea a reality!  She specifically chose Waldorf-style dolls as they 'are very huggable with lovely appealing faces' but also, because they are all handmade they can be made with 'culturally appropriate materials'.  They were all packed up and posted out to Tanzania in preparation for Christmas Day.

In her own words, Anna said, 

"I could see how much comfort and security [her own daughters] gained from these particular toys, even though they have both been lucky enough to spend their whole lives being loved and cared for by both parents.  I thought how significant such a comfort item might be to a child living without a parent - however well and lovingly cared for they otherwise were."

You can see how delighted Vicky was to receive her very own doll!

The children were all so happy to receive their very own doll on Christmas Day.  Bekka was there to experience their reaction and said that 'there were thrilled!'  We want to say a massive thank you to Anna Black, as well as to the amazing doll-makers who were responsible for making this happen!  You all made these children very happy (as you can see from the massive smiles!).

Jennie (www.wildmarigoldtoys.com)
Shelley (www.littlesparrow.net.au)
Susan Healy (www.etsy.com/shop/jemilynndolls)

All of the children over the age of 2 got their very own doll.

Each doll had the child's name written on it.

All the dolls were very beautifully dressed and huggable!

Maureen Kubwa with a grin that couldn't get much bigger!

Eman with the soft-toy dog that he received!

Since then, Bekka said that although some of the kids are more open to sharing, a few kids were definitely holding onto theirs (made more difficult by the littlest kids who are enjoying stealing them whenever the big kids aren't looking!).  Overall, it looks like these dolls have already given the children a huge amount of happiness and excitement, and we are sure that they will treasure them for a long time to come!

Thank you so much again to everyone involved in what has been such a thoughtful project!