Dear All

A Happy New Year to all of you – 2010 has arrived safely and we wish you all a blessed and prosperous year. Here at OMF we can scarcely believe 2009 has finished, even the lads commenting on how quickly it seemed to pass.  It was a difficult year for us in many respects and we hope that things will ease up in the coming year.

Let me update you on how things have gone here on the farm since I last wrote in July.  One major event has been the finishing of the dormitory.  When I last wrote we were struggling to get our money back from the contractor who had failed to complete the building.  Finally we managed after getting the police involved, and we were then able to have the building completed in time for Social Welfare’s deadline and then to move the boys in.  They are very happy with their new surroundings and seem to enjoy the 4 to a room arrangement.  There is also a kitchen and a shower block at the new dorm so we now have a much quieter and emptier house than at any time since we moved to the farm.  Some days it seems almost deserted and we are still not sure we entirely approve of the new system, though we were forced into it by Social Welfare.  We miss the boys under our feet (well, sometimes) and the closeness we shared with them was one of the reasons why so many of them felt they belonged here.  So while the extra space and peace is nice, I hope the new building does not lead to a barrier between us and them.  We are now working on getting furniture for the rooms such as cupboards and drawers and desks and bookshelves.  We already have bunk beds for everyone and we and the boys are truly grateful to all of you who made the dorm possible. It’s completion marks the beginning of a new phase in OMF.  Inevitably the question gets asked “What will we do with the space now available in the house” and this is something we think about a lot.  There are so many needy kids that we could fill it 10 times over without any effort, but we don't have the other resources we would need such as staff and funding, and we really cannot stretch ourselves much further.  Yet it seems pointless (and wrong) to occupy a 7 bedroom house when so many youngsters still sleep on the street.

Another major event for us has been the arrival of Abigail Brown to work with us.  Abi is 24 and a qualified primary teacher from England.  She visited Zambia on several occasions and spend a lot of time with us on each visit.  She decided to give up her job and come to stay with us for a year, sponsored by her church.  We are very aware of the sacrifice this meant on her part and the part of her church and her parents, but we must acknowledge that she has been a complete godsend to us here.  She spends most of her day teaching boys not yet ready for school, helping with home work in the evenings, and assisting in running  the house, as well as being a good friend to Sarah our older daughter.  In a very short time she has become one of the family, and we find it difficult to imagine life without her.  In particular she has demonstrated a real love and dedication to the boys that has left an impression on many of them and they have accepted her as the “big sister” in the house.  God bless you Abi, you came at the right time and have helped more than you know.

From the boys point of view, the last six months have been busy with school.  Four children wrote Grade 7 exams in November and the results were just announced this week.  After all the anxiety of waiting, our four candidates did very well.  Memory – the only girl we have staying with us – led the way with 89%, followed by Isaac with 83%, Sammy with 83% and Rommy with 79%.  Remember that with the exception of Memory, all these kids lived on the street at some point and missed several years of education, and in Sammy’s case had done so well last year in Grade 5 that he was allowed to skip Grade 6 and go directly into Grade 7. We also had 4 lads write Grade 9 exams – results in February, and Edna, one of our boarding pupils wrote Grade 12 which is effectively the school leavers certificate.  The other lads all did well on their coursework, several taking top spot in their classes, including little John, who is now not so little any more.

We also had some comings and goings amongst the lads.  I mentioned Clifford in my last letter and he is still doing here and making good progress under Abi’s watchful eye.  Our latest addition is a boy called Joseph who is also schooling at home but has become a great help to Phil on the farm, and takes the responsibility of feeding the pigs very seriously.  Little Danny on the other hand has left us again.  We discovered a series of thefts had taken place, mostly from Abi’s room.  We decided to lay a trap which involved me hiding behind a bed in the room while everyone else was watching a movie.  The first night nothing happened, but the second night I heard the scrabbling and emerged from my hiding place to stunned looking 10 year old who’s knees nearly gave way with the shock!  His face was quite a picture, and it would have been funny if it hadn’t been so disappointing.  He confessed the whole crime spree and we had no option but to send him back to the orphanage where he came from.  The other boys were so annoyed with him that they were ready to lynch him, and he had to leave for his own safety as well as our peace of mind.  It really is very hard to understand why people will risk all that they have for petty theft.  Apart from this incident, the boys really have been very well behaved for the last few months, and several of them attended church camp in December and were obviously challenged by the messages.

Our girls have worked hard at school also and Sarah is due to write her IGCSEs in May.  She is specialising in Music and Drama and seems very gifted in both.  Rachel just takes whatever comes her way at school and seems to enjoy everything EXCEPT English and Drama.  Christine has had a busy festive season feeding us all and buying presents for countless other families and children we support in one way or another. I hope that she might manage a few days break away in January to rest and recharge her batteries.  Her Obstetrics and Gynaecology practise continues to be in great demand but she is happy with part time work and being a “mother of thousands” as one of the boys called her recently.  Just in case she doesn’t have enough to do she plans to start a small home bakery this year making Scottish cakes and other goodies, and will get some of the boys to help out in that.  She already has several orders in the pipeline so that will probably be our next project.

From a work perspective, the last year has been very difficult especially in financial terms, as the recession continued to bite.  Things are looking up a bit now and we hope the shop will return to profitability soon.  I was approached to ask if I would become the Commercial Director of Zambezi Airlines, a small airline which was started after the demise of Zambian Airways.  I agreed to do the job on a part time basis and to combine it with my work running the hardware store.  It is hard work doing both, but it helps pay the bills and I enjoy the challenge of being back in the airline industry.

We continue to wait for registration of the farm as a childcare facility and are hopeful that this will happen early in the new year, but we have been helped a lot in this by our friends in the police force and some very kind social workers who seem to realise we are only trying to help.  We continue facing challenges in our efforts as many people do not understand what we are trying to do and can be very unhelpful.  In particular we have been very distressed this year by a couple of lads who left us and made allegations of sexual and physical abuse against us.  This has been behind a lot of the scrutiny from Social Welfare, but thankfully they have stated they have found no evidence backing the allegations.  Nevertheless it is a very upsetting experience, especially when we realised that the boys in question were being manipulated by unscrupulous lawyers and police officers who were determined to extort money from us. We have defended ourselves as best we can but it is all unsettling and a big distraction from what needs to happen in order to help the many kids still on the street.

Finally I have managed at last to post some photos to a Facebook site.  If you would like to see them please click on the links below – you do not have to be a member of Facebook to use it.  I don't really make use of it to keep in touch but it does seem the easiest way to let you see the pictures.  The names of all the boys can be seen by clicking on their picture.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2159&id=100000286013171&l=e632a77f13

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2291&id=100000286013171&l=0cfdd448a3

So 2009 has finished with its problems and blessings.  We look forward to you continued support and interest in 2010, and will keep you posted on any other developments.  In the meantime, could I please appeal to those of you who help sponsor the boys education to send your contributions for this year as soon as possible to allow us to get everybody settled into school without delay this as we start the new session.

With all our love,

Don, Christine and all the kids



Dear All

July is here again and with it school holiday time for some of our large family of children. Christine, Sarah and Rachel have already left to spend 2 weeks in Scotland and Nicholas and I will join them this week. We hope to spend a further 3 weeks there, visiting family and friends and catching up on all that has been happening. We are looking forward to the trip and we hope that we will be able to see some of you in the course of our travels. We plan to return to Zambia on 13^th August and pick up where we left off with the remaining 28 children. Our girls attend schools which follow the British school year and so this is their long summer holiday from July to September, while the boys Zambian schools run the academic year from January to December and so have only 4 weeks off just now during August. They will then go back at the start of September and will go into third term at the end of which they will write their main exams. There are 3 national exams in Zambia, one at the end of Grade 7 for entry into junior secondary, one at the end of Grade 9 for entry to Senior Secondary and one at the end of Grade 12 for entry into college or University. We have 5 youngsters sitting Grade 7, 2 doing Grade 9 and one doing Grade 12 this year so it will be a fairly fraught last term for us all.

Last time I wrote was in April and I told you of the difficulties we were facing from Social Welfare, then in my second email in April I was able to tell you about the intervention on our behalf of a number of Zambian friends who brought us to see the Minister in charge of the department. The Minister received us very kindly and told his officials to stop harassing us. Since then we have been left in relative peace but we have been pursuing registration of the work with the boys as a Children's Home in order to comply with the letter of the law. This has been a slow, and drawn out process, and is not yet complete though we are now close to finishing it. Part of the conditions for achieving final confirmation is that we complete the work we have started on the dormitory and the care givers house. I may have mentioned before that we had started the dorm, but unfortunately the contractor whom we paid to do the work on both buildings has stopped doing anything on our project. He used our cash for other projects and as a result is unable to finish what he started with us. We have been pursuing him now for months and have had to involve the authorities but when he has no funds left it is very difficult to get anything practical done. We hope and pray that somehow we will be able to finish both projects by the deadline we have been given of the end of September, as we do not wish to be closed down, even temporarily, by the authorities. It is strange that it is acceptable for children to be living on the street, but not acceptable that they live in our house with us, but that seems to be the attitude of the officials in charge here and that is why we have to build the separate dormitory for the boys.

We are truly grateful to you all for the support, prayer and sympathy throughout the difficult days, and we felt that we, along with all our children, were very much cared for by you all.

Of course lots has happened since then and much of it cannot be covered in a newsletter. The lads have continued to go to school and learn. They continue to make us proud with the effort they put in and the results they achieve. We now have 2 at University and a third writing Grade 12 this November for entry to University. Others have taken position 1 or 2 in their classes, while even those who may never achieve such heights have really tried hard and done their best – sometimes exceeding everyone’s expectations. For those who are not academically inclined, we try to find vocational training or apprenticeship places with companies in Lusaka. This has worked well so far and we hope that we will succeed in our aim of giving the lads a chance to achieve their full potential and provide for themselves and their families in the future.

We have been blessed with the provision of high quality volunteers in the last 6 months. We began with Anna and Chrisy, two young ladies from Canada who got stuck into helping out around the house and working with the boys on homework, extra lessons etc. Anna stayed for 3 months and Chrisy for 6, and both have been missed by the lads since they left. One of the things they really made a difference with was taking time to teach some of the little children who stay around the compound, and under their kind attention you could watch little boys and girls blossoming both intellectually and in their personal development. Some of theses children are pre-school and stay with their parents so they are not officially part of the Home, but the impact made on them has made us wonder whether the next stage of the work might be to establish a community school providing free education of a good standard to the children around us. We are now being helped by 3 other ladies, all from England, Kate, Dorne and Christine. All of them are ex-teachers, and again the input into the children’s academic work is phenomenal – I’m not really sure teachers ever actually become “ex” – they certainly seem to retain their authority! Kate is coming to the end of her time with us while Dorne and Christine are staying on – bravely – to manage the house while Christine and I are away. They have support from Cammy, a sports science student from Edinburgh who is great at managing the boys for games, bathing, washing clothes etc, and having spent the last 2 weeks being looked after by them all, I am actually very confident that the house will be run as well if not better than when we are around. The only complication seems to be the confusion caused by the similarity of their names to ours, but as they are normally addressed as Auntie and we are called Mum and Dad, we seem to have got over that.

As far as individual boys are concerned we have run into a number of troubles as well as successes over the past few months. We had an unfortunate situation where a couple of youngsters stole money from one of the volunteers. Of course they were quickly discovered and had to be expelled since it was their second offence. We took them to Social Welfare and asked them to find other places for them to stay, which they completely failed to do, and 6 weeks later both boys were on the street again in complete destitution. We really could not leave them there so we had to swallow our pride, bend our rules and allow them back. I do have to admit that they have both behaved extremely well since then and show every sign of having changed for the better. We have not allowed them to go back to school as we want them to see this as a privilege that has to be earned rather than a right to be abused. They are both Cliffordworking extremely hard at home with the volunteers and we are ready to allow them to go back either for this term or at the start of next year. A third boy is in the same situation for repeatedly fighting, and he also seems to have made every effort to control himself helped greatly by anger management counselling from Christine. It is very hard to know what to do with such boys in terms of discipline. If you are too soft, they cause havoc in the household, and upset the other well behaved boys, yet if you try to be strict there is the danger of wrecking their chances for ever. Most of them recognise this, and even when we expel them, they ask to come back and do not blame us for what we have done, which is a very unusual thing amongst children who have lived on the street. I think they also recognise that we do care for them as individuals and therefore do not speak ill of us even when under suspension. Unfortunately, there are always a few who simply want revenge and go around spreading stories of abuse, and unfortunately there are always people too ready to seize on these stories and try to stir up trouble. As one good Zambian friend said to me recently – “No good deed will go unpunished”.

In December I wrote of 4 new boys, Sam, Gift, Danny and Patrick. Two of these boys have left us, while two have stayed on. Sam didn’t last long as he proved very unreliable and troublesome, and in the end decided he didn’t like the rules at our place. Danny and Patrick both decided to make a break for freedom in February, but Danny quickly came back and asked to be re-admitted. He is now 10 and a real little livewire. He is the littlest boy we have ever looked after and is very bright but still very wilful and naughty, although he is also very loveable. We have seen very little of Patrick since he left. Gift has remained stable and constant throughout the year and now goes to school although he really struggles with most subjects because of the lack of foundational teaching in basics. We have also added another by called Clifford, whom I have referred to before as being a very sad retarded lad. His problems are compounded by many years of sniffing glue and abuse on the streets including sexual abuse, and he has great difficulty in learning anything new. He is being taught at home just now by Christine and Kate, and while he is a nice friendly lad, it is hard to see how he will ever progress to being self-sufficient. I have attached a group photo of 25 children (I have no idea where the others were) and one of Clifford, and all the comings and goings and returns mean that we are now at 28 boys and 3 girls in our “immediate” family. The third photo is of our little football team wearing the new strips and boots that were sent to them by a group called KitAid from England whom we would like to thank sincerely. Danny is second from the left in the back row. We have a number of boys who are gifted musically but have never had the chance to learn to play instruments. Does anybody now of a charity which collects old instruments and donates them to groups in Africa who can use them? If so we would like to hear from you so that we can try and give the guys a chance to develop their talents.

From a work perspective, we continue to struggle against the problems caused by the global recession and its knock on effects in Zambia. Business is very hard right now but we can record God’s faithfulness as we have been able to meet our family expenses so far often from unexpected sources. Christine continues to be part time doctor and full time Mum to 31 kids plus the many other families we try and help from a distance, and I never cease to wonder at how much she gets done in a day. Sarah and Rachel carry on well at school, and Sarah is now contemplating her future after she finishes school in the next year or two. She would love to study music and drama and is already looking at possible colleges. Nico and Mulenga are hard at work in their classes and Mulenga writes Grade 9 exam in November, which is why he cannot take time off to join us in Scotland this year – he has to attend extra classes all through his holiday.

Thank you all for your continued support. It is invaluable and very much appreciated. I hope we see some of you while we are home, and may God richly bless you all,

Love from us all

Don, Christine, and all the kids