Food, Glorious Food

It takes a lot of food to feed an army. It also takes a lot of food – and hard work – to feed the children of Bulembu. But meal making has been made a little easier thanks to the completion of the centralized kitchen, where all of the meals are made and all of the children come to eat.

It’s quite a process to prepare three squares a day for more than 200 children and aunties five days a week. That number rises by almost 100 on the weekends when those who live in Persimmon (another living area within Bulembu) join the others. (Persimmon has it’s own kitchen but doesn’t serve meals on the weekend.)

Stabiele (which means happiness) Murambiwa leads four other staff members in the preparation of all of the meals. Stabiele hails from Zimbabwe and is married with three grown children. She and her husband came to Bulembu in 2008, and he began working at the Bulembu Bakery in 2009. Her days in the Bulembu kitchen start early – around 7:00 a.m. – and they end late after the last meal is served and the kitchen is cleaned and ready for the next day. (And then she goes home to cook for her husband and son, who is currently studying journalism!) But the menu is simple and routine.

For breakfast, Stabiele’s team make porridge three days a week, cooked oats two days a week, and Motive, a type of porridge, two days a week. Fresh milk and bread is a daily staple. Lunch always consists of sandwiches and fruit. The dinner menu looks like this:

• Monday – mixed rice and beans and salad or cabbage
• Tuesday – pap and imaasi
• Wednesday – Spaghetti bolognaise
• Thursday – Samp and beans with salad or vegetables
• Friday – fish and mixed rice
• Saturday – pap and imaasi
• Sunday – chicken and rice and pudding.

The kitchen staff makes sure a big cake from the bakery is ready every Sunday as a special treat for the children and aunties. There are a few changes to the menu for some of the children who have special food restrictions. (For those of you wondering, pap looks like mashed potatoes but it’s ground corn boiled up with water. Imaasi is sour milk, almost like cottage cheese. Samp is whole corn kernels that are soaked in water until soft and then boiled for a couple of hours.)

Three or four children can usually be found at the centralized kitchen on weekends helping to chop vegetables, assisting the cooks, and helping to clean up after meals. The centralized kitchen has made meal making much easier on the staff, but there is still a lot of hard work that goes into preparing food, glorious food, for everyone in Bulembu.

By Theresia Whitfield

Life would get …

 Life would get kind of boring if we just stopped filling our brains with new stuff. Bulembu is home to an amazing school system for kids of all ages, including adults, thanks to a special English as a Second Language class that’s being taught to the Aunties. “The Auntie’s kept asking when they could learn some more English,” explains Leslie Shirk, the instructor of the English classes.  How could she refuse?

Leslie, who arrived in Bulembu in 2010 along with her husband, Bulembu’s Medical Director, Carl Shirk, M.D., started working with the Bulembu childcare program. Her task was to help newly arriving children transition and adjust to their new lives in Bulembu. But now that most of the newcomers are babies, she has been counseling children with special needs. Leslie says that since the day she arrived, she’s wanted to start an English Second Language class for the caregivers.

Her dream came true in March when she began offering two classes – beginners and advanced – to about 60 Aunties. The classes are held for one hour every Tuesday and Thursday morning and will last through the rest of the year. When asked what they wanted to learn, the Aunties said they wanted to work on punctuation and writing proper letters. Leslie says the classes have become great fun for the competitive Aunties who play games, such as Bingo, as a learning strategy.

Part of the fun in learning is sharing all of that wonderful knowledge. Patricia Mamba is Aunty to six children, and she’s been able to take some of what she’s learned to help the children in their studies. These classes are teaching the Aunties a second language as well as helping them to gain confidence in reaching their children and beyond Bulembu. They are proof that none of us ever really stops learning.

By Theresia Whitfield

The Benefits of Sponsoring a Child in Bulembu

The commercials aren’t shown as often these days, but there once was a time when you could hardly get through the evenings TV shows without seeing Sally Struthers or some other actor or actress pleading on behalf of starving children in some far away land. They showed dirty, hungry, tear-filled, hair-matted children looking sweet and innocent, while Sally begged for you to drop whatever you were doing to sign up for child sponsorship. How could you resist such sweet innocence? But the warm, fuzzy feeling always left about fifteen seconds after the commercial was over. If you did take the time and spend the money to sponsor a needy child, that was pretty much the end of that. You sent in your money and, at the end of every year, you received a tax-deductible receipt. But whatever happened to that darling little kid in the commercial who needed a Kleenex? What was her name again? You may have gotten an update on your sponsored child, or not.

It just would have been great to know, to really know, that your child was being well cared for and benefiting from your gift. Statistics today show that people want to do more than have a tax-deductible gift automatically deducted from their account every month; they want to be involved. And they want to see the difference they’re making. Really impacting someone’s life means being actively engaged in someone’s life. That’s where today’s child sponsorship is quite different from the programs of the past. You won’t see any commercials about the children of Bulembu, but there are plenty of children in need. They’re orphans – all of them. Every single one of them has a name. They have a history and they deserve a future.

Sherry Dorsey wanted girls. After all, she was in the midst of raising four boys back home in Canada. After visiting Bulembu on a mission trip arranged by her employer, G & J Parking, she knew she wanted to sponsor girls. Now she has three girls. G & J takes a group to Bulembu every year, and this year, Sherry got to meet the girls she sponsors. She’s been able to interact with them, help with homework, and general smother them with love and affection. What makes this especially exciting for Sherry is that she is able to see the impact her money is making. More than that, she’s able to make an impact in person.  But the connection she’s made with the girls won’t end at the conclusion of her 10-day trip. She is able to write letters to the girls and they often write back. The relationship continues even across miles of oceans and land.

Sponsoring a child is a family affair for Sherry. Her husband, James, is with her on this trip and, while her youngest two are also with her on this trip, all four sons have visited Bulembu previously. Her oldest, a university student has also begun co-sponsoring a child. He’s so passionate about what’s happening in Bulembu that he even got the Bulembu logo tattooed on his arm. Sherry says it’s important to all of her kids to be actively engaged in what’s happening in the lives of these children.

“We want to benefit Bulembu in some way so that when we walk away from the town, we have left a piece of us behind,” Sherry explained. “We want to be sure we’ve given them just a little bit of love that they have needed.” While Sherry and her family have been blessed to be able to meet the girls they sponsor, their story is unique. Not all child sponsors are able to make the trek to Swaziland for that one-on-one interaction. But they can still experience relationships as real as if they were in the same room. Sponsors can choose to sponsor a boy or girl (or both) and there’s no age restriction to begin sponsoring. Children from one day old to 21 years of age can be sponsored.

There are more than 200-orphaned children in Bulembu, and more arriving weekly. Sally Struthers isn’t here to beg for your participation, but if you’ve ever wanted to make a difference in the life of a child – a real, personal difference – this is what you’ve been waiting for! And the benefits of sponsoring a child in Bulembu are plentiful! To learn more about how you can sponsor a child, visit www.bulembu.org.

By Theresia Whitfield

“A Year of Your Life” in Bulembu

Imagine devoting a year of your life by learning about and serving God. Imagine spending a year completely focused on Bible study, worship and intercession, character development, and outreach and evangelism. Imagine this being your life from sun up until sun down. Could you do it? Could you give of yourself in such a way that brings an intimacy with God, fully knowing Him by experiencing God’s love and His Heart and yielding to the work of the Holy Spirit?

If you can’t imagine it, then let Outhatile Dlamini, Kyung Won Kim, Hyebin Park, and Whitney Leon Flores bring it to life for you. They are spending two weeks of the year in their lives in Bulembu.

The group of 11 students is from Hatfield Church in Pretoria, South Africa, which is where the “Year of Your Life” program originates. The YOYL program started nearly 25 years ago with the intent to create a culture of solid Biblical teaching, personal accountability and practical experience in a year of intense discipleship. The studies focus on relationship with God, personal restoration, character development, relating to others, finding a purpose in life and career guidance. The training takes place in a multi-cultural environment, as is demonstrated in the group of students in Bulembu. Dlamini hails from South Africa while Kim and Park are from South Korea. Flores is from Peru while other students are from Spain and the U.S.

As part of the YOYL curriculum each student chooses to do one of four tracks, which are designed to give the students specialized training in their area of interest and gifting. The tracks consist of worship and music, video production, youth and children’s ministry and transformation and life skills.

The students, who range in age between 18 and 22, are spending a great deal of their energy in Bulembu working with the children by helping with homework and spending time with them. They work on sorting and folding clothes that have been donated for the children while the guys have been doing a little manual labor by clearing out weeds on the banks of the children’s homes and other outdoor projects.

The work has been both rewarding and challenging for the students. Whitney points out that she’s not had much experience interacting with children but has found it an enjoyable experience. Outhatile says the YOYL team members are all having a great time with the children. “They are just so happy to see you and the way they are so forgiving,” she said. “To learn to be child-like again, that for me has been quite an experience.”

A “Year of Your Life” is a daily transformational process for these eleven students who are spending two weeks of their Year in Bulembu, making memories of a lifetime by experiencing God’s love and sharing God’s love. It is a transformation that will help them disciple and prepare others for not just a year of their lives, rather a lifetime – an eternity – with the One who made them.

 

By: Theresia Whitfield

The Buzz for Bulembu Honey is a Sweet Deal!

Bulembu’s bees better get busy because a sweet new deal is going to carry the honey they make all throughout Swaziland. It’s an exciting new partnership with Bulembu Honey and Logico, a Swaziland-based logistics and distribution company. Bulembu Honey is one component of the community enterprise strategy with the goal of providing sustainability to the community by 2020.

Bulembu Honey launched in 2007 with just 150 beehives. By 2008 the number of hives grew to around 800 and are now producing between 10 and 12 tons of honey per year. The scutellata bees, also known as Killer Bees, produce three harvests each year: June, September and November.

While honey production has actually decreased over the last year, the new partnership with Logico aims to market and distribute the product to a variety of sections of the marketplace. Bulembu Honey is already being shipped via Logico to Royal Swazi, the largest hotel in Swaziland and will soon be available in Shoprite stores. Depending on demand, Bulembu Honey will provide approximately eight tons of honey annually for Logico to distribute.

Based in Matsapha, 160 employees at Logico work to maintain 2500 pallet bays at their main distribution center, stock consolidation facilities in Boksburg, Gauteng and Durban, as well as a stock collection facility in Durban. More than 300 Logico wheels are on the road every day transporting products to their customers throughout the Kingdom.

Bulembu Honey currently has four staff members including the Beekeeper, two beekeeper helpers and one processor. In addition to expanding distribution of the honey, expanding hive sites into other locations such as the Swazi capital, Mbabane and the Piggs Peak area is a future goal.

Bulembu Honey transported nationwide… What could be sweeter?

By Theresia Whitfield

Preparing the Way

At the heart of every new day in Bulembu is tomorrow. The future is what every hug, every meal, every article of clothing, every new building, every new bicycle, every new classroom is centered on. The best way to make sure there is a future for Bulembu and Swaziland as a whole is through preparation. The orphaned children in Bulembu are being prepared to make a way for a successful future.

One vital component in the preparation comes from the loving care they receive at home, another from the Biblical foundation being poured into their hearts, and another still is their education. The Bulembu Christian Academy is the epicenter for the children but because there are so many unknown elements behind each child’s arrival in Bulembu, throwing them into the mix just won’t work. Great care and compassion goes into preparing the way for each child. That’s the reason behind the Bulembu Primary School’s Education Development Centre (EDC).

Bulembu Primary School’s Principal, Michelle Loubser, and her team, Anje Steenkamp, Magdel De Klerk, and Lesley Shirk established the Education Development Centre in July 2011. Its purpose is to prepare the way for a proper fit in education for each child who will attend Bulembu Primary School (Grade 1 through Grade 6). The team uses specialized learning techniques that assess and analyze age respective level of academia. Whether educational barriers specific or emotional in nature, the educators and leaders believe it is far better for the child’s development that students are placed in classrooms where peers are of the same age regardless of their academic level. But it can be tremendously challenging integrating children with limited schooling background into age appropriate classrooms.

Whether through play therapy, interactive exercises, classroom lessons or individual work assignments, the EDC team approaches each lesson with two principles in mind: that education can be and should be fun, and that every child has great potential.

The EDC sees on average 30 children per week with each child receiving almost three hours of assessment and coaching in that week. Though each boy and girl is unique in his or her own circumstances, the faculty consistently works to address two overarching questions: what is the child’s learning barrier and how can it be overcome. It is the vision of the EDC staff to have each child reach the mastering stage in less than three months although there have been cases where some children have stayed in the program longer. The program stages are beginning, developing and mastering in terms of overcoming their learning barrier.

While most of the students who attend the EDC are new to the Bulembu school system, there are opportunities for students who have been in the system for a while but are struggling academically to be placed in the EDC program. That means the EDC and primary school function cohesively as one single entity creating customized teachings that cater specifically to a child’s individual learning style. The ultimate goal is to build upon the pillars that the primary school teachers continue to set in place; one preparing the way for the next steps in life.

Less than six months old, the EDC is already finding great success as the Swaziland government has taken notice and outside schools look to partner with the EDC. Most important, the children of Bulembu are being given the chance to succeed and continue to prepare the way for future generations.

By Theresia Whitfield

New Year; New School Campus

Dennis Neville - Director of Education

It’s a good problem to have, if you think about it: Too many students and not enough room. That means there are a lot more kids in Bulembu who are getting an education. But that can also make for an uncomfortable learning environment for both teacher and student. To accommodate for this growth, Bulembu Christian Academy has once again expanded and added a new high school campus.

The BCA high school building

As the children returned to school in the new year and after their recent holiday break, 74 students eagerly returned to a newly renovated building at Bulembu Christian High School.

Scientists in the making

“As we planned for 2012,” explained Dennis Neville, Director of Education,  Bulembu Christian Academy, “We found that the ideal situation would be to create a high school campus for our older children. We wanted to create the right learning environment for the older children as well as create a campus that they can be proud of and consider their own.”

First day back in class and working hard

 

Staff members worked hard at converting the former Welcome Centre into the new campus just in time for this school year to begin. The high school boasts five main classrooms, which include Grade 7, Form I, Form II, Form IVA and Form IVB, and a number of specialty classrooms including rooms for geography, design and technology, travel and tourism, and Afrikaans. (Forms I, II and III are essentially Grades 8 and 9 split over three years while Form IV is Grade 10.) The school also has an equipped science laboratory, a computer room and a small library.

Two students enjoying the library

“Our children need to spend more time reading and researching their work,” explained Dennis. “The library is an important part of this campus.”

Nondomiso - one of the teachers

Eleven full and part time teachers take part in the education of these students, and while they’re excited about enriching each individual students life, they are also faced with some challenges. Vital resources for the school are at a premium and Dennis hopes to be able to add textbooks, teacher resources and reference library materials soon. The other challenge is that this new location is only a temporary one until the permanent campus can be built.

More students hard at work

“We are trusting God for the finances to put towards the construction of this new campus over the next two years,” Dennis said. Until then, he and the students are looking forward to seeing tremendous growth in 2012.

Bobbie and Edwarda - administration staff

 

“Last year was an awesome year where we saw incredible results from our highest grade,” Dennis added. “We’re very proud of all that they managed to accomplish, and I’m excited to see both the teachers and the students make the high school campus a place of rich learning but also of fun.”

By: Theresia Whitfield

Learning Baking Secrets from Top Pastry Chef in Bulembu

The students call him Chef. Those who are fortunate enough to have had Chef Victor Helberg prepare tasty treats for them undoubtedly call him often! His culinary creations are called delightful, delicious, and delectable. Helberg, a Master Chef, is considered one of South Africa’s best pastry chefs. He’s been a chocolatier and pastry chef for 41 years and recently brought his expertise to Bulembu for a three-day workshop in cake baking and icing. He was brought to Bulembu by the Hospitality Training Centre (HTC), to teach 11 students on the fundamentals of baking and cake decorating.

Helberg, who started his training at the age of six, says being a chef is all about passion. “Unless you have passion in order to make something, you may as well give up catering and being a chef,” he said. “You have got to have passion.”

Chef Helberg definitely has passion to prepare food but to teach as well as to learn. His education began at the Silwood Kitchen Cordon Bleu School in Cape Town. Some might think this Master Chef can whip up a recipe on a whim but Helberg says he was taught to read the recipe: Learn the basics of all recipes and then use the recipe when cooking.

“I carry around with me a little black book,” he explained. “My little black book is comprised of about 150 pages and about 30,000 recipes which I can’t remember off-pat. I have my ingredients and then I have my summary method. That’s all that’s needed. As long as you know the science, the right balance of ingredients and making up recipes is simple.”

Helberg says one of the most important things about teaching a cooking class is not just in showing somebody how to make something but also in helping the student understand how not to make something.

“We have done vanilla cakes and chocolate cakes,” he said of his HTC baking class in Bulembu. “And some of them flopped! In the theory lesson, I showed them the theory: ‘Make it this way, this is what could happen.’ In the kitchen, that’s exactly what happened because they didn’t do what they were told to do.”

The mark of a good chef is one who is open to correction, something that is rare among most professional chefs.

“There must be no ego and there must be no attitude,” Helberg said. “You find a lot of chefs around the world – from trainees to master chefs – who have attitude and ego. Very few want to share, but it’s by sharing that you learn more.”

Helberg likes the idea of the creation of a chef’s association in Swaziland and hopes there will be a collective effort to make it work.

New adventures are on the horizon for this pastry chef come the beginning of the year when he’ll become Executive Pastry Chef for a new company. Helberg will be developing more than 100 different lines of products ranging from confessionary to baking and cakes to chocolates and everything in between for a food emporium.

Wherever his culinary creations take him, Chef Victor Helberg can be certain the citizens of Bulembu will be calling on him for future cooking classes as well as some of his most delightful, delicious and delectable treats!

Power to the People

It’s hard to believe that in this age of technology where people live in space (on the International Space Station), talking with someone around the world via video calls or text messaging is standard practice, and cars can parallel park themselves, there are places in the world where electricity is seen as magnificent opulence. While Bulembu does have electricity, its geographic location requires long power lines, leaving the electrical supply it does have quite unpredictable. The town’s inhabitants often encounter extreme frequency fluctuations and power outages, not to mention astronomically high monthly bills.

Bulembu’s current power supply comes from the Swaziland Electricity Company, which sources 60 – 80% of its energy by the burning of non-renewal fossil fuels. Bulembu Ministries Swaziland was looking for a solution but, as a non-profit organization, they needed to obtain external funding for whatever strategy they developed. Keeping in mind the goal of self-sustainability and a desire to move toward clean renewable energy, BMS developed a plan to establish a Solar PV (photo-voltaic) plant, or a Solar Array. And Development Bank of South Africa (DBSA) and the Energy and Environment Partnership (EEP) provided external funding.

SAR Electronic SA, the South Africa division of SAR Group, was recruited to design and install the plant. SAR Electronic SA’s green energy efforts are focused on the generation of energy from natural resources, matching perfectly with Bulembu’s desire to shift in the direction of clean renewable energy for the town.

The plant in Bulembu consists of “108 Bosch Mono-crystalline solar modules and two SMA STP 12000 inverters.” Sounds pretty technical but whatever all of that stuff is, it will produce 25 kilowatts of electricity. That’s about 8% of the electricity requirement of the town.

Eight-percent doesn’t sound like a lot, but the installation is destined to bring some relief and stabilize the power challenges Bulembu has been facing. And for a non-profit organization, every little bit is a tremendous help on the way to meeting their goals by 2020. This new Solar Array is definitely giving power to the people.

By: Theresia Whitfield

Bulembu in Germany

It’s hard to visit Bulembu and not walk away carrying a piece of it with you when you return home. The children, the people, the sights and sounds, the beauty of the community, and the joy that each person carries in the hope that comes with every new morning is ripe for the picking and available for you to tuck into the suitcase of your heart and mind forever. Most people who visit return home with a newfound zeal for making a difference wherever they are. But some just can’t shake what they left behind in Bulembu. Their physical work may have ended but they’re just not quite ready to give up volunteering on behalf of Bulembu. Such was the case for Gisela Miessner.

Vernon Puttkammer introduced Miessner, who hails from Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany, to Bulembu while vacationing in South Africa. Puttkammer is the Director Of Child Care while his wife, Leigh, works as the Child Care Administrator. Since that time, Miessner has become close friends with the couple and their two children and has made several trips to Bulembu. With each return trip, Miessner, 66, has brought goodies and schools supplies for the orphaned children and has taken several of them on safari so that they can enjoy their home country and wild life in their natural habitat. But it wasn’t enough to take the children on trips and bring them candy. They needed so much more. That’s when she decided to form “Kinderlächeln Bulembu” or “Children Smile Bulembu.”

The purpose of the association, which is based in Germany, is to give the orphans in Bulembu a safe home, to allow these children an education, to provide for their medical care and to give them safe sport and play facilities. Much of her fundraising will consist of monetary contributions and 100% of the funds will go back to Bulembu. But she’s not stopping there. As the club president, Miessner is determined to collect donations for clothing for children of all ages, including newborns, toiletries, school supplies, toys and blankets. “The simplest of things are lacking,” she explains. “They need everything you can imagine. We don’t take anything from the orphans. We are just volunteers. Every cent goes back to them.”

Miessner wants her German friends and countrymen to become engaged and see Bulembu for the potential it has. She wants people to take off the blinders to the reality of what awaits these orphaned children if they don’t receive the help and care they desperately need. Miessner now has a Facebook page and has an email address, kinderlaecheln-bulembu@web.de, to make it easy for people to make donations. And in March 2012, she’ll return to Bulembu with some of the fruits of her labor. But it’s only the beginning of what she hopes will be a lifetime of Children Smiling in Bulembu.