Merry Christams and a Happy New Year!!!!

This Christmas has been an amazing time for the children and staff, our children were blessed with many Christmas gifts – one Company gave our children gift vouchers so that this time we were able  to buy them good quality clothes and the children were able  to choose, what struck me more than anything is that even though our children are 12 to 16years old they were overwhelmed, they walked around the shop not knowing what to choose, we spent hours in the shops but it was a lot of fun.

 

A company paid for our staff lunch and for their Christmas gifts which was such a wonderful blessing for them.

 

Thank you for all the support you have given us this year, Lambano would never survive without your support.

 

May you have a blessed Christmas and a Happy New Year!!!

Peggy's farewell!!!

 Peggy's saying her farewell speech

 Children singing

 



 

Goodbye hugs

 

Lambano staff singing



TRIBUTE TO RICHARD GAULDIE OUR – DIRECTOR (TREASURER)

It is with great sadness that we announce the sudden death of our long term supporter, friend and treasurer, Richard Gauldie.

Richard has been one of our Directors (Treasurer) since the inception of Lambano Sanctuary in 2001.   Richard has over the years ensured that we followed strict accounting principles which ensured that we had a clean annual audit. 

I really appreciated his input, wisdom, advice and willingness to go the extra mile.  Richard’s contribution to Lambano has been immeasurable; he will be sadly missed.  

Condolences to his wife Dale and his children Ross and Kimberly, gone to soon but sitting at the feet of His Lord.

 
Management team and Michele Clark (DA counselor) with a few of our cyclists for the Momentum 94.7 cycle challenge!!!

IS A CURE FOR HIV TO PREVAIL IN SOUTH AFRICA?

HIV/AIDS has been a topic in South Africa for many years now and though we have been slowly making progress, we are not as far up in terms of progression as other countries. When the AntiRetroViral (ARV) drug was first introduced in South Africa, it seemed like the answer to our HIV/AIDS crisis; but its long-term side effects are still as controversial as ever. Following the announcement made by our Minister of Health Aaron Motsoaledi on Tuesday, 23 October 2012 – He said it was indeed the country’s greatest day because of the discovery made by our scientists. The country’s research team has once again conducted a study that has placed the country a step closer to controlling the HIV situation. A team of scientists at the Centre for the Aids Programme of Research in SA discovered that the immune systems of two women living with HIV were able to produce antibodies capable of neutralising and killing 88% of the virus. "Our scientists have also in the past helped us understand the mother-to-child transmission of the virus. Their ground breaking work brings us closer to developing an HIV vaccine," said Motsoaledi. I believe that this study has given hope to the country and a chance to take charge of our HIV pandemic. The main question is - how long will it take before this study is made practical in S.A? I pray that this is not a premature announcement or short-lived excitement because I just think of the greater things to come should the vaccine be a success. These are just my views as an individual, what are your views on the subject of HIV/AIDS and the announcement made by the Minister on Tuesday? Let’s interact on facebook, via twitter or blog comments.

Ohhh, what a week!!! This week has been a crazy week for the children. As you know, we have children in a number of different Schools and trying to organise everyone for the school concert was a little bit of challenge. Two of the schools had a concert this week and both were really amazing - the children enjoyed every moment of it. We regret that there are no photos we were not allowed to take our cameras in.

Don't forget to sign up for the 94.7 momentum cycle challenge!!!

Hospice children outing!

Few weeks ago we took the Hospice children out for an outing and what fun they had!!!

Fun in the snow!!!

 The mama's were also playing in the Snow :)

 Children's playground

 Mama Lyn having fun too :)

702 walk

After much anticipation, Sunday 22 July finally arrived... we dusted off our walking shoes, put on our new Lambano t-shirts and walked for 5kms to get the Lambano name out into the greater community of Johannesburg.



The Lambano staff

Thousands of people walked

 Yipeeee, we did it, we finished!

wouldn't  be Lambano without the singing - the staff sang for Mama Lesley for organising the

t - shirt and registration



It seems like yesterday when Sibylle left on furlough!

After Sibylle had been with us for 2 years, she went for 10 weeks on furlough.  She was solely missed and when she came back 2 weeks ago we were really happy to have her back but we were more excited about the Swiss chocolateJ.  Sibylle has agreed to stay with us for another 2 years.

Mandela day!!!

I have to confess Mandela Day is not my favourite day - the office is extremely busy, the phone calls don’t stop and visitors arrive in their droves but I have to say, the generosity of the people and companies is so amazing.

Some of the companies that came to work on the Mandela Day:

Sandpit

Sandpit staff came and painted one of our houses

also helped with the Garden



Immix

Immix staff playing with the children



they also collected groceries for us!!



Thank you all for making this day a blessing for our children.

School Holiday!!!!

Library visit! 

Boys having fun :)

Last Sunday  was Father’s day and it brought so much joy to us that, even if our children don’t have Fathers, we do have people in our Church and around us that contribute to that part.  In School our children were asked to write a Father’s day card and, when they came back from School , they showed us the cards - they wrote the cards for our pastor and some Sunday School teachers thanking them for being part of their lives. So this is a thank you to those  men that are involved in our children ‘s lives and also a cry for more male volunteers J

Today is the last day of School and our children are really excited to be on holiday!!!

Volunteers

Homework Grannies

These ladies have been such a big help to us. Helping our children with Homework

Guitar lessons

Our children like to play instruments and when a volunteer emailed and told us that he would like to give Guitar lessons to our children we were more than happy, we had a guitar that was donated to us a year ago and we wondered who was going to use this guitar.  This shows that every donation is a big help to us.  Three of our children are now doing guitar lessons every Friday and they are enjoying themselves.

Art classes

Most of our children like Art and every Friday there is a lady that comes and gives Art lessons tp some of our children. She has already identified a few of our children as being good with Art .

No matter how big or small your help is we truly appreciate it!!

After about 18 months of hard work and much frustration Barbara was able to finalise Tebogo's adoption and passport. They flew back to Wisconsin on the 7th of May and arrived there safely. Barbara was with Lambano for 6 years and what a blessing she was to us, so it was sad to say goodbye to her and Tebogo, but we pray that they will both settle in quickly  

 We serve an amazing God!!!

The past few months have been financially tough for Lambano, with this month being the toughest - we couldn't even pay our credit card (which we use to buy food, clothes, repair materials etc) at the end of April. But yesterday a company donated enough money to cover our costs for the next two months (we have never received such a large donation before). You can imagine how overcome with emotion we all were - we serve an awesome and generous God.

Computer problems

We have been struggling with our computers for over a year now. Finally we decided that we needed to upgrade our computer systems and set about getting quotes - my goodness but people can take you for a ride! It turns out that we were duped 5 years ago when we wanted to network our computers - we were sold a programme that would suit a company with 100 + users plus the expensive hardware needed to accommodate it.  After months of seeking advise we found a cheaper solution and went looking for someone to install and manage it for us. God was gracious to send us Stefan who is in the process of making this happen for us.  It's been very frustrating for all concerned because even the simplest change he tries to make seems to cause headaches (we seem to have some computer gremlin that's taken up residence!) .  We are also finding it difficult to get used to a new and slower system which, for this bunch of speed queens, has been quite a learning curve.  It seems we still have a good few weeks of tweaking to undergo so please pray that things will go well. In the meantime, please be patient with us since we cannot provide the same kind of service we usually do.


Sibylle has been with Lambano for two years - she mostly worked with the Hospice children so, when she was preparing to go home on furlough we knew that we would face many challenges especially with taking the Hospice children to all the Hospital visits. Sibylle is back home in Switzerland and we hope that she is enjoying her holiday. She will be back with us at the end of June - we can't wait! 

We have another volunteer from Australia - Sisi, a nurse, has come to Lambano for a year and she will be helping with the Hospice and taking the children to Hospital! She is really excited to be here and we are so grateful to have her.



Every Wednesday I bake with the children at the 36 House. Bearing in mind that I'm no baker, everything that we bake I either got the recipe from Google or from someone at Church. It's been a lot of fun as most of the time when we are done with the baking the children have flour all over their clothes and hair. Some of the dishes have come out well and some of them have been really interesting but the children eat it all regardless.  Last week we made brownies (the recipe was from Mama Jenna) and it came out not too bad. Thanks Jenna for the recipe! So this is a plea for all the bakers out there to send us your recipes (the easy ones please)and we will try them then let you know how they came out :)

Easter blessings!

Our office was filled with hampers on Tuesday thanks to Charmaine and her staff who donated 17 hampers for our staff and children. The children really enjoyed the Easter eggs!

School

Wychwood Primary School had athletics on Wednesday and one of our boys came 1^st in all his races, he was so happy about that!

Claudine, Cynthia and Dany

Naledi Projects from Luxemburg is one of our sponsors and they have been supporting Lambano for many years. They provided the funds to buy and renovate the Hospice in 2010 and they are currently working with us on enlarging it to fulfil the Hospice Association’s requirements and provide a few more much needed beds. The also provide the funds for the School Feeding project.

Every 2^nd year they come to visit us and their schedule is quit hectic, meeting up with some of our board members and other people involved with the Hospice and School projects. We are really grateful for their continued sponsorship!

I’ve been on holiday and the blog hasn’t been updated in a long time but thanks to all of you that have helped updating while I was away.

Extra special treat for the children on their birthdays

Auntie Ruth is one of our long term volunteers and every Tuesday and Thursday she visits 78 house and 34 house and plays games with the children, bakes with them and reads stories to them. The children love having Auntie Ruth around!

When it’s one of the children’s birthday, Auntie Ruth takes the birthday child to her house for a sleepover and the birthday person gets to choose a friend to go with them. This is really exciting for the children because they get to sleep late and choose whatever they want for supper! Thank you Auntie Ruth for loving our children in this way.

January birthdays

February birthdays

Outing for the boys:

Jeppe Boys, one of the top high schools in our area, have a Foundation that provides scholarships for underprivileged boys. As part of their programme they encourage these boys to get involved in outreach to their community. Since we have had a relationship for many years with Jeppe Boys, they approached us, offering to spend time with our children. Last month they organised for our bigger boys to spend the day with them where they swam, played rugby and were also treated to a braai! They are hoping to do something like this once a term. This is a wonderful opportunity for our boys to have some male companionship and, hopefully some good role models.

Schooling:

For some time now we have been dissatisfied with the level of teaching and discipline in the school which most of our children attend. We were therefore very grateful to Leicester Road Primary School for accepting three of our grade 6 children into their school at half the normal school fees. Because the standard of the school they were in, these are having an uphill battle trying to catch up with the other learners. They attend extra lessons for Afrikaans, English and Maths that the school provides free of charge. We are so grateful to the Leicester Road teachers for putting in this extra effort for our children.

We are trying to move all our children to better schools but it’s hard to find good schools that have room for extra children! We were lucky to find place for our Grade 1, 2 and 3 children at Sunny Ridge Primary School and they will go there from the second term (April). We already have a child attending the school – it was the only school in the area that had a remedial class that could provide learning for this child. Since many of our children have learning problems and are going to need remedial help either now or in the future, this is an ideal school for us. We will try to get the other children (grades 4-6) into this school next year.

Volunteers

At the moment we don’t have any volunteers to help with the driving to clinics and schools and to help supervise homework. And that’s why we are appealing those of you who have friends who are qualified teachers or someone who can help with the driving around and who are looking to volunteer in an orphanage for few months. If you are interested please do email us.

Fanele

Fanele, one of our Girls from Hospice past away last sunday, somehow unexpected for us. We loved her and we miss her a lot!!!!

Time to say good bye!

It has been a very busy time since the New Year started and a special time for all of us, as 3 Volunteers left, to go back home to their Country.

Devyn who stayed with us since August 2011 went back to America, Sarah who stayed with us since September 2011 went back to Switzerland and Sandra who stayed with us since December 2011 went back to Paraguay.

All of them have been a huge help to us in terms of driving around, cleaning our storerooms, helping the kids with their home work, helping in the Office during Martha is on leave and for all the time they spent with our kids and entertained them during the weekends and holidays.

It was very sad for the kids and all of us to say good bye. But we wish them all the best and may god bless them. And of course we hope they will at least visit us soon again…

If you know of anybody who is interested of being a Volunteer at Lambano – please let us know, extra help is always needed!!!

Back to school!

On the 18^th of January all our kids went back to school.

It was a very special day especially for 5 of our kids:

The 3 who started Grade 6 are now going to a new School. They are attending the classes now a Leicester Road School. We are very excited about this because it’s a really good school and we would not ordinarily be able to afford their fees, but they have agreed for us to pay 50% of the school fees. This is still a lot of money but we feel it’s worth it to raise the level of our children’s skills to prepare them for High School in two year’s time. The children are really enjoying their new school.

They have already started with extra classes in Math, English and Afrikaans.

We also had 2 children start Grade 1. Since the classes at Wychwood are so overcrowded we decided to run Grade 1 our premises. The preschool teacher who has been running our preschool for about 5 years is going to teach them Grade 1. Again Leicester Road School has helped us by giving us the materials and curriculum to do this.

Since their biggest disappointment of not going to “Big School” was the uniform and school bag, we put together a uniform for them to wear every day and gave them school bags just like the older children have. They are very proud to wear their uniform and do their homework after school.

This week we had a strategic planning meeting and one thing that stood out for all of us is that it was hard for us to make the commitment to come and work at Lambano (As the wise one – Lyn said we all came kicking, screamingJ), but the Lord changed our hearts, showing us that this was where He wanted us to be. Each one of us can now agree that working here has been a privilege and a blessing.

We have grown to love our jobs and that for me would be shopping, something that I use to dread – The Lord has a sense of humour! This week I had to take most of the school-going children (17 of them) shopping for their School uniforms as most of our children have outgrown last year’s clothes. The shopping was an adventurous outing - going in and out of the fitting room and people staring at me like I’m a mad woman. Some bolder people came to ask if the children were mine, I mean most of the children are the same age and they all look different, but I’d just nod and say yes, they are all my children and the look that I get is priceless!

Yesterday two of our children had a sinus operation, quite a lengthy and painful procedure. They are both back from Hospital and are doing very well. They will go back for their check-up on Friday next week.

My plea to live!!!

This poem was written by one of the Hospice children who is 16 years old. The letter that follows was written with the help of the Nursing Sister in charge of the Hospice, but the thoughts belong to this young girl. She is resistant to all the antibiotics that would cure her renal disease but one and this drug is very expensive so this letter and poem was send to one of our local Radio Stations with the hope of gathering funds towards the drug. She has already had her first 14 days of treatment and is just beginning her next 14 days because the infection has not cleared completely. Once this treatment is completed, we will do another sonar to check her status and, if the infection has still not cleared completely, she will have to have a third course of the antibiotic. This is her last chance as there are no other drugs to help her.

I thought I was alone but I was wrong.

God gave me people in my life, like my Granny and the people of Lambano.

When I was sick I thought I would die before my time.

My mother gave me birth and left me like this.

I thank God for my Granny and Lambano...

Behind my smile is a hurting heart.

Behind my thought I am falling apart...

look closely at me and you will see

the person I am isn’t me...

I am very ill and need medication now that will help me.

I live in an NGO named LAMBANO SANCTUARY in the hospice section. I was admitted on 29 September 2011 with complications due to HIV and TB. Lambano treated me when I was admitted. Lambano hospice provides me with the best possible treatment and care to improve my quality of life.

I was admitted to the hospital during October 2011, and moved to five different wards without any treatment for my renal problem. Lambano re-admitted me to their care and started a 21 day treatment of antibiotics. The cost of this treatment and tests is very expensive. My condition improved a lot and Lambano decided to continue further treatment to help me.

During December, my body resisted the cheaper drugs and Lambano paid a further R19, 000 for medication to improve my quality of life. I know need another 14 day treatment to the value of R19, 000 which Lambano will pay but their funds are low.

Please help Lambano to help me to live and be able to have the medication that I need.

Thank you for reading my plea...