The Center will have water soon

The newly-delivered 1,000-gallon water tank dwarfs the Tembari kids who are taking shelter from the sun.


By ALFREDO P HERNANDEZ
A Friend of Tembari Children


FINALLY, after a long delay, the 1,000-gallon water tank for The Center’s water facility project was delivered by the supplier last week.

Installing a water facility is one of The Center’s major projects. The other one is electricity, which we expect to have very soon.

The water tank, alongside the needed attachments like pipes and more, has been provided by the RH Foundation – the charity arm of RH (PNG) Group.

As soon as RH Foundation learned of our difficulty of obtaining water for our day-to-day needs at The Center, it did not hesitate to shoulder the cost of the materials for a water facility.

We use water to cook the daily meals of our beneficiary children and clean the cooking utensils.

To do this, volunteer mothers would need several buckets of water which they have to collect from the settlement water tap some 200 meters away.

The settlement water facility is being run by a community association called the Oro Community Development Association (OCDA), which charges fees to users.

But the problem with this service is that OCDA decides when to let the water flow.

It does not tell the users like us as to when it would come so we could anticipate for it, and thus wait for it. It has no fixed schedule. So you really have to wait by the water tap the whole time, ready with your bucket, if you badly needed water.

Sometimes, water would come late in the night, thus keeping people awake the whole night while collecting water and hauling them off to their houses.

The same thing goes for our volunteer moms assigned to collect water for The Center.

Due to the difficulty in having water, our beneficiary children would usually skip washing hands before eating.

And they don’t drink water but instead, would just make do with cordial drink, prepared from water collected from the public faucet. And this is, most of the time, contaminated because it is collected in not-so-clean, uncovered buckets.

It is a common knowledge that anybody who had just meals should drink at least a glass of water because it is needed to digest the food taken.

Our children at The Center would skip drinking water – a clean one at that – after their meals. And it is a pity for them.

That’s why I tried my best to encourage The Water Company (TWC), a purified water provider, to donate to the children on a weekly basis at least six 19-liter containers of their water product.

I would collect this donation every Friday from TWC and bring it to The Center the next day when I do my especial cooking for the children. Then, I return the empty containers for refill.

It is only then that our children would have really iced and clean water. And they could easily consume a container-full in matter of 15 minutes. That’s how thirsty they are for drinking water.

Hopefully, this sad experience of our kids would end soon.

The facility will be put in place by ABC Builders, Filipino-Papua New Guinean company owned by Johnny Ala as its assistance to the Tembari Children’s Care (TCC).

It is being facilitated by Engr Joselito Buenaventua, a New Zealand-based construction engineer who is supervising a K170 million hotel project in Port Moresby owned by Holiday Inn POM.

The project involves two high-rise hotel suite buildings next to the existing Holiday Inn hotel building and is being handled by Canam Construction, a New Zealand-based company – Joe’s employer.

Yesterday, Joe took a quick break from the work site and drove up to The Center to supervise the unloading of used timber materials that we needed for some of our future projects.

The timber materials came from the compound of ABC Builders in Port Moresby.

Joe discovered the Tembari children through the blogsite www.tembari.blogspot.com while surfing the internet when he was still in New Zealand.

At that time, he was preparing to migrate to Port Moresby and one of his first agenda upon settling in this city was to meet the Tembari children and find out how he can help them.

Joe discussed with me and Hayward Sagembo, the Tembari Children Center (TCC) president, how he intends to install the water tank.

Joe told us that Johnny Ala, one of his hotel project subcontractors, is ready to help The Center with what it needs to complete the water facility, like plumbers, equipment and materials.

The good news after the first good news is that Johnny is also willing to help The Center with whatever improvements it needed to boost its facilities, according to Joe.

He said with a better facility, The Center could improve the services it provides to its beneficiary children.

Like having a stable source of water for drinking and more.

And the water facility would be his first project for The Center.

Cheers to that!

Engr Joe Buenaventura supervises the unloading of timber materials at the backyard of The Center. The delivery was made by the ABC Builders, a construction company in Port Moresby.

Joe sorts our timber materials that could be used to build tables and chairs for use at The Center.

Joe and Hayward Sagembo, president of Tembari Children Center, pose for a picture under the shade of a half-completed chicken house, a part of a planned livelihood project of The Center


Email me: alfredophernandez@theantional.com.pg
jarahdz500@online.net.pg
freddiephernandez@yahoo.com