The Tembari Children’s Care compound. - More pics after the story.By ALFREDO P HERNANDEZ
A Friend of Tembari Children
LAST Friday, I got a surprise news from the email: Curtain Bros (PNG) of Port Moresby would like to donate a 20TEU container van to Tembari.
The company is one of the prestigious and dominant groups operating in PNG doing an impressive array of engineering and transport expertise to the resource and construction industries. (visit http://www.curtainbros.com.pg)
With the real state boom in and out of the capital city alongside the booming construction business triggered by the on-going LNG projects, Curtain Bros has become one of the busiest of engineering groups.
Justin McGann, an executive at Curtain Bros, said the container van would help us store our foodstuff and other properties.
I don’t know how the company knew of our storage problems.
But I supposed that Curtain Bros is among the hundreds of companies in my email file receiving weekly updates on Tembari activities through my blog site www.tembari.blogspot.com.
And in one of my blog postings, I appealed for a donation of a container van which we could use as storage.
Curtain Bros had asked where Tembari could be found as it would like to deliver the item as soon as possible.
I really appreciate the company’s gesture.
It’s quite timely because we are accumulating materials donations – from cookware to white goods such as refrigerators and freezers, bags of rice and flour, cartons of tinned fish and cordial drinks – and storing them has become a big problem.
We badly need a secure storage for our food supply and materials and properties.
Just for instance, a few days ago, we received a donation of 67 cartons of foodstuff and such were more than enough to clog up every space available at our little office, which happens to be a renovated container van also.
On top of this are foodstuff delivered by donors just a few days ago.
Sometime last year, on the night immediately after the first delivery of several bags of rice and cartons of fresh milk was made, courtesy of one of our earliest donors, a group of village raskols tried to break into the container van where the foodstuff were stored.
But the container van probed to be a sturdy piece of steel enclosure, and the raskols took off empty handed.
Immediately, we reported the incident to the community leadership, who later identified the culprits and warned them never to touch Tembari again.
But we don’t want to be too trusting.
The container van is the only solution to frustrating future theft.
Since then, I have never stopped wishing for one (container van) for Tembari.
Also, we have started expanding our premises to provide space for future facilities like the food storage out of container van from Curtain Bros.
What I am trying to say is that we are trying to reclaim several square meters of land area from the hillside immediately next to the Tembari center.
We are doing this using a hired bulldozer to scrape the hillside to carve out new area of paved grounds around our premises.
So far, we had done two days of land-scraping through a hired bulldozer, costing us at least K1,000 (US$435) for a four-hour equipment use.
But there’s still a big area to cover, which would mean more kina to bleed on.
I hope Curtain Bros appreciate our needs and spare us one of their earthmoving machines – for free -- to complete the job for us.
But whatever further assistance that Curtain Bros could extend to Tembari on behalf of our beneficiary children, we would greatly appreciate it.
Help from our supporters has always been a big deal.
But the impact of the gesture is greater when it comes from the unexpected -- such as Curtain Bros.
A million thanks to you.
An unfinished portion of ground works at Tembari premises. The earthwork was carried out by a hired bulldozer over two days but the job has not been completed so far. Tembari is reclaiming some paved ground from the hillside as part of its ground-expansion project to accommodate a 19m x 7m classroom building for construction by January 2012.
The front of Tembari compound showing landfill from the earthwork.Email the blogger for reaction: ahernandez@thenational.com.pg and aphernandez58@yahoo.com
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