God always provides: A surprise donor for Saturday feeding program

By ALFREDO P HERNANDEZ
A Friend of Tembari Children


IT was Thursday night and I was a bit uneasy.

I only had a cash of K150 (US$52) in my wallet and 15kg of banana prawn sitting in a freezer at Our Yes Grocery at Gordons.

The cash and prawn were supposed to go into the ingredients that I would be cooking on Saturday for the Tembari Children’s special lunch. The banana prawn, by the way, was a donation from High Energy Co Ltd, a fishing company based in Port Moresby.

Having cooked for them special Saturday lunch since last January without fail, I knew that the available cash won’t be enough to cover all what I would cook on that day.

The four Saturdays of the month – first, second, third and fourth – are already covered by permanent feeding sponsors who chip in K150 each for the materials.

For this Saturday feeding - the first Saturday of October – the fund came from permanent sponsor Nanga Medical Center owned by Rey and Lulu Lambo.

However, this amount won’t be enough to feed 97 children at Tembari Center. The soaring cost of food items in Port Moresby is truly heartbreaking

So, I would look for a counterpart sponsor – in short, a co-sponsor – who would chip in another K150 to beef up the feeding fund.

But as of Friday morning, I haven’t found the missing co-sponsor. Or maybe, I did not try harder looking for one.

I took it in stride, anyway, deciding to revise the menu I had prepared for Saturday into something less costly to cook.

In short, I have to cut corners to make both ends meet, so to speak.

On Friday after lunch while at work, I had a visitor – Mae Odocayen, the sister of the late Dr Lu Lagayan, who recently passed away in the Philippines after being in coma for more than a month despite being looked after by two medical facilities in Port Moresby.

Finally, after a long delay, Dr Lu was brought home to Manila for the much-needed medical attention. But all was late and that her doctors finally gave her up. She died peacefully at home.

Mae came to see me regarding an ad booking with The National that she wanted to come out on Tuesday, December 5.

The ad placement will announce the names of all the people who helped the Lagayan-Romulo family paid for cost of Dr Lu’s medical expenses while in Port Moresby and also to announce the 40th day of mass offering for her at St Mary’s Cathedral in downtown Port Moresby.

Having arranged for the payment with our advertising cashier, I came back to Mae who was at the reception lobby and gave her the payment invoice.

Then, just before she took off to go back to CE Hardware at Grodons where she works, she handed me an envelope.

“Kuya Freddie, that’s for your feeding program this Saturday …” she said. “Kuya” is Filipino for “big brother”, the Filipino’s reference to a person his/her senior. The female counterpart is “ate, pronounced as ‘ah-teh’”, or “big sister”.

It was a big surprise. I had already given up hope in finding the counterpart money.

I was unable to ask Mae how she learned of my feeding program. But I had assumed that she heard of it from Dr Adel Lagayan, Dr Lu’s husband, who had also helped my Saturday feeding program in the past.

I thanked my Lord for the surprise money and thank Him again because my networking with people I know and don’t know continuously makes wonder for the Tembari Children.

Back in my work station upstairs, I opened the envelope. It yielded two K100 notes!

No kidding!

Since I have already decided on what to cook the next day, which cost about more than K250 (US$87), I used the extra money to buy other small items of bits and pieces that are needed for the day-to-day cooking at The Center.

Every time donations would come from people whom I did not expect to give because I never asked them for it, I felt goose-bumps crawling all over me.

So to all individuals and entities who had help and those who continuously help the Tembari Children, may the God Lord bless you everyday for your good hearts.

As Filipinos fervently believe, what you had given to the needy despite your bleeding over it would come back to you ten-fold.


A volunteer mother tending to a pot of soup.

A pot of rice is boiling over firewood-fed drum stove.

A volunteer mother stirring a pot of boiling soup.

Kids sipping their steaming hot soup.

Kids eating their lunch of stir fried prawn and mungo beans.

Engr Joe Buenaventura and Totoy enjoying lunch with the Tembari children.

Kids have loved the soup so much that they go for a second helping. Picture shows them as they crowded a pot of soup.

Totoy (left) and Joe pose for a picture with the preschoolers inside their classroom.


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Teaching volunteer mothers how to cook Filipino’s 'puto'

puto steamer in the process of cooking “puto”, a Filipino steamed cake while a volunteer mother tends to it.

Close up of the “puto” steamer.

A volunteer mom slices a newly steamed puto for taste-testing.

A pile of whole meal flour donated by Lae Biscuits, part of the two tons delivered to The Center recently.

By ALFREDO P HERNANDEZ
A Friend of Tembari Children


IMMEDIATELY after the Tembari children finished their special lunch on Saturday, I started laying out on the table the ingredients for the Filipino pastry called “puto” (steamed flour cake).

By the way, I usually refer to our Saturday lunch as being special because it is indeed one.

From Monday to Friday, the Tembari children eat boiled rice, tinned fish, veggies, cordial and fresh milk. A tiresome meal (we can’t help it but this is better than eating kaukau (sweet potato) at lunch), the meal is prepared by our volunteer mothers.

But on Saturday, I take over to cook for the children. This makes the Saturday lunch really special.

To give their diet a variety, I would cook for them something great – lunch which would consist of meat, chicken or fish fillet (or prawn) dish, rice, veggies, special soup, cordial and fresh milk. The Saturday lunch is paid for by what I call two “sponsors” who would chip in K150 each to cover the ingredients.

Now, this flour recipe for “puto” was something our volunteer mothers saw for the first time. Whenever they cooked using flour, they would make a soft mass of it, and had it deep fried. Or they cooked it with coconut milk and some other stuff.

But since we have just received a donation of two tons of whole meal flour from Lae Biscuits, we decided to use it everyday before weevils or bugs finally attack it.

In fact, I already saw bugs in one of the bags that I opened yesterday, when I took some flour for the new recipe.

I wanted the volunteer mothers to learn new ones to give the children a variety of meals everyday.

Last Saturday, I taught them how to cook hot cake. It is a simple recipe so the mothers were very interested in doing it at least three times a week.

The puto recipe is quite complicated by the mothers’ standard, so I went slowly through it, explaining why I did what I did on certain ingredients.

The Filipino “puto” which is usually called “steamed dumpling” by the Malaysians and Chinese, needed a steamer. So I went around town looking for one to suit my purpose and found one a J-Mart supermarket at Erima. It cost us K205 (US$87) for the two-layer steamer set.

For my cooking demo, I prepared flour, margarine, vanilla extract, baking powder, sugar and water. The puto batter that we heaped on small tin bowls was cooked in about 30-35 minutes.

As expected, the taste-test elicited just one reaction: the puto was good, very delicious and the children would love this even if served to them everyday.

I am very familiar with this recipe. In my youth during the 50s, my mother used to steam puto made of rice flour, and not wheat flour like we used at The Center, which I sold around our neighborhood every afternoon.

This was my mother’s way of boosting the measly wage that my father received from his employers at the iron mines near our barrio (village) in Bicol, in the Philippines.

And at my flat here in Port Moresby, I, on occasions, cooked puto which I brought to work for snacks.

So it was a piece of cake showing our volunteer mothers how to do it.

Next time, I would show them how to cook “chakoy” a Filipino favorite which is sort of a counterpart to doughnut. But I find chakoy more delicious than doughnut, to tell you the truth.

This recipe is complicated, as it uses yeast and takes about two hours to prepare before finally cooking it. I did this recipe during my early days here in Port Moresby, back in 1993, to fight weekend boredom in my apartment.

I also told the mother volunteers that “puto” goes great with grated coconut. So, brought out some freshly grated coconut I prepared at home and served them the freshly-steamed puto topped with it.

Indeed, a new experience for their taste buds!

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Filipino Association of PNG (FAPNG) raises fund for Tembari children

The Pretty Young Thing (PYT) sing-and-dance act from Manila belts it out on Saturday night during the Hatid-Saya 2010 dinner-fundraising concert at Hideaway hotel. The concert is an annual initiative of the Filipino Association of PNG (FAPNG) to raise funds for charity. The Tembari Children Care (TCC), along with the Pediatrics Ward of the Port Moresby General Hospital, are this year’s funding grant beneficiaries.

By ALFREDO P HERNANDEZ
A Friend of Tembari Children

THE Tembari children were lucky enough to be one of the only two beneficiaries of a fundraising dinner-concert staged by the Filipino Association of PNG (FAPNG) last night at Hideaway Hotel at 6-Mile.

The association’s annual event Hatid-Saya 2010 (Courier of Fun) is also giving assistance to the Paediatrics Ward of the Port Moresby General Hospital.

As usual, the dinner-concert was a sell out. It was the only time for Filipinos in Port Moresby that they could watch the performance of known acts from Manila.

And they watch with excitement and satisfaction an all-girl sing-and-dance group Pretty Young Thing comprising Ava, Dania and Nichole, who succeeded in enthralling their audience with their musical energy.

Association president Joey Sena is quite familiar with the Tembari children, and in fact, has become a donor through their family company Unversal Ventures.

The Hatid-Saya 2010 fundraiser has given Joey a better opportunity to further help our children by involving the Filipino community in Port Moresby.

He told last night’s audience that FAPNG has been holding this regular annual event to entertain city residents and to raise money for charity.

With the concert’s generous sponsors and supporters that enabled FAPNG to import such a very talented group of three young performers, the audience was truly entertained.

And obviously, the ultimate winners are the POMGH and the Tembari children.


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Indian community’s generous donation

By ALFREDO P HERNANDEZ
A Friend of Tembari Children

THE Indian Association of PNG (IAPNG) was kind enough to include the Tembari Children Care (TCC) as a beneficiary of its fundraiser on Saturday night dubbed India Nite 2010.

Held at the Sir John Guise Stadium at Gordons, the show was aimed at cultural integration to bring together the people of India and Papua New Guinea.

Although my letter of request for funding assistance came at a time when the IAPNG board was already deliberating on what group should receive assistance, it was given kind consideration.

I addressed the request to association president Sudhir Guru of City Pharmacy.

Through the intercession of Krishna Raj, the association secretary who discussed during a meeting why The Center should also be considered for funding assistance, my appeal for help was immediately given credence and thus, included among seven other charitable groups operating in Port Moresby, notably among them the Cheshire Home of Hohola and the Charity of St Anne of Gerehu.

It was the first time that IAPNG heard about the Tembari children, although some from the Indian community have already been helping our children in one way of the other, namely Sadjani and Shian Kattapuram, Manas Panicker and Chandy Kurien – all of Trade Link International (TLI) which is engaged in trading industrial and health products, vehicles and farm machinery.

Just before the cultural show ended, Mr Guru explained the night’s event, saying that the show was not only a showcase of Indian culture and values but also means to raise funds which can be donated to charity organizations and people in need.

He said it was their little ways of giving back to the Papua New Guinean community, for which the association has donated close to K1 million to various organizations in PNG.

Mr Guru also announced the eight beneficiaries of the fundraiser, including the Tembari children which received a cheque for K2,000.

The association is an organization of about 80 Indian families living in Port Moresby, with some of the members having lived in PNG for about 20-25 years.

“Many of our kids have been born and brought up in PNG and have learnt Papua New Guinean ways.

“It is our responsibility to ensure that we contribute to the development and improvement of this young nation which many of us call home away from home.”

The event’s special guests were NCDC Governor Powes Parkop and the PNG High Commissioner in India Tarcy Eri.

The funding assistance would greatly help in boosting the day to day cash flow of The Center whose children’s needs are growing everyday.

Indian children singing the national anthems of India on Saturday during the cultural presentation sponsored by the Indian Association of PNG (IAPNG) at the Sir John Guise Stadium in Port Moresby.

A cultural dance presentation participated in by the members of the Indian community in Port Moresby.

Association president Sudhir Guru delivering a remark before the presence of special guests NCD Gov Powes Parkop and PNG High Commissioner in India Tarcy Iri in which he explained the goal of India Nite 2010.

NCD Gov Powes Parkop (left) and PNG High Commissioner in India Tarcy Iri intently listening to Mr Guru’s speech.

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Sometimes, good fortune comes with inconvenience

By ALFREDO P HERNANDEZ
A Friend of Tembari Children

FOR EVERY good fortune, there would sometimes be a counterpart inconvenience. And for such inconvenience, would there be a way out of it?

When Fabian Chow, manager of Lae Biscuits branch at Gerehu, informed me that his company will be donating flour to the Tembari children, I was just thinking of a few bags, which could tide The Center over during days when our children’s food stock would be running low.

But no. Mr Chow said on the phone the Tembari Children Care Center (TCC) will be getting two pallets of flour in 25kg bags – for a total of 40 bags, equivalent to one ton.

And Lae Biscuits won’t deliver. I have to pick the goodies myself, within seven days. Or else, I forfeit the donation.

What to do? I cannot load them in my 20-year-old 323 Mazda station wagon and transport the whole batch to The Center some 30 minutes away.

My new-found friend in the person of Trevor Lyall, a Kiwi working at a building project of the Holiday Inn in Port Moresby, offered to pick the flour up and haul it off to The Center at ATS Oro Settlement, at 7-Mile on the other side of the Jackson international airport.

At Lae Biscuit’s Gerehu warehouse, the Filipino warehouse assistant showed me the flour donation – in two pallets.

“That’s two tons … 80 bags in all (of 25k),” he told me.

“Two tons…? I thought it was only one ton ….?”

No, he said. “Two tons in all …”

“Do you have somebody to help you load them up into your truck?” he asked.

“What do you mean …? You mean we can’t take the flour in their pallets?”

I asked him that because if we were to take the goods in their pallets, loading them into Trevor’s mini-truck would be easy. And the warehouse forklift could easily lift and ease them into our mini-truck in matter of a few minutes.

But this was not to happen.

The warehouse man said we could not take the pallet with us because they are also needed at the warehouse for other packed goods.

Well, for those not familiar with pallets, they are a flat transport structure that supports goods in a stable fashion while being lifted by a forklift, pallet jack, front loader or other jacking device.

So, for almost an hour, I, Trevor and the Papua New Guinean who works as his assistant at the hotel project, and who also doubled as our bodyguard, sweated it out transferring the flour from the forklift into the truck’s open bed.

Arriving at The Center some 30 minutes later, I had another problem: Where to store the 80 bags of flour.

The truth is that The Center is actually made up of two classrooms fashioned out from two junk container vans. Called the community learning centers, or CLCs, they were donated to The Center by Digicel Foundation for use by our 45 preschoolers, who are orphans, neglected and abandoned children.

However, one of the CLCs actually was converted into “office” and storage room for some of our properties and foodstuff donations.

Wagi, the volunteer-caretaker, said the entire flour stock could be accommodated inside the CLC, to sit side by side with other stuffs.

Soon after half of the flour was moved inside the CLC, almost half of the space had already been occupied, leaving just a small room to serve as passage way in getting in and out of the container.

Then, while the goods were being worked, guess who arrived at The Center?

No-one but Marina van der Vlies, chief executive of Digicel Foundation, who was pleasantly surprised to see me (we last saw each other last December at a Digicel Foundation Christmas party for the city’s unfortunate children).

Surprised to see Trevor’s mini-truck parked right in front of the CLC, Marina asked what was going on.

I immediately tried to beat her into it. I said: “Well, I hope you won’t be upset to see these bags of flour inside the CLC … they are messing up the whole place …”

“Yeah … I know … you got no other place to store this stuff … and it’s messing up the classroom …”

And I could only utter “yeah …”

Then, she said: “I think I should send you another container to serve as your storage for your food supplies and other things.”

Marina, by the way, dropped by to see the progress of a daylong workshop on livelihood skill training program being held at the Tembari Center for certain parents at the settlement. To be held one day at a time in 14 other CLCs in settlement areas around Port Moresby, the training program is being sponsored by Digicel Foundation.

Then, I have another “inconvenience” arising from a windfall of this flour donation: how to make use of this huge raw material.

I knew how poor Papua New Guinean families use flour for their daily meals – they make a soft mass of it by mixing it with water and little salt. Then they fry it in deep oil. That’s all. No fun-fare like what I used to do with flour at home.

I knew this because long time ago, I used to supply a poor Papua New Guinean family friend with a 10kg bag of flour every 10 days.

And the mother of the family would just mix the flour with water and little salt until she produced a soft mass. Then, she would fry it in deep, hot oil. Her family consumed it with a tea at breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Now, with two tons of flour material at their disposals, I really don’t know how our seven volunteer-mothers would handle this food resource.

May be they would be frying it everyday like my friend-family did with the flour that I gave them, and serve it for the children’s noontime snacks with cordial?

I’m pretty sure this wouldn’t work with the kids, who could go tired eating the same thing day in day out.

So I have a plan: I will teach our volunteer mothers with at least four flour recipes that I used to do on weekends when I was just a new migrant here in Port Moresby. I did this to beat my boredom of living alone.

I could teach them how to do pancakes (or hotcakes), steamed flour cake Filipino style (“puto”), Filipino-style doughnut and simple bread baked with yeast (pandesal).

Well, introducing these new recipes to them has also a counterpart “inconvenience”. But I won’t tell you about it, lest you think I am a cry baby.

What I would have to do is plan it very well. For all you know, I would be cooking flour recipes for 97 children and this is no joke!

For instance: How long would it take you to cook pancakes for all the 97 children – one pancake at a time?

Answer: Cooking a piece for three minutes each, it could take you more than four hours.

Inconvenient? Perhaps.

The 80 bags of whole meal flour are being unloaded and moved into the CLC for storage. Kiwi guy Trevor Lyall is shown on the right as he gets off his mini-truck.


Bags of flour (25kg) are being arranged inside the container.

Marina van der Vlies, Digicel Foundation chief executive and Trevor Lyall, planning supervisor at New Zealand-based construction firm Canam Construction pose for a picture.

Trevor Lyall with the Tembari kids.

Blogger APH (left) with Marina, Trevor and a local guy pose for a picture in front of the CLCs.

Children waving goodbye to Trevor and company who are driving out of The Center’s premises to go back to the city.

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Hands-on hotcake cooking lesson

Children preparing firewood on a stone-base stove.

Blowing air to build fire from a tiny ember.

Caption 3) Volunteer mother pours hotcake batter into the frying pan which I brought to The Center. See some hotcakes on a plate.

Hotcake mix now cooking slowly.

A Tembari kid poses next to a pile of whole meal flour from Lae Biscuits.


By ALFREDO P HERNANDEZ
A Friend of Tembari Children


ON SATURDAY, I taught our volunteer mothers how to cook hotcake, aka pancake.

Hotcake would be one of the four simple flour recipes that I am going to impart with the mothers so that they could maximize the use of two tons of whole meal flour that were donated to The Center by Lae Biscuits a few days ago.

The three other recipes I have lined up are steamed flour cake (puto, a Filipino cake), “chakoy”, a Filipino version of doughnut and “ginataang bilo-bilo” (flour balls cooked in coconut milk). I would teaching the recipes one at a time in the next coming Saturdays.

It appeared that our volunteer mothers are seeing for the first time how hotcake is prepared and cooked.

They know of a simple process to cook flour – make a soft mass of it and deep fry. That simple, and I knew how it felt in the mouth and tasted. This recipe is very common among many households in PNG, especially those outside Port Moresby.

I have noticed one thing: whole meal flour is quite difficult to use for hotcake recipe because it easily breaks up when trying to lift it from the frying pan. I would prefer using plain flour. But we have to use our flour stocks before they are spoiled by bugs.

What I taught them last Saturday was a hotcake recipe that I have been familiar with since I was a child. As a fifth-grader in the 60s, I cooked hotcake as source of additional income for our family, which I did right in front of our house. They were picked up buy passers-by and neighbors as afternoon snack.

I had to bring my own frying fan to The Center to make sure that I could produce hotcake that looked good. The Center does not have one.

Hotcake would serve as our preschoolers’ noon snacks after their classes in the morning. We have 45 of them plus another 42 children attending classes at 11 elementary schools in Port Moresby who would be coming home to The Center after lunch.

Since we have 97 children right now including toddlers, preparing 97 pieces of hotcake everyday would be a big challenge. So we needed a bigger hotcake pan that could immediately cook at least six rounds in one go. One hotcake could take at least 3 minutes to cook. Multiply that 97 times, you could easily imagine the number of hours you would need to cook them all.

This would require a hotplate the size of 20” x 30” steel plate, which would cost us K400 to acquire. It’s quite costly, so we are having second thoughts about buying it.

But it is required so I am looking for a sponsor who could provide us with this one.

As I have said, we have two tons of flour to deal with. We should be able to use it otherwise it would be taken over by flour bugs before we knew it.

Hopefully, now that our four volunteer mothers know how to cook a simple hotcake, which they will do for noontime snacks on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, we would be relieved of the costly tough biscuits that we used to serve to the children.

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Lae Biscuits donates flour and the Kiwi guy offers to deliver it to The Center

By ALFREDO P HERNANDEZ
A Friend of Tembari Children


IMMEDIATELY after Fabian Chow, branch manager of Lae Biscuits at Gerehu, Port Moresby, told me on the phone last Friday that he was going to donate to Tembari children two pallets of whole meal flour – that is 40 bags of 25kg flour – I knew I had a problem.

And the problem was how to bring the goods weighing one ton from Lae Biscuits’ warehouse at Gerehu to The Center at ATS Oro Settlement at Seven-Mile, outside of Port Moresby.

Hauling them in my car – an old Mazda 323 station wagon – is out of the question. However, in most of the donations that were to be picked up, I used my car.

But not this time and not at Gerehu. Days before the last Holy Week, I had the bad luck of being held up around that place when my car broke down after picking up frozen meat donation from Papua Niugini Freezers, which is just a neighbor of Lae Biscuits’.

Mr Chow told me that his company normally donates substantial volume of flour to children facilities like the Tembari Children Care (TCC), a day care and orphanage.

But there’s a catch, and this triggered the problem: I have to pick it up from Lae Biscuits’ warehouse within seven days, or else I forfeit the goods.

So I really have to show up at Lae Biscuits and pick up the donation as soon as possible. But how?

On Saturday morning just before proceeding to The Center for my usual weekend cooking for the Tembari children, I had a chance to chat with Trevor Lyall, the plumbing supervisor of New Zealand-based Canam Constructions, which is constructing two high-rise hotel suite buildings for Holiday Inn.

Trevor happens to be a work colleague of New Zealand-based Filipino construction engineer Joe Buenaventura, who is the project manager of these two high-rise projects.

Joe is a new friend of mine, who is also helping The Center, and that day, he asked me to drop by his work site for a little chat about something important before I proceeded to the settlement.

A Kiwi, who has been here in Port Moresby since the hotel project began this year, Trevor said he had been in the Philippines during his younger days and almost married a Filipino girl, a teacher from Cebu province.

But nothing happened with their engagement even after what he described as “very good relationships with the girl and her family”.

Anyway, Trevor now in his 50s, asked me what I was doing at Seven Mile with all the stuff in my car (donated items like five cartons cordial drink, five containers of purified water, two bags of rice and other stuffs) and I told him about my involvement with the Tembari children, like helping them find donors of foodstuff, money and many more.

“In fact,” I told him, “there’s this one-ton flour donation which has been giving me a headache due to its sheer volume, something I would not be able to deliver to The Center on my own.”

“I can help you with that one,” Trevor casually said, while working on a new door at their makeshift worksite office.

“Let me know when you want the stuff picked up ... I am available this coming week,” he said as he pointed his finger to a white, mini open bed pick-up truck parked just next to where we were chatting.

“That could carry two pallets of your flour.”

“Oh thanks a lot, Lord,” I shouted inside my head, as I thanked Trevor for his offer.

We set the pick-up on Tuesday.

Learning about it, Joe said the Kiwi guy has a soft spot for Filipinos, adding that he has several Filipino friends back in New Zealand where Canam Construction is based.

“I’m not surprised that he offered you some help,” Joe said.

The truth is that while driving on my way to the Holiday Inn worksite to meet my friend Engr Joe Buenaventura, I kept on praying for help to find somebody who could pick up the flour for me.

That prayer was answered in a matter of 30 minutes.

YOU MAY be wondering how Lae biscuits’ general manager Fabian Chow happened to donate a big quantity of flour.

I mentioned to Tee Jay Khoo, a work colleague at The National newspaper where I work, that the Tembari children would also need flour to supplement their monthly rice supply.

I even asked him to donate at least a bag of 10kg a fortnight, which I thought would be enough for the children’s needs. It would be cooked by our volunteer mothers using some local recipes for the kiddos’ noon snacks.

Tee Jay told his friend Cindy Lim, a senior staff at Digicel outlet (Hypermart Gordon), about our flour need.

Cindy has a contact at Lae Biscuits and told him about our needs at The Center.

The message reached Mr Chow, Lae Biscuits’ general manager, and the rest is now history.

Two volunteer mothers cook the day’s lunch -- veggie dish, fried fish fillet and soup.

A volunteer mother tries to build fire by blowing into the smoky stove.

A 30-liter pot boiling mad with special soup spiced with masala (Indian) spices.

Two volunteer mothers frying breaded barracuta fillet which will go with sweet-sour sauce.

Wagi, The Center’s caretaker, and Hayward Sagembo, TCC president, carry a huge pot of masala soup.

Penny Sagembo (center) TCC founder, with volunteer mothers, pours newly-cooked soup into smaller tin cups which will be served to the children shortly.

Filipino Engineer Joe Buenaventura enjoys lunch with the children.

Joe enjoys his lunch while kids look at him with curiosity.

Children eat their lunch of fried breaded barracuta fillet and stir-fry Chinese cabbage, soup and cordial drink.

Girls pose for a picture while having lunch.

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