A Visit to the Sanveld Kindergarten

One of the highlights of our trip to Drimiopsis in August was visiting the Sanveld Kindergarten. We were invited to spend three mornings at the Kindergarten where we enjoyed a real “hands-on” experience with the staff and children. CSNS enjoys a special relationship with the Kindergarten as our Society funds its daily food program. CSNS Board Member Diane Mawson teaches Kindergarten in North Vancouver, BC and her class is a “buddy class” with Sanveld Kindergarten. We were delighted to bring a variety of books, games and other teaching resources to the school and enjoyed introducing some of the new resources to the staff and students.

Below, we received a very warm welcome by the teachers at the school and were immediately impressed by their commitment and caring for the students.

CSNS Board Member & Kindergarten teacher, Diane Mawson introducing new books & puzzles to the class.

CSNS Board member and teacher, Judy Dunbar, introduces a new bingo game to the students and to their teacher and CSN Board Member, Lydia Molestane.

The children appeared to enjoy their new books.

Some children playing a soccer game during recess.

The children wash their hands before entering their class for a meal.

Mealtime in the Kindergarten.

Anna, the cook prepares the children’s meal (eg: oatmeal, pap, lentils, bread & peanut butter) in an outdoor kitchen behind the kindergarten building. CSNS funds two meals daily, 5 days a week for the Kindergarten students.

The teachers washing dishes after school.

Lydia Molestane invited us to join her life skills group for teenaged girls. This group is a unique resource for young girls in Drimiopsis and takes place in the kindergarten building.

Hippo Rollers for Carrying Water

Generous donations over the past Christmas season made it possible for CSNS to ship an additional 10 hippo rollers to Drimiopsis in March 2019. The shipment was made at the request of CSN. Hippo rollers make the task of collecting water much less strenuous than traditional methods. Each roller holds 5 x more water than a typical bucket and the water is moved by simply rolling it along the ground.

 An initial shipment of 10 hippo rollers was sent to Drimiopsis two years ago and these have been very well used by the Kindergarten staff, by the workers and volunteers on the Sanctuary land, and by several elders. With the drilling of the borehole and installation of the water tanks on the Sanctuary Land, CSN does not anticipate a need for additional hippo rollers in the future. CSNS is deeply grateful to the Hippo Roller Foundation and to the other generous donors who made the purchase of the hippo rollers possible.

CSN relied upon Chief Ita’s guidance to determine the distribution of the hippo rollers. Below are some of the elders who received a hippo roller for their use.

Pops for Namibia

From left: Betty Owen, Judy Dunbar, Helge Mercker, Diane Mawson, Terry Adler

On behalf of the Kindergarten class and their Grade 7 Buddies at Canyon Heights Elementary School I would like to thank Helge (from CSN) for her inspiring and informational slide presentation on Oct. 18, 2018.  The slides she showed gave us a close look at the San people and culture that we couldn’t have gained in any other way. With Helge’s prompting the students realized that the profit from the sale of one popsicle, $1.00 CAD, feeds ten Kindergarten students two meals a day in Drimiposis.

We were pleased to present a cheque for six hundred dollars to the CSNS members present, Terry, Judy, Betty and Helge. The money was raised by selling Fruit popsicles in September.  Our students are inspired to share the information about Drimiopsis with the rest of the school and to continue their fundraising efforts for CSNS.

Diane Mawson,

Kindergarten Teacher,

Canyon Heights Elementary School,

North Vancouver, BC

Children at Canyon Heights Presentation

Freedom Through Service - A New Board Member's Perspective

The CSNS Board: (From Left) Betty Owen, Treasurer; Ellen Besso, Vice-President; Terry Adler, President; Diane Mawson, Board Member at Large; Judy Dunbar, Secretary; (Front) Helge Mercker, CSNS Agent & CSNS & Children’s Sanctuary Namibia Board Member

Many years ago in Ontario, I was treated by a Naturopath-Chiropractor, a divorced, middle aged man, father of two. This quirky, opinionated man fell in love with a beautiful young woman and together they had a baby, to the amazement of everyone who knew him.  One day Richard told me that he had found freedom through commitment to his new wife and babe, a concept foreign to me at the time.

Yesterday morning I opened Sharon McErlane’s newsletter from The Great Council of Grandmothers, (netoflight.org), entitled What Service Will Do For You. “Service is freedom and service brings freedom,” the Grandmothers said. “Loving service is powerful.  “Connecting with others in the light”, they go on to say, our limitations begin to melt and our energy shifts.

Western volunteers we met in India echoed our sentiments, that we all get back much more than we give to the Tibetans we help in Dharamshala. The same goes for our work with displaced Tibetans and Syrian refugees here at home, and now my volunteer work with the newly founded Canadian Children’s Sanctuary Namibia Society.

Recently we held our first AGM followed by a General Meeting and were privileged to have Helge, our Namibian Agent, and a member of both the Canadian and Namibian Boards, with us. Though my energy was flagging near the end of an intense day, Helge immediately riveted my attention when she began speaking about her experiences in Drimiopsis, the settlement where the orphaned and at risk San children subsist in neglect and poverty.

I have observed abject poverty on my Indian travels and have become inured to it to a degree, in order to continue visiting that country. However Helge managed to paint a visceral picture of the lives of the children and teachers in the Drimiopsis settlement, one that penetrated my privileged, safe, white Canadian mentality.

Listening to this gentle, spiritual white woman speak lovingly about her work with the children opened my heart and moved me deeply. Helge spoke about how she slowly, over a number of years, encouraged and helped the teachers and other supporters of the San people, re-settled in Drimiopsis, Namibia in 1991, to begin rebuilding their community, starting with food and water security, education for children and employment opportunities for adults.

Helge happily reported that the CSN Board and key community members have made great strides by taking ownership of development efforts by starting the brick building project that to date has produced 12,000 bricks, working with a volunteer architect to design the first Sanctuary building and hiring a security guard to safeguard the supplies needed for both the building and the protective fencing for the site.

I am proud to have the opportunity to offer my service and skills to this community as a member of our dedicated CSNS team.

Love & Light

Ellen

News from Namibia - Your Donations in Action

New Kindergarten Building

Pastor Jeremiah & Lydia

CSN took on the stewardship of the Sanveld Kindergarten from its earliest stages, helping orphaned and vulnerable children in Drimiopsis. In July, the Kindergarten moved to a much-needed new building, built by the church of Pastor Jeremiah and Lydia Molestane, teachers at the school, on land donated for this purpose. While simple in design, the new building is beautiful with colourful cartoon animal art on its white exterior.

“CSN is joyed by this new development and by the responses of the students, Pastor Jeremiah says. “You should see the smiles on the children’s faces when they heard that they are now going to that place forever. They were so happy!”

CSN continues to provide food and other supplies to support the 44 students in attendance. From January to June of this year four trips were made to the town of Gobabis, 42 kilometres away, to purchase food for the Kindergarten class. The children each receive two nourishing meals per school day, cooked over an open fire by volunteers. 

CSN has applied to the Ministry of Rural Water Supply for permission to begin drilling on the borehole for the sanctuary land and awaits approval to start this project. In the meantime, CSN has begun making bricks to build a security and storage building, to secure the supplies for the bore hole and for future dwellings on the sanctuary land.

A CSN sponsored first building will be built in the coming months and Jeremiah, Chief Ita and Gideon, all CSN representatives, are meeting with the architect to plan the project. Pastor Jeremiah and his team have been working hard producing bricks, for a total of 12,000 bricks now! CSN is very pleased that these projects provide work opportunities in the local community.