TENEBO: News for and from The Rainbow house in Haiti

Good Morning! It was one of those evenings when you were looking forward to a good night of sleep, ending up not getting much at all! Gabriella had a nightmare and could not go back to sleep, finally ending up in my bed, with Benjamin who were already sleeping there. Then Ben woke up, not feeling well, so I thought, here we go, stomach bug coming up. But it didn't happen, he fell fast asleep again, but I stayed half awake for hours, with my antennas out, to be prepared with a bucket when shit hits the fan ;-) Which of course never happened. Bon, c'est la vie! The kids felt just great this morning, but I'm a zombie. But what am I complaining about... Still no news from Bram and Co, but no news is good news and I knew it would be like that. Just have to be patient and see if they succeed to make a satellite phone connection one of these days. Instead, I'm pleased to be able to post great news about project TENEBO with more donors joining our cause. My sister in law, Hella, has been in contact with her children's elementary school in Naarden, "de Tweemaster", suggesting they take part in donating help to Haiti. No other parent had so far pursued the matter (sadly enough..), so after some brainstorming, the school sent out the following newsletter to their 250 pupils last friday:

Action for Haiti: Children helping children!!!

Watching the growing amount of actions, we don't want to sit on the sideline, but also reach out holding hands.

Giving money would be easy, but so much more rewarding by creating the donation together with our children. We're thinking of small projects that you can do from home, such as: dropping off your empty bottles and donating the deposit, baking cookies/cakes and selling them in your community, walking by the doors of your friends and neighbours with a lantern singing a song (idea and text by Merel Schrijver, 7 years), donating your weekly pocket money, selling drawings and other selfmade items, collecting donations in your own small association or any other idea you might think of. It doesn't have to be big, with many small helping hands we can create a lot.

We've explicitely not chosen one of the bigger help organisations as target, but would like to see the amount collected, be directly donated to an orphanage in Haiti, where we know for sure it is desperately needed and more than welcome. http://www.maisonlarcenciel.org/

Hella baked 70 muffins with the kids this weekend, decorating them to an almost "uneatable" version, but they were beautiful and all sold out, creating another €50 for Tenebo! Go "de Tweemaster" Go !!

I also received a new message from Maison l'Arc en Ciel and Diane yesterday: "Hello Jenny, thank you for everything, I am following Bram and his friend on your blog....I did the french summary of his adventure on MAEC FB group today. I had a short skype conv. with Danielle this morning she and Robert visited 4 camps of refugees yesterday, the only word she could find was terrible...they feel they are not doing enough, Unicef called them back this morning, they will have 6 more children at the internal program (5) babies and a 15 year old teenager. They will also use their volunteers of the external program to try and help the camp the best they can. We will have a skype conf-call at 7:00pm our time, I should be able to update FB and the website tomorrow. Mèsi Anpil and take care !"

If you want to read her excellent french summary of Bram's adventures and Tenebo, visit their website and click on "contact us" and look up their FB page! It is so well written.

! ! ! Brigitte just mailed me a little update from Tim and the boys:

The satellite phone connection is seriously bad, Tim phoned 4 times yesterday and got disconnected 4 times. But this morning I received one phonecall, and after being disconnected twice, we managed to talk for 3 minutes. Everyting is AWESOME, they're enjoying everything, the nature, the adventure and the local population. It's cold, but blue skies and only -5c° when the sun is out. Temple visit on the schedule today, offering the necessary prayer flags for good luck and respect for the mountains. Tomorrow at 6 am europe time, 10 pm zanskar time, they start the actual trek up along the frozen "Tchaddar". Hope for satellite contact in the coming 12 days, is most probably equal to zero. But they will keep on trying! We'll find out. Love Brigitte