Thanks to generous donations from Switzerland (Bay Foundation) and Liechtenstein, we finally have a proper kitchen; therefore no more food cooked on open fires! 

When Jelena, Holger, Isabella and Bruna went visiting Bholas Children in November 2009, the actual building of the new kitchen had just been finished. In Dhaka they bought a big cooker with an extractor, many pots and oven trays.

Although the kitchen wasn’t fully equipped yet, they managed to inaugurate it installing the new cooker and having the first lunch ‘cooked on the premises’ with Lars-Erik Wallhagen and Roland visiting too from Sweden.

Laily proudly cooked also Spätzle that Isabella thought her the days before.It was such a wonderful atmosphere, we European visitors and Ali sitting around a big table feeling all very emotional and proud that finally Bholas Children Protibondi School has finally a kitchen. At the times the gas for cooking was still provided by gas bottles, but now finally they have installed pipes bringing local gas to our home and kitchen, helping also to lower the cost of the gas bill!

Bruna just got new pictures of the new kitchen directly from Bhola Island.

Here we see how they proceed to build it up. The roof now has already been installed!

At the moment we still don’t have a proper kitchen.

Our wonderful cooks, Laily (she has only one leg) and Fatima (terrible burns on her arms and breasts) are fantastic managing to cook for so many people (60) in two different places.

One, semi-open, outside the main building where they cook on an open fire that produces terrible suffocating black smoke. The other place is a small room inside the building where now we have a cooking range with two gas burners but no oven, a small basin to which we have added some shelves with two very colourful drainers. No more drying of plates on newspapers on the floor!

We have also bought a small cabinet to store plates, cups and cutlery, but we hope to have more cupboard space in the new kitchen, we will build all the shelves and cupboards in our workshop. It is all very poor and inadequate, not safe and healthy. We are planning to build a big proper kitchen where we will use only gas for cooking; at the beginning using gas cylinders until the local authority connects us to the local natural gas supply which they have been promising for a long time!

The new kitchen will be 4m x 8m, it will have two sinks, one very big to wash the very big pots needed for 100 people above all during the raining season (no more wet and shivering children!). It will cost around € 5500, CHF 7000, our students will build all the cupboards, cabinets and shelves and will have a lot of fun painting them.