Archived Blog
Mekelle Youth Center
(Notice the American spelling of "centre". This is the name of the place, don't go telling me I'm becoming American :)
I'm spending my final week in Ethiopia up in Mekelle, in the North of the country, almost at the Eritrean border. SIM have a youth centre here called MYC or Mekelle Youth Center. I've been to this city before, but haven't seen the project before. Jon Nykamp, along with his family, and a couple of other SIM workers run the project here. Jon is a really great guy and is really enthusiastic for the work that is going on here. It is evident that a lot of work has gone into the centre here, it is a fantastic place for the kids. Apparently, the Ethiopian government own the building, and were willing to give it to the project to be used for the youth work in the area. Jon and the team have built a fantastic compound around it, with football, basketball, volleyball and tennis facilities, as well as ping pong and other games indoors. They organise various activities for the kids, bingo, Taekwondo and weights training amongst other things. They have English classes and other education classes, including IT which would be where I would come in. They have a fairly well equipped computer lab here, they have 13 decent PCs here, donated by a Swiss team recently. At the moment, they simply teach a very basic Word/Excel program to anyone who is interested, but some of the team here have said that if there is a program for more complicated and interesting stuff, there would be plenty of interested participants.
I've been getting stuck in here as much as I can. Other than attempting to solve various computer niggles with the team's laptops here, I've been advising and helping out getting the website up to speed, and integrated with Facebook etc. Its been great to share all the potential for website improvements, as well as chat about the various potential for teaching programs here with Jon. Of course, he's been not so subtly hinting that I should come here, which we've had a good laugh about. I've also helped teach some more stuff to some of the Ethiopian staff here who teach the computer programs, like how to update the website well, some basic Photoshop, things like that. They're keen to learn too, which is great.
As well as the various sports, education and computer classes run here, they are able to run various bible studies and events with the kids in the adjacent buildings. These have to be done unofficially, though Jon says there is little problem with it. I sat in on one or two studies with a few kids, its great to see their interest.
The team here clearly are very close, they meet together regularly to go out for meals. The injera here has been some of the best I've had since coming back to Ethiopia, really nice. There are also some meals that aren't available in Addis, some of which are really good.
One of the reasons that the team here are so close is that they are fairly small. Other than Jon and his family, there are only two other people working here at the moment with SIM. So I've been left on my own in the evenings, it is the first time I've had to cook for myself since I've arrived in the country 4 weeks ago (thanks Christy Johnston if you're reading this!! :) That's not a big issue, but it is not so fun being alone all evening. Its not something that I'm used to much.
Ping Pong is a big thing here...
Basketball court
Weights room
Will try and post some more before I leave here if I can.
Niall
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