Archived Blog
Grade 7 Dinner
So it’s now well into December and Christmas break is approaching fast. Time here at Bingham seems to go by so much faster getting close to a break and now is no different. Teachers here are organising what to do over the break; Brian and I are still figuring out some things to do, and are hoping to take a trip over Christmas day, before his Dad arrives. As far as my bike goes, no more news unfortunately, I’m still living in hope!
Last Saturday we had the Horizon boys club in the morning. We had the boys play the Bingham students in a football match. The Horizon boys won 2-0 but everyone had fun and enjoyed themselves. I will be coaching two football teams this year; the junior boys the next semester and the senior boys the semester after that. I’m looking forward to the seasons; we have a number of promising stars this year!
In the afternoon, we had the annual Christmas Gibsha, the event hosted for the Bingham Ethiopian staff and their families. We have shed loads of injera and a time to get together and get to know them all better. I’m not sure what happened to the leftovers this time; I wasn’t involved this year in any “drive by foodings” like last year.
On Saturday evening Brian had organised a “Mystery dinner” for his Grade 7 class. They had no idea what was in store for them, but they all dressed up nice and came along to the event. Brian had laid on a simple dinner for them; spaghetti with sauce, salad and dressing and ice cream cake for dessert but he’d changed all the items names. Each item had an individual name associated with Christmas; the spaghetti alone was reindeer whips, the salad was called Holly, the salad dressing was “Santa snot” and other similarly ridiculous names. The utensils were also given names; a fork was “antlers” etc. The meal was then divided up into 4 courses and the kids had to pick what food/utensils they wanted for each of the four courses at the start of the evening, picking from Brian’s daft names. They could only pick each item once. We then would make their selection, one course at a time and clear everything away after each course. Obviously, Hilarity ensued. Some of the kids picked only utensils for their starter and had to eat the rest of their courses with their hands. Many got a bowl of plain spaghetti, with ice cream cake to eat it with. One girl had a knob of butter on a spoon for her dessert. The kids enjoyed it and we all had a laugh watching them scoff down spaghetti sauce with their fingers.
Street ministry continues to encourage us and at times frustrate and distress us. Last week we encountered a street girl who was witting outside of a hospital, quite obviously in labour. We went into the hospital to try and see what the problem was and found out that she had been turned away because the doctors said that she wasn’t actually going to give birth for another couple of hours. So they sent her home; which meant she had to go back into the cold night and sit on the streets in pain. We managed to get them to let her back in; there were plenty of free beds. However, when we came back 30 minutes later to check on her; she had been turfed out into the courtyard of the hospital, and was sitting on a small wooden bench. It really is quite distressing what some of these street people have to go through. The next day, however, after having her baby we were able to take her back to her parents who lived in the city. She had initially run away because she didn’t want to go to school and had been living on the streets for about 5 years. Thankfully, both she and her parents wanted to be reconciled so we had a very happy ending to that story. Some of the kid’s situations are more complicated.
Dundee has seen some of the success stories that we have with the street ministry nights; both the above story and others, and has decided to start a new company to formalise the process. Called Strong Hearts, it will seek to take in street kids to a house (which he has already rented) and both school and disciple them with the end goal of enabling them to get jobs and move off the streets. Dundee is very excited about the whole thing.
Hope it’s not too cold back home! I’ve almost forgotten what winter is.
Niall
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