Archived Blog
New School Term
Well School has started once again, and we at the computer department have been having a rather tough time of it. Unfortunately, the Bingham computer network has been the victim of a rather nasty computer virus which has been playing havoc with all of our computers, much to the dismay and frustration of all of the staff. This has been complicated by further computer problems that have been left alone too long and now have come down on us hard. So we’ve all been rather busy for the past week or so, thus I haven’t had time to post on the blog.
Anyway, other than virus fighting, things have been pretty normal round here. I am coaching Junior Varsity (under 15) soccer again this season; we had our first match today. Unfortunately, we lost but I see plenty of potential and am confident that we can improve our performance. Last weekend, the older boys had a match against some of the street boys that we go to see on street ministry. They had a comfortable win, but the main thing was that the street boys really enjoyed themselves; they rarely get to play with a real football rather than bits of rubbish made into a round shape. On Saturday evening, Dundee had the fundraising evening for his new project that he is starting. He is aiming to take a number of the street boys off the streets and begin to educate and disciple them. The evening went really well, and there was a good deal of interest from people at the event. Please pray that God will bless Dundee in this work, and will bring many boys to faith through it.
Monday was the Ethiopian Holiday of “Temket” and knowing that the orthodox noise machine church next door would be raring to go; we decided to head out of Addis and go to Ambo for Sunday and Monday. We set off on Sunday morning on our bikes and arrived in Ambo early afternoon. We spent the most of Sunday lying by the pool, though were unable to get into the local hot-spring pools due to the number of locals crammed into them like sardines. On Monday, we found out quickly that the pool was being cleaned and wasn’t an option. So we decided to travel another 30km along a dirt road to the crater lake called “Lake Wonechi”. Brian asked our hotel clerk whether we would be able to swim. He didn’t think so, so Brian asked another 4 people who said that we could; and took it as majority rules.
We rode our bikes down to the crater, got in and had a brief swim; it was freezing! We changed to an audience of about 15 kids intently watching us. Quite off-putting, but anyway. We took some pics and rode back to Ambo. By the time we got back, we realised that it was 4:30pm and we would just about have enough time to get back to Addis before it got dark. That would have been, had everything gone to plan. Unfortunately, while stopped to take some quick snaps on the way back, I took my glasses off, put them on my bike and forgot to put them back on before I drove off. I realised 10 minutes down the road, but by that time it was too late. We continued on and about half way home, it began to rain. I think the short rains are coming; however, we had not packed for this event. We stopped by the road to shelter, and waited through about 30 minutes of very heavy rain. It began to ease, but it was getting very dark and we knew we would have to drive through some rain if we were going to get home at all. We started out again, slowly; in the rain. It soon got very heavy again, and we had to drive though a downpour for about 20 minutes, getting soaked through. It was pitch dark by now, and I had to drive with no glasses, heavy rain and darkness. We made a tight convoy, and I followed Brian’s tail light all the way back to Addis at 30mph. It took a while, we got back drowned and freezing.
Niall
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