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Previously in 'Not In Addis': David cheats death while riding in a vehicle driven by Dave Hicks across several hundered kilometres of Ethiopian landscape, and nearly doesn't fall off his horse. Now, back to the story...
After returning from the Bale (pronounced 'Bah-lay') mountains, I was confronted by the monster that all teachers aproach with fear and loathing (well at least the latter of the two): student reports. In this case, the ones in question were mid-term reports, and at Bingham they're done by hand. And every student gets one in first term. For those just joining us, I teach Kindergarten to grade 6 for Computer Studies, as well as 7 & 8 for Mathematics. With an average of 20 students per grade, that adds up to around 180 students. Around 120 of which I'm still trying to attach names-to-faces for. Thankfully I was given mercy on several of the elementary grades by their full-time teachers, so it was only around 100 or so I had to write myself. My word, is that a draining job to do. Do you know how hard it is to come up with useful, constructive comments for that many kids? By the end they were becoming less useful (although hopefully not destructive).
Anyway, after that ordeal was over, it was time to face up to the next one - trying to choose two videos that would both appeal to and be appropriate for a bunch of 40 11-14 year olds. Because that weekend (October 17th-19th) was the Grade 7-8 Retreat, and I was responsible for picking the movies. Easy, you would think. Ha! But more on that later...
Friday lunchtime came, and with it the last-minute-mad-rush to get everything and everyone packed and loaded onto the vehicles. Finally everyone and everything was onboard, and we headed off to the Babugaya Guesthouse.
We were headed south again, but this time our destination was only about an hour out of town - much more reasonable than the last trip. We arrived intact, and upon disembarking, I got my first view of the lake. It was not to bad.
Over the weekend, there were lots of things happening, from fun/bonding activites, to swimming to dressing up in toilet paper. A couple of the more memorable events included being tied to each other for 3 hours, the Talent Show, and the councelor hunt, which involved all the teachers hiding in the dark for an hour while the students tried track us down.
As well as all the fun stuff, there were opportunities for more serious discussion. All the teachers had a 'family' group of about 4-6 of the students, and the boys I was responsible for and I had a couple of good discussions over the weekend. There were also three devotion times, given by one of the students' parents, which were also good. They spoke about Joseph and how he used his talents for God, and how he delt with temptations of different sorts.
And then there were the movies. The first night, we made the movie a surprise. The kids didn't seem to appreciate this - the most popular question all day was "What's the movie?" At about 10PM, we started it, showing the 1960's version of "Romeo and Juliet", which the 8th graders have been reading in class. Understandably this wasn't terribly popular, so after a couple of minutes we switched over to the real movie, "Finding Nemo", which was much more appreciated. Some people also went out "Hyena Hunting", which involved going to the tip and attempting to attract hyenas with meat dragged around behind a vehicle. I wouldn't have minded participating in that event, but since I was responsible for the movies, I kind of had to stick around there. The second night, there was another movie scheduled. Unfortunately the short clips I showed before the movie as 'trailers' were more popular than the movie itself, which was "Mystery Men" (which I quite like - apparently my tastes are not shared universally). Anyway, both movies finished around 1AM, so by the time we'd packed everything away afterwards, the other occupants in my cabin were already in bed, and most of them were asleep. Which was better than them playing Monopoly all night, which had been threatened earlier.
At the end of the weekend, we all got a final photo, piled back into the vehicles and headed home. Another weekend successfully accounted for. And I got the opportunity to develop my relationships with a lot of the kids, which was one of the aims of the event. All 'round, a good result.
And now for some important messages from our sponsors. But stay with us for the shocking conculsion of "Not In Addis" in Episode III: David goes back to Babugaya and doesn't do much.
Director's Commentary
- The Babugaya Guesthouse was established over 50 years ago on the shores of the Bishaftu crater lake. It is owned and run by SIM (Serving In Mission), who also runs Bingham Academy. Back to the story
- I was found by about a third of them, although my quest was not aided by three of the 7th grade girls, the first of which said in a loud voice, "There's someone over there," after which the other two proceeded to scream a the tops of their voices. I didn't think I was that scary... Back to the story
- The clips, for those who have seen my collection, were the "Terry Tate Rebok" ad, "Matrix Pingpong", the "Funny Cats" clip, and the trailers for "Return of the King" (Lord of the Rings 3) and "The Incredibles" (both of which I think everyone on the planet should see). Back to the story
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