Thursday, April 20, 2006

Good News Club and HIV Screening

We’re very tired after a day of many children…the Good News Club had an outing today, at the Sandy Bay Community Centre. We had about 19 kids or so, and 6 adults, and it was a great day. The kids were picked up at the Pilling Primary School (across the road from us) in a yellow school bus at 10 am. We had to take our car because we had the guitars and overhead projector, so too much for the bus. The community centre used to be a school, but no longer in use (not enough children). It wasn’t bad, we spent most of the time in a big room with a concrete floor and Christmas decorations strung across the ceiling. There was quite a lot of rain off and on, but when it wasn’t raining the kids ran around outside with a few footballs, or tried to wrestle Nick to the ground. We also played hide and seek, sack races, tug of war…it was super fun. We opened with some singing, but after lugging the OHP and guitars there, discovered that we (I) had left the music file at home, so all we could do were a few songs that the kids knew by heart, and only two of those with accompaniment as we didn’t know the chords for the others. Doh!

There’s been a lot of news lately about the airport and HIV/AIDS and screening of migrant workers. Initially the decision was taken not to screen for HIV, but the island is presently thought to be HIV free, and the people were NOT happy about all and sundry coming to the island for long periods of time. The concern is a real one, because the morality here is, well, not very good, so the risk of infection is high. An airport team came over from the UK to get a feel of things here, and heard the outcry against their decision to not screen. This information has all now been taken back to the UK, so the airport people MIGHT reconsider their decision. If they do, and they screen all workers, it will delay the airport project quite significantly and it will have to be reapproved by the UK. Makes you wonder whether the only reason they didn’t want to screen was to save time and money.

It’s 20h15 now and Nick has just come to say goodnight…he’s even tirederer than I am!

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