Team Auntie Sports Day

What an amazing day we have had today!!

I was asked to take a group of six ‘precocious’ boys for I.T. lessons twice a week after school. They were mixed ages – 2 each from classes 5, 6 and 7. I decided that it might be a nice idea to organise a Mini Sports Day with them – their role being to publicise the event (Publisher), record scores (Excel), present what they had done in assembly (PowerPoint) and finally to report the event (Publisher). The boys suggested and agreed on 6 events and offered the chance to enter to children from Kindergarten to class 4.

We christened the group ‘Team Auntie’ as Alison and I were their teachers.

The boys have been absolutely incredible; 2 of the boys missed the first 2 sessions as they were poorly with malaria. They each came and found me to ask if it would still be ok to come along – the 4 other boys made sure that they caught up with what they had missed in earlier sessions and were extremely generous with their time. I’ve remarked before at how patient the children here are – Team Auntie are no exception – no complaints when computers didn’t work, or when work couldn’t be printed out, or when computers froze for no apparent reason.

Today was THE day. Riou, one of the volunteers had organised all the equipment needed for the races and along with Felix and Tony was responsible for running the teams and explaining rules etc – not many of them were familiar with the intricacies of the 3-legged race and Welly Throwing (or willy as they insisted on calling it) was a complete mystery!

All 4 teams entered into the spirit of the morning and hopped, threw, ran and skipped fit to burst. Team Auntie collated results, were able to give a continual update on team positions and after the event was over, begged to be allowed into the IT Suite so that they could record the results on their spreadsheets and produce their charts.

The reward for Team Auntie was to be taken for lunch by Alison and myself – the school driver took us all and dropped us in a street that we were completely unfamiliar with – good job they seemed to know which restaurant we were going to! We had a real slap up meal with unlimited fizzy drinks – and ice cream for pud (I was relieved that the ice cream came in individual tubs – wouldn’t like a repeat of Alison’s recent experience.) The boys were great company and shared with us some of their hopes and dreams for the future.

We caught 2 taxis back to school – it’s amazing how many kids you can cram into the back of a taxi in Calcutta – and seeing small children begging outside the restaurant made us reflect that the Future Hope children are in fact the lucky ones – most of them will actually have a future!

I don’t want to end this blog on such a sombre note, so will just ask you to look at the photos from today – just try to imagine the fun we had – and the noise level of all the kids as they cheered like crazy for their teams.

A really GREAT day!!

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