Now that the schools have moved into their long holiday, this week has been taken up with a few trips. Firstly we had the teachers on their annual trip. We went to a swimming pool complex about an hour from the city called ‘Aquamarina’; we had intended to go further afield but the terrible rains have swept main roads away so we needed to stay closer to the city. About fifteen of the teachers came with us and we had a great day together: eating, swimming, playing on eth swings and having a little bit of the sun (although I got a bit burnt and am, still suffering). I always enjoy these trips with the teachers, they earn so little in their regular wage that the trip becomes another way of saying thanks to them for their teaching which really is a social-work job as well as a teaching one.
The very next day I took the altar servers on their first ever trip. At home these trips were regular affairs but I had never taken one yet. So off we went – about twelve servers from the various chapels around the Parish – to the local shopping centre. The ‘Mall del Sol’ when it was built was the largest shopping centre in Latin America – amazing for a city so poor! In any case, the servers had a great day: we went for a burger, walked around the centre, went up and down the escalator (they had never seen one), when up and down the lift (a very elegant one) and then went to play billiards in the amusements. Over all, I was struck by how new all of this shopping centre was to them and then I realized that, whereas doing the shopping at one of these centres is a regular thing at home, here families from our area could not afford to shop there. I was also struck by the amount of kids – most of them – who kept a bit of burger back ‘so that they could give it to their Mum”.
Then on Monday we were on to the coast for our Youth Group Retreat. We took around 24 youth and worked on the theme ‘What is your treasure?” Once again the young people amazed me by their enthusiasm to get involved in prayer and singing. Of course, as well as the work we had a chance to get down to the beach but what was amazing there was that it was crowded. Normally the beaches are empty but, because it was holiday weekend, thousands of people from the city had spilled out onto the coastal beaches.
Through all of this the work on the school classrooms and on the football pitch continues. We are nearing completion on the football pitch – it might even be ready before we head for Scotland. However the eight school classrooms will take a little longer but I am less anxious about them in the sense that we are on a long school holiday until the end of March so there is plenty of time there.
And talking of the school, last week we had our Graduation Ceremony for the Primary 7s. Forty five kids have now finished their primary education at our school and some will pass on to our secondary school – others will go to specialist schools in the city, some will go tot eh local state secondary. It was a great moment to see them all reaching this goal. On a serious point I had been asking our teachers recently whether the standard of education had increased since we started the school in 2003; the general opinion seems to be that the longer the kids are with us the better they are at studying and responding in investigations. I suppose then it’s a case of ‘onwards and upwards’, no?
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