Bible and Games Club

One of the activities that I have been doing at Aisha School is a club that on Tuesdays does a little Bible lesson with an activity and then on Thursday does games. This has been a big hit and people like coming so the attendance is remarkably regular. Since Christmas things have changed because about half the people went to another grade, so we got a little smaller, but that's OK. We also lost all our boys - so now it is informally a girls club. This isn't so bad either - the guys were harder to deal with and cheated a lot more when playing games.

My supplies for the games are three tennis balls so sometimes some innovation is necessary. Some games require no supplies - like musical chairs and a few other little games. Dodgeball was a big pre-Christmas hit. I was always a little scared that someone would get hurt because the two sides were very close together and some of them were throwing the balls pretty hard. Fortunately, nothing untowards occurred. Then, just before Christmas, I had an epiphany and we started playing an adaptation of ultimate frisbee - ultimate ball I call it. We don't have a lot of space, but the kids really enjoy it and I usually get to play as well, especially if one team falls behind. My most recent crossover from North America was 500. All these games (dodgeball, ultimate, 500) were new to the kids and they seem to lap them up. I am trying to figure out how to play kick baseball (or Chinese baseball as my elementary school gym teacher called it - I'm guessing they can't do that anymore!) in our limited space.

That's the good news. I started thinking yesterday and began wondering how many of the girls will become teen moms, how many will be sexually abused, how many will get AIDS. Not a pleasant thought. If they follow statistical averages then probably half will be teen moms, most will be abused, and about a third will get HIV/AIDS. A bit of a sobering thought when watching these energetic, enthusiastic youngsters enjoying simple tennis ball games.