BP Centre – Day 1 Tears and Tantrums
Ruth our third contact was to join us later in the day. The bags of various clothes, football kits and stationary were unloaded and sorted into sizes,
the reason being the donations were to be split over several orphanages and charities and they needed to be able to know where to send what items.
Having sorted these and put aside a pile of toy
s,
teddies and clothes for 0 – 3 year olds were given a tour of the BP centre which included a vision of
what they would like the centre to be, including additional toilets, conference room and museum.
What was obvious was that a lot of the jobs had started but had stopped part way through, the
reason was very simple they had run out of money. The kitchen/cafe that we were part funding was well on the way to completion although the initial £1500 we had sent them was all but used up getting it to a state of being water tight and plastered inside.
The next part of the day was one that personally I was a little uncertain of, a visit to an orphanage for children from 0 – 3 years old that were HIV positive.
The New Life Orphanage was only a short drive away from the centre, so loaded with gifts we set off. The outside was not as I would have expected, high walls topped with electric fence and huge steel gates. On the inside however it was something totally different, not the run down
tatty building I was expecting but a modern clean single story building.
Some of the toddlers were outside playing already and some of our group instantly went off to play with them, Roy was the first to make a child cry but we could understand that we do it frequently once he starts telling us a tale!!
The rest of headed into the building for a short talk by the centres administrator and a tour. He
explained that most of the children that they had in the orphanage came either from hospitals or were found abandoned in of all places toilets.
The process for them being able to take a child in and find new parents for is not an easy one but luckily these were a persistent group of individuals and some of the most caring individuals that I had come across. Their views on losing a child to illness was I must admit at first glance quite matter of fact, but on thinking about is a kind and loving one.
The tour over, there were kids to cuddle, feed and play with. The gifts were received with utmost gratitude and joy which I believe touched many. However, the visit had to come to an end the little ones needed their sleep and quite a lot of heart strings needed some serious TLC.
I believe that the visit to the orphanage touched us all in many different ways but rightly or wrongly we had little time to dwell on it at that moment as we had a group of Scouts that were waiting to play us at football back at the centre.utmost gratitude and joy which I believe touched many. However, the visit had to come to an end the little ones needed their sleep and quite a lot of heart strings needed some serious TLC.
On return to the centre there was a gathering of Peters scouts already in football kits awaiting the big game Tom’s International Squad versus Kenya, there follows now a statement by the management of Team Tom International.
Press Release from Team Tom International Relations.
This is a statement from our recent international fixture gained from interviews with participating players and staff.
First of all we would like to apologise for playing an under strength team due to not being able to gain international clearance for a number of our first team players. However, with a threadbare team we were able to put in a polished performance against all the odds.
A complaint has been lodged by us with FIFA due to allegations that the referee Ian Haskell had been bribed with 4 pies and 2 pasties whish lead to two fine goals being disallowed for our team,
one by our new striker Roger Wilkson and also a fine goal by keeper Alex ‘the cat’ Haskell, not forgetting the a dubious penalty being given, that has since been proven by television replays, that was definitely being ball to hand.
We realise that the complaint will not change the outcome of the match nor would we want to deprive the Kenyan FC of their LC to BP 2011 trophy, but we needed to go public with our views to prevent this disgrace happening again.
However on a lighter note, which means we won’t be mentioning referee Ian Haskell again, having lost only 3-2 including the dubious penalty Team Tom regulars Chubbs and Tom got two fantastic goals, one a sweetly struck shot by Chubbs and the second a cleverly placed header by team manager/captain/owner Tom Hornsby.
Special mention has to go to Steve Tyler and Carl Hornsby for coming out of retirement and playing a strong game proving that 1940’s football can survive in the modern game. We would like to wish Steve Tyler a speedy recovery in his oxygen tent at Nyrei hospital.
We are still waiting a response from FIFA on this statement and will bring it to you as and when we receive it.
No comments:
Post a Comment