Sarnelli House Foundation, Thailand

The school holidays have started and volunteers are here doing their best to keep the children occupied and amused. There are English lessons that deteriorate into throwing missiles across the room with the Sarnelli boys, badminton games with the girls that go on for hours, coloring in, drawing and swimming to name some of the activities. These holidays as a way to have all the children together for one day and using their natural competitiveness a sports day was organized. Children and staff were organized into 4 different teams using the colors of orange, green, light blue and dark blue.  Thanks to the generosity of Fr Chuck and Jim Snell every staff member and child received a T shirt in the 4 team colors.

 
 


On the morning of the 16th September everyone assembled at 8am on the big, dry field adjacent to the church at Pi Si Tong and sat under the shade of the lovely old tamarind trees facing the field. Events were organized by Fr Ole, Fr Bird, Br Keng and some young seminarians stationed at Khon Kaen who came down for the week. The sound system was set up and donuts handed out and the games began.



 

 It was a great day with games including tug of war, chair ball and football. Then some of the more unconventional games came out, such as wrapping Fr Bird, Shea and Chuck and Br Keng in toilet rolls as quickly as possible. House mothers sat on toy cars and were pushed by a group of children to the finish line. Girls changed into men’s boxer shorts and ran up the field and back, quickly undressing and handing the clothes to the next team member to do the same. For the boys some very big ladies underwear was used that had the small children rolling around on the grass in laughter.  Another game was a group of 10 kids from each team had to kick a box once and run back to the team while the next team member ran up for the following kick and the first to get it over the finish line won. There were of course water balloons involved and eating as much bananas and watermelon as possible and then running very fast. The three legged race was a lot of fun as kids tried to coordinate with their partner while running as fast as possible.

Scores were kept on the big board facing the field and the children sang and chanted in support of their teams. Lunch was chicken and rice or noodle soup followed by ice cream with a short break to recuperate under the trees. There were a few sprains but only one bone breakage when one of the boys – Un from Jan and Oscar House fell heavily on his wrist in football. Team Orange won the day and everyone is still talking about the great day it was, some house mothers are still sore from the unaccustomed exercise and the T shirts are being proudly worn every other day by the children. 

16 October 2012