We were a little thin on the ground today; we lost a quorum’s worth of members to a luxury Danube cruise. Lest any of those layabouts should be reading this while still on board, be advised that we expect an illustrated What-I-Did-on-my-Vacation presentation upon your return.(see two paragraphs below.)

 

Our guests were: Christine Himbury, our guest speaker and Robert Steven, President and CEO of Burlington Art Gallery.  Robert attended Rotary the previous week to receive the AGB’s share of the silent auction.  He was a Rotarian in Grand Prairie before moving to Burlington and plans to visit all Burlington clubs before deciding which one he’d like to join.

 

Mike Molloy announced that starting in October, the job of finding speakers falls to your scribe. So….I’m looking for interesting speakers.  Who do you know that has a story to tell, an interesting occupation, an adventure or a cause? Nigel Wright was a Burlington boy, maybe he could spare us 25 minutes.  There are other minor celebrities living amongst us.

 

And then of course there’s you and I.  It’s a feature of Rotary that sooner or later everyone does a classification talk; or maybe they do a return engagement..  Flipping open the directory, and pointing at random, I came up with: … Mae Radford- former PK, we haven’t heard from you in a donkey’s age. Dean Rutty- next time you’re in town, tell us about your new life; and Allan Ramsay – father of an emerging football star, it’s been a while.

 

Among the lessons learned during the Sergeant at Arms drill, we heard a cautionary tale from Kathy Thomas. It all arose because she and Jack decided to make an adventure of taking the Amtrak to NYC and staying in an AirB&B-sourced apartment overlooking Central Park.

 

I’m guessing the Amtrak part went okay; I’ve done it and it’s well, okay. As I recall, just when you think there can be no finer way of travelling, rocketing along with the verdant, upstate New York countryside a careening blur, the train slows, squeals to a halt and then sits silently in the woods for ten or fifteen minutes.  It’s as if it regrets having been so recklessly efficient hitherto and made such rattling good time. There are high highs and low lows on Amtrack.

But, that wasn’t the cautionary tale.  It was the AirB&B bit; hers was a scam rental. And had Kathy not become suspicious a few days before departure, she and Jack would have look pretty darn baleful, wondering where 273 Central Park West went. I can picture it. It’s raining, the yellow cab has driven off and there’s a homicide going down right across the street. Jack clears his throat.  ”Look, there’s 271, and that’s 275. So where’s 273?... Hmmmm?“  Fortunately, Kathy’s far too smart to fall all the way, so it didn’t get to that; but she did part with her money. It took dozens of calls to AirB&B  before they sent a refund – after all that’s one of their promises; they have a “Guest Refund Policy’ page on their website.

 

 

 

Another minor amusement was a trivia quiz. President Bryce sprung ten obscure questions on us and then we had to mark our neighbour’s paper.  My neighbour absolutely blanked; not a single one could she answer.  Had there been a question like: What is the special feature of a cat’s clavicle etc etc. ? She’d have been away to the races. But, ‘Who was the Mayor of Burlington in 1995? Not a chance!  Allan Ramsay got 70% and took the Grand Prize just because he remembers the sort of stuff that most of us see no reason to hold on to. (Or maybe as Club Administrator, he wrote the questions. )

 

Our Guest speaker was Christine Himbury. Born in Kenya, she is making it her life’s work to help Kenyan orphans deprived of family and all of the security that goes with it.  The greatest scourges are HIV/AIDS and the social practices that can deprive a girl of what we consider a fair chance in life.  Christine’s personality is open, friendly and relaxed and she appears somewhat casual about the enormity of the many tasks confronting a small not-for-profit like hers.  Her organization is Achieng HIV/AIDS International. http://achieng.org/

 

Consider: Parents die of HIV/AIDS leaving young children, girls and boys.  They may or may not have extended family to raise them, but chances are the girl(s) will, by their early-mid teens, be married to someone much, much older, uneducated, perhaps infected with the virus and pregnant, facing a life of....You complete the story.

 

Christine’s mission is to help though education. But of course it all comes at a cost.  Christine funds her work with everything from taking back empties to asking you and I to help.