Fun food and fellowship Bodden Town East Seniors’ night

By Christopher Tobutt

There was fun, food and fellowship in abundance at the Bodden Town East Seniors’ night and Webster Memorial Church Hall was pretty-much full up. Lots of people came to help and make sure it was a huge success, including about 20 people from the Savannah Seventh Day Adventist Church Community Service Group, who were sharing and serving the food. Curry or Jerk Chicken was on the menu, along with rice and beans or just white rice, and a lovely mac & Cheese. But don’t forget all the others who stepped up to the plate, including Tatiana, Annie.

Bodden Town MP Dwayne Seymour was there too. He wants to make the get-togethers happen every month and he thanked everybody for stepping up and making it possible, “Thanks to Tatiana and Anita and Jane and Annie and the rest of the crew and thank you to the Adventist community group for coming out,” he said. “Too often we hear our seniors say that there is nothing for us to do and we want more to do, we want more involvement in the community. People don’t understand how important it is for us to interact with our seniors and listen to them, when they tell us about things that happened in the past so we don’t make the same mistakes moving forward, and things that actually worked in the past that we can use to take us forward in the right direction.”

84-year old Miss Martha Robinson was someone who could tell you all those things, but tonight she was content to share the most important thing of all, her faith with people, through a beautiful poem about the Lord she had memorized when she was a young child: “Over the whole wide wonderful world, from sea to shining sea, children worship their King, whether their skin be black or white, the savior’s praise they sing. Over the whole wide wonderful world they read his holy words telling of the saviors love, and of a living Lord”

It was time for the games to begin. First of all there was a sort of horseshoe-throwing game, only more indoor-friendly, with colored bracelets for horseshoes and three filled water bottles for pegs. There were lots of near-misses and lots of cheers from everyone as Miss Shirley came up to have a go, followed by Miss Carole, and TJ, a young boy, helped a lot collecting up the bracelets. When it was Dwayne Seymour’s turn, and he made everyone laugh and scream when he just walked straight up and put the bracelet right over the bottle. Now, that cheating? or is that just a man who likes to get things done his way?

Then it was time to do some scat- dancing to the great 60s ska reggae tunes being put out by music man Dwayne Euter. Wow! The older folks have got such style they could sure teach the younger ones how to dance! The last game of the evening was Musical Chairs and lots of people came up to join in. They danced round and around, and when the music stopped they sat down. Last one standing was out. Dwayne Seymour gave out the prizes which were gift certificates for haircuts, manicures and wash-and-blow-dries by a Bodden Town beauty and hair salon.

Next, it was happy birthday time for everyone who had their birthdays recently. After Beulah Howard was serenaded Happy Birthday by Mr. Shirley, she told the story of the day she was born, many years ago. “I weighed only a pound and a half, and Beulah McLaughlin was the midwife. I was so small that she used to put me in a shoebox,” Ms. Howard said. “There were people who would say, “she’s not going to live, let her go,” and she said, ‘No, I am going to raise this child, and she is going to be named after me, and she is going to be a nurse like me, and sure enough that is what happened.”