Two different dinners
Sunday, 17 April 2011
In a very busy week with many highlights, two dinners stand out in my memory.
The first took place on Tuesday evening when Di and I hosted the last of this year’s student dinners in our home. It has been our practice for several years now to invite groups of about 10 to 12 students to our home at various times through the year as a way of getting to know the students more deeply, giving the students a home-style family dinner (including Di’s famous desserts), and providing the students with the chance to ask questions or discuss issues on any topic they like. Of course, it is also a 
very pleasant time of exchanging stories and experiences, and having a relaxing time sharing each others’ company at the end of a busy day.
In most ways, Tuesday evening’s dinner was just like all the others we have enjoyed through the year, but it was no less special for that because every ‘typical’ dinner has been so enjoyable. However, this dinner was our last one - not only for the year, but as we are moving to a new school at the beginning of August, also the last one we will host in our Hong Kong home.
The second of the week’s memorable dinners was on Friday night, and it was certainly much grander in scale than our simple home dinner! On that evening, we celebrated the last day of lessons for our graduating class by holding the annual graduation dinner at the Novotel CityGate Hotel.
This was a sensational event, with great food, fantastic company, inspiring speeches from two of our students (Jia Jun and Zakita) as well as an address from a board board member (Mrs Ruth Lau), all ably co-ordinated by two student MCs, Nsika and Christopher. My hip, which is gradually getting better from its recent injury, was unfortunately not good enough to join in the dancing, although as I was sitting near one of the main speakers I was able to feel the music (literally) through 
every bone of my body, and especially my tender hip, which seemed to resonate to every amplified beat of the thumping music. And yet, even with a bad hip, I felt totally at one with the spontaneous energy that erupted into dancing as soon as the music of “Waka Waka” began, and the entire student body as one followed Ximena’s lead in performing a dance that Shakira herself might have envied.
Every year, I try to craft my graduation speech specifically to suit the special identity of the graduating group of students. This year, the theme of my speech was the life of our UWC President, Nelson Mandela, focussing especially on his example of patience, humility, honesty, sincerity, simplicity, pure generosity, absence of vanity, and readiness to 
serve others. I focussed my remarks around one particular sentence of my speech: “In years to come, I think you will be proud to say that you were in a UWC when Nelson Mandela was its President!
I concluded my speech with a challenge to the graduating students that was based on the opening words of Mandela’s 1998 draft autobiography (that will almost certainly never get finished). Mandela’s words, and my challenges to the students, were these:
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“Men and women, all over the world, right down the centuries, come and go. Some leave nothing behind, not even their names. It would seem that they never existed at all. Others do leave something behind: the haunting memory of the evil deeds they committed against other people… (But) there is universal respect and even admiration for those who are humble and simple by nature, and who have absolute confidence in all human beings regardless of their social status. These are men and women, known and unknown, who have declared total war against all forms of gross violation of human rights wherever in the world such excesses occur. They are generally optimistic, believing that, in every community in the world, there are good men and women who believe in peace as the most powerful weapon in the search for lasting solutions… It is such good men and women who are the hope of the world.”
I hope that it is my students that he is talking about!
