School receives special visit from friends in Ethiopia

A PRIMARY school played host to two very special guests who travelled more than 5,000 miles to meet the pupils.

Yesterday (23) Belayneh Shewaye, the co-ordinator of the charity Link Ethiopia, and Biniam Adisu, an 11-year-old pupil from the Gondar region of Ethiopia, visited Warrender School, in Old Hatch Manor, Ruislip.

They have travelled to England for 10 days to meet some of the schools linked with the charity and discuss their ongoing projects.

Warrender School has been linked with Kola Diba Elementary School in Gondar for the past two years.

The schools regularly swap letters from pupils and Warrender has raised money for a new library and new science equipment for their partner school.

During his visit Belayneh took a special assembly, where he showed a selection of traditional Ethiopian artefacts and told the pupils about their link school.

Biniam spent the lunch break playing football with his new friends, who were thrilled to hear that he was a long-distance Chelsea fan. One child was so impressed he even gave Biniam his Chelsea lunchbox as a gift to take back to Ethiopia.

Having met the children, staff and parents, Belayneh and Biniam were presented with a team set of football kit along with hundreds of letters from the Warrender pupils.

Christine Lake, the teacher in charge of community links at Warrender, said: "We have a wonderful link with Kola Diba and were thrilled to hear all about our friends and the progress the school is making."

Warrender's next project is to raise £1,000 to provide Kola Diba with its first ever computers.