She took his hand, opened it and traced the lines on his palm, before looking at her own upturned hand and doing the same.  It was a connection he would never forget.  She was a 12 year old deaf girl from Ethiopia, he a 62 year old electrician from Northern Ireland.  There could be no going back; they simply had to help these people…

And so it came about that a bunch of men from Comber, desperate to help children in one of the world’s poorest countries, came up with the fund-raising idea of creating a recipe book.  They sought the endorsement of Jenny Bristow and then scoured the country for celebrity assistance, before coming back with recipe gems ranging from Dame Mary Peter’s Thai chicken with ginger and mint, to Lynda Bryans’ Prawns with Lemon and Garlic and Arlene Foster’s banana dippers.

These ‘Men on a Mission’, from 1st Comber Presbyterian, were driven by a compulsion to see a school for special needs young people established in Ethiopia.  One of their members James Russell takes up the story: “We’d been to visit a special school, which was within this vast mainstream school and in this unit kids with disabilities were being taught in awful conditions.  So we thought that we simply have to build a school for these guys.”

£125 thousand is the target amount, needed to build this school.  And so this beautifully illustrated Christmas recipe book, which is full of stories and photos from the men’s Ethiopian experiences, is available for purchase in all Spar and Vivo stories here.  Even to flick through the book is an emotional experience, as smiling young faces peer out at you.

James says the men are determined to push on and see this special school established as soon as possible:  “It’s hard not to be moved by what you se there and sometimes you have to remember when you look at a classroom of smiling faces, that these kids are all orphans.”