'Champion'

Just to share a little taste of our tropical joys.....

Fancy a bit of this on your shoulder?

'Champion' is the local name for a little black and red acid fly. Kofi has a little scrape on his shoulder too and they have been walking on my face as well. How delightful.

It may be cold, grey, miserable and wet back in the UK but at least there will be no champion flies! UK and fundraising, here we come.

'champion' all over my shoulder - uggh!

And another one.....

The sun rising over the Malama Hills - the view from EducAid Lumley [Freetown].
A couple of weeks ago, I posted Juldeh's success and consequent plight on the blog. He had gained a place at Fourah Bay College, successfully saved £250 over the year [almost unheard of here] and was in the happy position of needing an additional £250 plus maintenance to make engineering studies become a reality.

Through the generosity of some friends of EducAid, he has achieved this first step of his dream and he is now part of the FBC engineering department. Well done Juldeh and thank you to his supporters.

Today, another of our young junior staff came to see me with a similar story. Emmanuel Bai Sesay has gained a place at IPAM [The Institute of Public Administration Management] to study Applied Accounting and has saved £200 of the £400 he requires. He has achieved this by working as a driver by night and a teacher by day, despite his father suddenly disowning him last year and refusing him further accommodation and support.

It is these little pictures of courage and determination that make it quite impossible to turn our backs on these young people. While they continue the fight, we must continue beside them.

Congratulations Emmanuel and good luck.

Meanwhile, if anyone is in the position to help with fees or maintenance, we will be extremely grateful.

For more information about EducAid's work, please see www.educaid.org.uk

Go Girls Go!

The Women's Project started in Lumley, Freetown in March 2006. Its target beneficiaries were girls who wanted to go to secondary school but, for whatever reason, were not at an appropriate academic standard. The project started with 18 girls and Henrietta Sandi [lead women's project teacher] and her colleagues went looking for more every afternoon, until the class was full and overfull.

For many of these girls, school was a discipline that was a complete shock. It was also counter to so many of the expectations surrounding them. In Sierra Leone, horribly, there are many girls who see education as a backwards step for women, as the men will not want you if you think you are smart etc etc.

We are extremely proud, therefore, of Kadiatu Tholley, Mabinty S Bangura and Hassanatu Sheriff [pictured below] who have battled against the prejudices and the difficult home circumstances, and have successfully moved from the Women's Project into the main stream school and on into the examination class. They sat the BECE [Basic Education Certificate Examination] in July and having just gained their results, are pushing on into the senior secondary classes.

We wish them every success and all courage in their on-going studies.

Hungry to learn

While kids are kids and we would not pretend that our students are universal saints who always thirst for knowledge, it would certainly be fair to say that we see far greater willingness to put themselves out for education than we would from the average UK teenager.

I do not remember, while teaching in a British boarding school, ever having to threaten to confiscate the books of a student who I caught studying in the middle of the night. It is not an uncommon event here. [There is a conviction that getting up and working through the night is the only way of really being serious about your study.]

Equally noteworthy is the attitude of the staff to opportunities for training. I was one of those who grumbled whenever the mention of 'inservice' training was made, when I was teaching in the UK. I am genuinely impressed, therefore, at the willingness of all the EducAid staff to participate in whatever training is proposed.

It is worth saying that it is not a comfortable enterprise either. All the up-country staff camp in the Lumley [Freetown] school during trainings. This can involve sleeping bodies all over the place and everyone putting up with the discomfort, in order to access whatever new knowledge is going.

The entire staff has just returned back to base, having spent most of half term doing training in curriculum issues, IT and designing materials. There would be a rebellion amongst UK teachers who had such a programme proposed to them!

The leadership team: Serious engagement with the complexities of a skills based curriculum.

The junior staff: equally willing to think through the quality of their work.

Congratulations to the EducAid staff and students

Newspaper cutting from 'Awoko'.

It doesn't matter where our staff go at the moment, they are congratulated at every turn. Once again, we have 100% pass rates in the junior secondary [key stage 3 equivalent] public examinations [BECE] and Magbeni, in particular, are right at the top of the whole Northern area.

Our aim now is to help more and more youngsters achieve this success and to increase provision at senior secondary level [Key stage 4 equivalent plus a bit].

At the moment, we cause an increasing problem for ourselves, by all the Port Loko district students having to come to Freetown to continue their education after BECE. Each year therefore, we add another 60 students to the live-in population in Freetown. We have hopes that we will secure a donation for £40,000 to build a new structure in Rolal, Port Loko this year. The man with the money is due to visit in early November and will decide any time over the next few weeks. We are optimistic.

The other problem is that, because of our success and the never ending need, we are experiencing greater and greater demand programme-wide. For example, the Magbeni school has overflowed out of its original building into an enterprisingly constructed bamboo classroom.

Junior staff, Bai Bundu and Joseph Kai, in front of the new bamboo classroom in Magbeni.

AJ's tutor group inside the bamboo classroom.

Sadly, we really need to reduce the overall programme population by about 150 youngsters, in order to really do the quality of work we want to. Or, maybe another saviour will come forward with the means to construct something more durable in both Magbeni and Lumley, so we can stop turning youngsters away. Here's hoping!

Really good news this time

At long last! Thanks to the kind efforts of a talented lawyer by the name of Paul Chiy, who took up Jimiyke's case, his application was resubmitted and today we got a phone call to say that the visa has been granted. He has taken his passport up to the British High Commission today and will collect it on Monday. Justice has been served this time.

If all goes well, he will travel with Kofi and me in early November when we go back to the UK for fundraising. We now have to make arrangements with the consultant and can hopefully set things in motion for a full diagnosis and appropriate treatment. The medical situation here continues to daily appall us.

[For those new to Jimiyke's story please read the post on 22nd May 09 or follow the link to: http://www.educaid.org.uk/EducAid_Sierra_Leone/Abu_Bakarr_Koroma.html]

If you want to know more about EducAid's work please go to www.educaid.org.uk

24/7 electricity - too good to be true?

EducAid at night with it's new electricity provision.

I met someone from World Bank in June. I was simultaneously outraged at the impunity with which, those who can, blatantly steal donor funding and at the incompetence of the aid agencies who unquestioningly hand over large amounts of donor money; amused at the woman's naivety and extraordinary incompetence and frustrated that once again the poor at the mercy of such people. She had been shown receipts for fuel and so on for the NPA [National Power Authority or No Power At all] and they had assured her that they were providing 24/7 electricity across Freetown. I laughed out loud. How long had she been in Freetown and not been able to work out that it was not true? We were generally getting 'government light' once or twice a week for a matter of hours.

The construction of the Bumbuna Dam to supply Freetown with hydro-electricity has been on-going since Alhassan was a child, as he remembered, and probably before too. It has been one of the new government's top priorities, however. And, in the last ten days we have finally seen some changes in the extraordinary non provision of power. We have had electricity most nights and most days [daytime power in most residential areas is generally unheard of]. It is life transforming to not have to head off to someone else's office, after your battery runs out, in order to recharge and continue working!

Please god, it lasts and someone didn't just lean on the wrong switch by mistake.

If you would like to know more about EducAid's work please go to www.educaid.org.uk