Thank you Tamarside

Hi to everyone from a baking hot Gambia

This week has seen me rushed off my feet, teaching in the mornings and out every afternoon supporting local projects run by other organisations.

Very happy to be supporting a new library facility in Bakoteh run by Sheikh E T Lewis and his team.

They also run an International Centre for Street Children and Child Trafficking.

Modou and I went along to visit the place and had no hesitation at all in donating a variety of reading books at all levels to support the facility.

Mr Lewis is a Human Rights activist and very interesting person to talk to.


I shall enjoy my visits there. A small delegation came to us from Gambia College, the teacher training institute here.

We filled their truck with boxes of text books and teaching materials donated by Tamarside Community College.

I'll be visiting the College tomorrow to see the items on site and to meet the Head of Education. Suleiman Bah, one of the students I sponsored for three years in Kerewan Samba Sira is now training to be a teacher at the college so the link is especially important for me.


That's all the hard work we are doing, the fun stuff is blowing bubbles with the children in the mornings!

Pictured is Hildegard Thaler, one of our volunteers, back again this year to help us. We all love her!



Until next time,
best wishes
Debbie

Visitors Galore!

The past few weeks have seen us welcome lots of visitors from Plymouth escaping the cold and enjoying the guaranteed Gambian sunshine. Simon and Heather Judge donated much-needed gardening tools last year and came to see them in action. Heather had all the children dancing and Simon added a few more snaps to the 700 he had already taken on their visits around the local area. Tracey Thorn and her daughter Perrie Renzi and friend Keira Wilshaw, Year 9 students at Ridgeway School visited the school and taught the children with some brilliant resources they had prepared back in Plymouth. The children loved it and I think I may have found replacements for me when I go back to the UK in the Spring!
A special visitor who spent two weeks living in a mud hut on our compound was intrepid Herald photographer, Lucy Blake who conquered her fear of monkeys and crocodiles by photographing them up close and personal! Lucy was amazing, the children are still asking for her and I, personally, miss her cheerful nature and "muck-in" approach. She fetched water, lit fires, painted the school door and ably assisted with the children.
I look forward to meeting up with Lucy back in Plymouth in the Spring; she's promised to cook me a meal (in an oven I think, not on an open fire!). I've just dropped a further 3 kilos, having had malaria twice in two months. I think I'm over it now but it's been a long haul getting back to normal (well as normal as I'm likely to get anyway!).
Have had a few blips with the numbers of children attending school as a new nursery school opened in the village and many parents sent their children there to get the free uniform and school lunch, even though they were already registered with our school. I felt disappointed initially and then realised that it is far nicer teaching twenty to twenty-five rather than trying to manage forty-plus. As long as they are all in school, I don't mind where it is.
Till next time,
best wishes
Debbie