Second Visit October 2007

Pippa and Ian visited Campama LBS in Banjul several times during the two weeks of their October visit to The Gambia and saw a lot of progress since their first in February.  see report on the first visit

"On our first visit, we donated a complete set of football kit (VERY popular with both boys and girls, they said they would share it!).
 

boys and girls in their football kit

We had also arranged to have desk and seat units made for both Grade 1 classrooms, which meant making 36 units in all, each seating 3 children. We negotiated the price with the carpenter we had identified on our previous visit, and also authorised a bit more plumbing work in the toilets, carrying on from where we had left off in February. We paid them for the materials and agreed to pay the rest on completion of the work in each case.
 

the carpenter and the plumber are given cash to buy materials

We also delivered a large package of letters written to the Campama children by the children of Manor Green Primary School in Crawley - these were accepted with great enthusiasm by Mrs Jatta, the Campama Head-teacher, who said she would make sure that replies would be ready for us to take back to UK at the end of our trip.

During our first week two of the pallets we had packed in UK arrived, so we arranged for them to be delivered to Campama and unloaded them on the Friday afternoon. (That sounds so easy - in actuality it took many phone calls, visits to the port and a great deal of frustration before they were delivered!) We, Wandifa and a couple of the Campama teachers unloaded the pallets and stacked all the small items according to their eventual destination. Eight desks and 32 chairs had arrived on these two pallets - i.e. half the chairs and one quarter of the desks from Bramley School - the rest having been loaded on the following ship.
 

the chairs arrive...	..and the desks	prize bag being modelled

Among the smaller items on the container were a large number of school bags containing a variety of goodies, sent as a gift from Manor Green School. We suggested that they should be given as prizes for good work at the end of each term, as there were enough of them for one to be given to every class at the end of each term for a year. One of the girls agreed to model a bag for us, and was rather reluctant to give it back!!

The delivered desks were enough for half of one Grade 2 classroom, as the Gambian children would sit 3 to a double desk, rather than 2. We arranged them in one half of the classroom, where they were promptly occupied by the head teacher, deputy, a couple of other teachers, the caretaker and a couple of the PTA committee members! They pronounced them to be very comfortable...
 

staff and PTA members trying out the furniture..	..and then the kids

On our next visit to Campama Ian inspected the plumbing work, which was progressing well, and we collected a large pack of letters written by the Gambian children in reply to those we had brought from UK. We discussed the school furniture, which was expected to be completed by the time we were due to leave and visited the Grade 2 classroom where by now the children were using their new desks. We assured the rest of Grade 2 that the remainder of the desks and chairs would be with them before too long.
 

Grade 1A class with their new desk units	...and Grade 1B

On our last morning I went with Wandifa to Campama for our final visit of the trip. Wandifa had left us the previous afternoon with the assurance that he was going to the carpenter's workshop and was going to stay there until the furniture was finished and would make sure it was delivered to the school before I arrived! Sure enough, it was there... all 36 units, arranged in three rows in each classroom, and painted as I had suggested... in each classroom one row was in red, one in blue, one in green, laid out as in the Gambian flag! They looked really great, the classrooms were so much brighter and the children were absolutely thrilled. They had gone home from a classroom where they had either been sitting on concrete or at broken-down desks with holes in. Now they were sitting at bright new desks - I told them that, as depicted by their flag, some were sitting in the sunshine (red), some were in the river (blue), some were on the land (green) and they could compete to see which colour did the best in class.
 

The PTA chairman and a couple of committee members were there to see the new furniture and were as excited as the children. The chairman told me that these children had never had anything to be proud of before, but now they had and it made them all so happy. Both he and headteacher Mrs Jatta said they could not believe that people from UK had been so kind to these children in their school. << the PTA Chairman The carpenter and the plumber were both paid in full for all their hard work and we congratulated Fansu, the carpenter, in particular for managing to get all the desks completed and in school in such a short time. All in all, a good couple of weeks for Campama - and, as I write this, I have just heard that the other pallets have been unloaded from the ship and should be at Campama tomorrow, 13 November.

We have the following people to thank for funding the Campama desks: