Our trip to The Gambia
Our trip to The Gambia was a life changing experience. There were 19 girls in our group; Roisin Potter, Keira Andrews, Lea Adkins, Sarah Lister, Megan Brook- Bromley, Anissa Payne, Jenny Bearcroft, Jess Shaw, Claire Green, Jess Hindle, Lou Ikiua,
Amber Loftus, Emma Wighton, Kelsey Mills, Alice Scull, Freya Stewart, Livi Drinnan,
Lottie Wostenholme and Hanna Crook. We departed The Phoenix Centre at 3:00am on the 11th December, after a restless sleep. Also a speech from Mr. Ralls on what we should expect whilst in the Gambia and had to re-pack our rucksacks with some essentials and presents for the trip; this included paint brushes, tea, coffee, first aid, pencils and a lot more! We flew from Manchester to Banjul airport which took around 6 hours. Looking out on to deserts and deep blue seas occupied us for most of the journey. When we arrived at Banjul airport we found ourselves standing in front of two ‘mini vans’ that. Had seats sellotaped to the bus, rusting doors, loose wires, our bags were launched onto the top of the vans tied with string and then left! This was the start of our week in the Gambia living the way they live.
We arrived at Bakau Lower Basic School; looking at the kids playing football in old tops, shorts and a rare sighting of shoes. The school facilities were very basic, there were several long rectangular buildings which contained two small classrooms, there were no windows just thin blue bars! We were taken to the rooms we would sleep in for the next week, it was rather cosy, once we had assembled our mosquito nets, and laid our roll mat and sleeping mat out.
We were given a classroom between four. The first thing we had to do was to take all the desks outside to be fixed by one group. The rest was left to us. We had to transform the classrooms: sanding paper, chisels, rollers, paint brushes and paint. To start you had to sand down the walls so that there wasn’t going to be pieces of old paint falling off as you painted the walls, this was harder than it sounded. Following that we had to paint the whole room white. To reach the top of the walls we had one old step ladder between everyone. Lets just say we thought it wasn’t safe; one day we were worried as one of the Gambian helpers came in and said, ‘ Are you sure that ladder is safe?!’ After painting the room white we then had to paint the bottom half of the room a deep blue, which didn’t take long. Then the fun part; we had to ask the teacher of the classroom we were decorating what the children learn, and with that information we painted educational murals on to the white area of the wall. We were given small paint brushes to do this but with the quality of them we had to use our lessons from primary school of finger painting! By the end of the week we had all completed two classrooms each, via one group who had to fix benches and paint one classroom. When you brought the teachers and children into the classrooms seeing the delight and happiness on their faces, and all the thanks we received is the best feeling I have ever experienced! Altogether we had improved facilities for over 350 children.
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Gambia
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