Extra Mile in 2012
· Preparing for this year’s volunteers, mainly at secondary level;
· Preparing for the Head Teacher Training at Easter 2012 with Tim Feast;
· Networking with current and new head teachers;
· Meeting Goderich elders to discuss the location for the new Extra Mile School;
· ‘Rescue’ from docks, the two barrels which were shipped in January bringing laptops, textbooks, clothes, hymn books and Bibles from UK;
· Teaching in a number of classes at various schools (in his ‘spare’ time).
I’m sure we’ll hear from him as he tries to cope with the many difficulties he’ll face just to successfully complete the very simplest of tasks to help children and schools in just one small community in Sierra Leone. We wish him the best of luck, great perseverance but above all plenty of patience, no doubt he’ll need it!
Seasons Greetings from Sierra Leone
Seasons Greetings to all our friends all over the world!
We thank you all for your hard work and
enthusiasm contributed over the past year.
We wish you all a very happy festive period and hope you have a
happy time together with family and friends.
Latest from Freetown - Week 2
This week in glorious Goderich, with terrific thunderstorms, final round-up at university and an ‘outbreak’ of seaweed on the beaches.
Not unusual throughout the wet season but pretty spectacular ear-splitting explosions sparking the night sky over a sleeping village. Windows blown open to drench whole rooms in minutes, zinc rooves shed serrated jets from every house scouring the foundations of roads and walls for miles. The dawn shows the cruel damage of a two hour storm from which no one escapes. For the main universities now is the time for their annual purge of ‘fake’ students. In their final few months students are finally ‘exposed’, already having been allowed to join classes as well as paying their fees (non-refundable!) for the previous years and now are finally brought to justice. A kind of justice maybe!!
In the last few weeks many of Sierra Leone’s beautiful beaches have been covered with thick, brown seaweed, allegedly due to some form of eutrophication from mining effluent brought to the coast. After three weeks of complete indecision and a lot of…. ”Who did this?”, it seems that some beach communities have used it as a blessing, raking it all together and putting it onto their farms to promote better yields of cassava.
Have a wonderful week wherever you are, Mike.
Latest from Freetown - Week 1
A big week here in hot and very wet Sierra Leone, with visits to the local bank, meetings with the Ministry and the end of Ramadan.
Finally got to see the Minister of Lands on Friday. ‘How de land Mike?’. ‘Problems’, I replied, ‘the land you gave us now has a house built on it’. ‘Ah yes we did have other clients! We’ll try for another place and send one of our surveyors who knows the area’.
We were offered the ‘very flat’ summit of a local mountain and an area only partly owned by one of the banks; neither offering much security for our future. The only remaining option will be for us now is to rent a property and start from there.
Muslims fast from 5.30am till 7.10pm every day throughout the month of Ramadan, (August 1st-30th) and today is prayer day when they break their fast. One problem is that many Muslim shops close, some for several days, whilst other, non-Muslim shops remain open. It’s a bit of a nightmare not knowing when and where to shop, but the one good thing is that it reduces our spending.
Have a wonderful week and keep the prayers going.
Thanks,
Mike.
Volunteers and staff in June 2011. Haja, Jacky, Cristina Bennett, Steve Atyeo, Su Adkinson and Samuel Babir, Ide Peterson, Justine Cutler and houseboy Ishmael.
Extra Mile BBQ Fundraiser
We had a skittles game, food stalls, DVD showing of Avatar!
