Seedlings for Christ

For the first few weeks I loved living in Gambia. Then it got hard. I spent most of the time wishing I was back home surrounded by family and friends. Now I'm back here I find myself wishing I was back there again. Life is so confusing. Living there was hard. Being alone was hard. Eating rice day in and day out was hard. Travelling anywhere was hard but I made some amazing friends, learnt a lot of things - both about myself, the country, other people and not least God - and had some great laughs! But the best thing of the whole 3 months, the thing that brought a tear to my eye was seeing the children in the school, their new school, singing.

The guys I had to help me out there were brilliant. I could not have done even a fraction of the work without them. I'd like to say a big thank you to Williams, Soloman, Saikou, Mo and especially Alieu. He was there for me every day doing whatever I asked of him and coming with me wherever I needed to go. If I was in trouble or stuck, he was there for me. Thank you Alieu. I can never repay you for what you helped me achieve during my 3 months in Gambia. The building we found needed a lot of work. Painting, digging, fixing, rendering, plumbing, electrics, ceilings, tiling, the list goes on! The guys worked really hard for weeks getting the place fixed up and safe for the children. Then came the first parents meeting. I was so nervous. I had never taken a meeting like that before when all eyes would be on me. I didn't have anyone to hind behind. I was the person that the parents would fire their questions at and THAT was a scary thought. African ladies can be very scary if they are cross. But God with with me and the meeting went very well.

Then came the craziest thing I have ever experienced. School open day. The invitation went out to children that were already sponsored to come and fill in application forms and to also tell their friends. I was so naive about this whole thing. I thought I could sit and chat with the parents who brought their children to register them. I told them to come at 10am. By 8am they were queueing at the gate (for those of you that don't know, Gambians are renowned for being late so this was quite a thing!). I started off at a table filling in forms. The crowd grew and grew. The pushing and shoving started. We moved inside and shut the door to keep them out!! 2 days of non-stop filling out forms and they were still queueing! Over 300 children we had apply. I am still amazed at the shear volume of people that came those days. It shows just how desperate these people are to get their children into school. It's sad that the majority of them will probably never have their children sponsored through us.

We hired a carpenter to make desks and Saikou moved onto the site to become Caretaker. This ensured there was always someone on site, very important in Gambia. Buying up supplies started. Books, bags, pens, paper, teachers desks, educational books, teaching material, blackboards the list goes on. Eventually we had everything bought that was needed to run a basic school.

I had a lot of trouble with the education department. They didn't seem to happy about us opening a school and there seemed to be a lot of barriers and obstacles put in our way. From the first visit I kept on hitting walls with them. They weren't happy about the building we were going to use then they gave us the wrong address to send the application to then they weren't happy about the letter that we wrote, then we had to give them this information and that information then write something else. It got beyond a joke at one point. It took nearly a whole day to hand in one letter.

In the end we went ahead and got the children coming in. I had 2 teachers there (Solomon and Williams) ready to start teaching and they were great! The children that already had sponsors in England were asked to come in every morning. And in they came. It was so lovely to see them everyday coming to play with their friends and sing songs. I got to know them very well and right now I am missing them so much. These children became part of my life, spending time with them everyday got me through the last few weeks before the group arrived. They cheered me up and getting things organised in the school for them made me so happy. They were so proud of their school and even sang songs about it. "When I was a little child I went to Seedlings School" became a favourite of mine!

Days went by with the children coming in for the morning and the guys shopping in the afternoon for various things. Bookshelves were built and rooms arranged. The children wrote letters back to their sponsors in England and learnt new songs. Everything was going very smoothly.

The group arrived on December 4th 2009. All eager to see the new school. I was nervous. I was so worried that they wouldn't be happy with it and that I might have let them down. There was no need to be. Everyone loved it and loved seeing the children. There were about 20 people in the group and in the 2 weeks they were there got on with loads more building work. Paintings were done, more rendering, tiling, walls knocked down, foundations laid for more rooms and a lid put on the well.

Today the children attend school from 9am until 3pm. They have uniforms, books, bags and shoes each. There are more sponsors in UK going through the process of starting up with a child. This will put another 20 or so children in the school.

Another group will travel out to Gambia in March where more work will be completed on the school. Unfortunately I will not be going (I think I've had my share of Gambia for the time being) but will hopefully be travelling out again at the end of the year. Thank you so much for any support you have given myself or the group during the last year as we went about setting up the school. If you would like to sponsor a child please do not hesitate to contact me. Details are here http://www.seedlingsforchrist.com/theteamcontactdetails.htm