The rains are here now, first big rain was on Saturday, it seemed like the end of the world! The sky went black, massive winds whipped up the sand, dirt and rubbish and then the heavens opened. Thunder, lightening and torrential rain for a couple of hours. It was lovely when it stopped, everything was clean and bright and the next day all sorts of new insects were out and about, some nicer than others! My favourites are like small bright red spiders, they look all fluffy. We also had a swarm of flying insects, they suddenly appeared in their thousands, their wings dropped off after about 15 minutes and then they were like ants. the chickens had a great time eating them!

On to charity news here. We have had some nice donations and have started to make blocks for the fencing for Basori Nursery. Bless and his team are working very hard and I will visit this week. Hopefully they will have completed around half of the blocks needed and I will buy more sand and cement this week with the latest donations. Once we have made all the blocks we will get a price for constructing the wall. I would love to see it up this year but it all depends on the fundraising. Each block costs around 25p to make and we need approximately another 3000 blocks. If anyone would like to donate towards this project please contact us. We can accept cheques made payable to Gambia Fundraising Account, bank transfer or through Virgin Money Giving, just search for Goal For The Gambia.

I visited the Arabic School recently to take photos of the completed toilets and found that another charity is constructing one of the school buildings. I am very pleased for the school but am feeling disappointed that no one saw fit to consult with us. I am sure if we had joined forces we could have achieved a lot more. The building they are constructing is very different to our original plan. The main classroom block we have constructed still needs to be plastered and we plan to do that after we have completed the wall at Basori. We have decided though that as the Arabic School now has other support that we will complete the building we started and then look for another project where there is no other support available. We will still visit the Arabic School and take along any stationery and supplies that is donated.

If anyone has any thoughts on this decision we would be happy to hear them.

Schools will be closing in the next couple of weeks for the summer break and all the students are taking exams at the moment. A stressful time for them all but they will have about 10 weeks to recover before school starts again!

Basori Nursery has been a very popular choice of schools to visit and Basori village has welcomed us each time with open arms. They certainly know how to welcome visitors. I have never organised any of the welcome parties, the village have organised it all themselves and seem to enjoy as much as the visitors and I do. We go later in the morning so as not to disrupt the school too much, the children get more than 3 hours of teaching before we arrive. We have built the new toilets at the school this year thanks to some generous donors and our next project is to fence the school. This is a huge project as the area is 60 meters by 100 meters and we want to build in concrete blocks as this will be long lasting. A rough estimation of the cost is in the region of £7000. Definitely needed though to prevent the animals coming in to the school grounds and leaving their mark all over the place as well as preventing the children "escaping" during the morning and crossing the main road very close to the school.

We are really looking forward to the prize giving day in July as I have been saving some of the "goodies" that have been donated by visitors and every child will receive a small gift with those that have done well getting the star prizes!

News on the Arabic School to follow shortly, watch this space!

On Saturday the nursery schools in this region celebrated the 46th anniversary of Independence and I was asked to accompany the nursery school in Basori. What a day!! 96 nursery schools were represented with 30 children from each school with their teachers were invited to "march past". I was included in this and it was great fun. They had nursery school age children representing local dignatories, members of the government and even the President who arrived in a cavalcade of vehicles with horns blowing, lights flashing and "security" running along side. The children all looked wonderful in their freshly cleaned uniforms and many of the girls had their hair plaited for the day, some even had their hair decorated with sweets, very colourful and noisy!

One of the highlights of the day for me was that the Sanyang Scouts, who we also support, were invited and they gave a demonstration of their marching skills which was fantastic. These children were age between 5 and 8 and honestly could have put the army to shame. They were perfectly in time, changing pace, turning and all to the real Army band. I was so proud of them. I will upload some photos soon to the Facebook page.

In the afternoon they had sports where there was some fierce competition. The children all did so well, they arrived at 10 am or before and it did not finish until 7. Brilliant day and again showed me just how proud these children and their families are that they are receiving an education.

The Arabic School staff have also dug their own soak away and as soon as funds allow we will be buying cement and sand and start the block making. I am very happy that they have all done this work themselves, they really do believe here that if we all join hands things will get done. No sitting around waiting for money to fall from the skies!

Not sure if I should have another blog for this but as I have mentioned it before...... The scouts in Sunbury have started collecting money for the Scouts in Sanyang after the death of one of the young girl scouts from malaria. We aim to buy every scout family a mosquito net and so far have enough money to buy and distribute 30, we would love to supply every scout family, they cost around £5 each for the big ones. Please sponsor a mosquito net and help protect our young scouts.

I was very happy to be there for the opening of the well that the villagers have dug for themselves at the school. They realised that they could not rely on the charity to do everything and so set to themselves. We provided a small amount of money for some of the materials but really can not take any credit for this. See our Facebook page for photos of the well and the starting of work on the toilets. Will keep posting new photos when I visit.

The Arabic School in Brikama is also in desperate need of toilet facilities and I was surprised and delighted when I visited to see that the have dug the soak away themselves. The staff all helped out and it obviously will reduce costs. Once the toilet is finished in Basori and I can be sure we have enough money I will start to buy sand and cement to make blocks for this school. Obviously, any donations gratefully received!