Registered Charity Number: 291660

Administrator:

A.H. Beadles -

The Administrator, Chaff Barn, Downyard, Compton Pauncefoot,

Yeovil, Somerset, BA22 7EL United Kingdom 

Tel: 01963 440461 Email: tonybeadles@freeuk.com

Below are some outstanding reports from scholarship winners over the past few years on their experiences in different parts of the world

Lucy Geake - Monkton Combe School - Oasis Trust in Bangladesh, 2009

Jessica Fok - Eltham College - Smile International in Kosova, 2008-2009

Robin Baddeley - Monkton Combe School - Anastasis Mercy Ship, Benin and West Africa, 2005

Liam Taylor - Bristol Grammar School - Project Trust in Guyana, 2004-2005

Ruth Harvey - Oakham School - Teaching and Projects Abroad in India and Thailand, 2005

Claire Bourke - Dame Allan's School, Newcastle-on-Tyne, Project Trust in Uganda, 2003-2004

Lucy Geake – Monkton Combe School Oasis Trust in Bangladesh – 2009

I’ve now been in back in the UK for a few weeks, having spent just under three months in the capital of Bangladesh, with the charity Oasis Trust.  I then decided to use the opportunity of being where I was to stay on for a few extra weeks to do a bit of travelling there and in neighbouring India.

I want to say a huge thank-you for helping me get to Bangladesh.  I feel incredibly privileged to have spent time there, and I know that it was made possible with your help.  I cannot thank you enough for choosing to support me.  I lived in a flat with the five other girls on the same short mission team, in Dhaka.  It is a fascinating city, full of constant activity.

I was privileged to spend time at a centre run by Salvation Army, in the south of the city, to rehabilitate sex-workers and provide them with a future.  It truly is an incredible project. I was very humbled being there and visiting the community.  I did some case study work at the centre, as before they only had stunted-paragraph-long case studies, so instead I’ve been recording their full-length stories, that will help inform the work of the centre and SA on a broader level.  Regina, who heads up the project, translated.  It was awful hearing how the woman had been forced to lead the lives they have had to, yet they were so keen to share if it was going to help others.  I was moved to see what a profound difference this centre had and was making in so many people’s lives.  To simply see the hope, joy and faith the women had, (as a result of the centre) despite terrible circumstances was humbling. It was inspirational to be working with such dedicated staff members too.  I was also privileged to be able to help out at a Stop the Traffick conference, where there were staff from numerous NGOs.  The process of repatriation, prevention work and follow up work is so much more complex than I could ever have imagined.  I’m so glad I had the chance to learn more about these areas, especially as I now appreciate what a challenge the NGOs are facing and that there are not immediate answers.  It was very encouraging during discussion groups to hear the proposed solutions to problems the group had previously mentioned, as well as to hear how keen everyone was to work together rather than act as rivals to other NGOs, as they are all fighting for the same cause.

I also spent a lot of time at a school that Oasis run for girls from a slum community called Duaripara.  The girls there are wonderful, - very friendly and very eager to learn.  I really miss them!  In the morning there are classes for girls who are unable to access any other form of education.  Then in the afternoons another group of girls come along, who go to government run schools in the morning.  Oasis helped this group of girls to get into the government schools, and contribute towards their fees, but keep on educating them in the afternoons and supporting them – particularly as the style of government schooling is very different – much less creative and interactive.  We built up really good relationships with the teachers there.  They are amazing woman who have such compassion for the children, and an incredible faith in God.  They teach really effectively and have been eager to pick up new teaching methods. We would often do a craft activity with the girls, (e.g. making a pencil case), to give the girls a chance to do something creative, as well as showing the teachers how they can incorporate a short activity into a normal school day.  We also ran “English Club” at lunch times, where we were teaching a variety of things, such as simple verbs.  At other times, my days there were filled up with a variety of things, such as visiting families in the slum, running a sports day, helping with admin, doing a PSHE lesson, or running a session on a relevant issue.  For instance, I ran a session for a few girls, with the help of Lovely, the head of school, who translated, to find out what they knew about human trafficking and how much exposure they, or the people they know, have had to relating issues.  It was scary seeing how many of the girls had been in situations which had the potential to turn into something more sinister.  However, they learnt a lot about the risk and were all keen to pass on everything they knew to people in their community.

I have also spent time at a couple of schools for slum children run by local churches, where we were more focusing on teaching English.  I enjoyed having the opportunity to take some classes independently, as I think that challenged me, having to think on my feet and completely change my lesson plan if it wasn’t suitable, as the schools would sometimes ask you teach different classes to the one you’d been told to prepare!

I also spent time at other projects and. at a local church, it was great to see such a broad spectrum of work while I was away.  I also relished the opportunity to meet a couple who run a business called REED which works with factories to improve the working conditions, and work on their corporate social responsibility policies – their work is so productive.  It was also valuable spending time with some ex-pats working in the country.  it was very inspiring to see and hear about some of the work they had done.

One thing I was really struck by is the sheer generosity of people in Bangladesh.  Everybody is amazingly generous and will go completely out of their way to help you, which is an inspiration.  I hope that I will be able to mirror this attribute as much as possible!  I have been very inspired to see how people live out their faith in God, and express it in action constantly, even in a country where so many Christians are persecuted. I also feel I have gained more confidence and had my character shaped a lot while I was away.  Beneficiaries, as well as the people I was working alongside, have both taught me a lot!

I have also learnt about the complexity of issues.  For example, I didn’t know about the positives of the garment industry, which has really expanded my perspective and got me trying to think of what is the best way to approach issues, how to find sustainable solutions and prevention means.  I have also been thinking a lot more about specifics of my future and what I might be able to do to best serve the poor.

When my placement finished, I travelled with another girl on my team.  We had two weeks in Bangladesh, which really helped me to gain a greater understanding for the country and its people, by being able to contextualise my experiences in Dhaka.  Bangladesh is a very beautiful country outside of the capital!  We then crossed into India.  It was fascinating to see the cultural differences between the two nations, the shift in the way we were seen as foreigners and the significant difference created by Islam being so predominant in Bangladesh.  As a result of having been in Bangladesh first, we were much more aware of dressing conservatively than other travellers, which we discovered the locals in India really appreciated.  I arranged for us to visit a few projects during this time.  In one instance, we stayed with a local family on a Fairtrade tea estate (I’m very interested in Trade Justice!) in the foothills of the Himalayas.  It was brilliant to see how a fair-trade tea estate operates, and what a strong sense of community was present.  Another project that  I felt very privileged to visit was run in the centre of Kolkata’s biggest red light district.  We visited their kids’ club and their church.  It was just incredible to see what a haven the place was, in such a troubled community.  Outside women lined the street, which was heartbreaking, yet it was a privilege to enter the community and be able to greet and have short conversations with clusters of women on the way to the centre.  I am just amazed by the hope that Grandmas, the charity who run the project, offer.  I hope that they, like the Salvation Army project in Dhaka, will be able to radically change many people’s lives.

I am certain that these experiences will remain with me forever.  My vision and understanding has been greatly expanded, my heart for the poor has grown and my dreams to work for the benefit of the poor solidified.  These experiences have highlighted my priorities, and also shaped my plans for the near and far future a little more!  I am incredibly grateful for the opportunities I’ve had and I thank you for your part in that, and assure you that they will continue to have a profound effect on me.

Many thanks once again. 

Lucy Geake

Jessica Fok’s report of her gap year to Kosova duration October 2008 -April 2009

Setting out on October 6th in 2008, I was, at the time, completely unaware of just how much Kosova would change me and just how quickly its people would grab my heart. What I did know however, was that I was stepping into a completely new experience, one I knew very little about and although my heart was going in that direction full speed ahead, my feet were a little more cautious. Still, after months of talking about going, I finally boarded that plane and waited in anticipation for it to land, on the ground that would be called my home for the next six months.

Kosova itself is beautiful. There is an incredible amount of luscious green landscape and hills. Gjakova (the town where I was staying) was surrounded by mountains on all sides, the most wonderful view to wake up to every morning! Each mountain range is a border to the 3 countries bordering Kosova. It has not yet been spoilt by tourist attractions and the like, and will probably remain like that for years to come. Now ten years since the war occurred in Kosova, the towns are built up again and are continuing to grow. Around Kosova however, you see buildings left from the war, left as memories, lest one might forget the destruction that occurred. They are mainly what used to be homes, now just empty shells showing the huge bullet holes in the walls from the fighting. In amongst all the new houses and the little shops, these are the buildings that reminded me where I was and what so many of these people had been through, something I could not relate to but something I would hear much more about in the days to come.

A lot of my time in Kosova was spent on the Romany Colony where the people face so much discrimination and hardship. Here I spent time teaching the children in a little ‘after-school’ school and visiting families.. The Roma Colony is equivalent to a shanty town. The one (of the many in the Balkans) I spent time in had about 200 families living there, situated on the outskirts of Gjakova literally on the rubbish dump. Walking around the colony for the first time was an experience. It is difficult to really describe how the colony is, but as a short account I have written a small description which unfortunately does not adequately describe the appalling poverty:

Homes in the colony are made up of various materials, some corrugated iron; some plastics; some more solid but with black sacks or cardboard covering the holes. Most families lived in one room, having as many as 16 members. The streets are muddy and the smell coming from the rubbish dump could sometimes be overpowering. I found that homes can be empty inside as the families often have literally nothing, some even without a toilet. The clothes for children are usually found on the rubbish tip. I saw children running around barefooted in snow and ice over the winter months. The main sources of income for the families are; wood cutting (which is difficult after March because no one wants wood for wood burners in 42 degree heat); selling lighters and cigarettes; collecting old cardboard; or searching through the rubbish dump looking for things to sell.

However, despite the conditions they live in, one thing that stood out in all this was; the people there were genuinely friendly, welcoming and what struck me the most was that despite the conditions they live in, they were happy.

The Roma kids are often bullied at main-stream school because of the stigma that surrounds them, they are laughed at because of the same old clothes they have to wear every day. They fall behind in class and so consequently become ‘school drop-outs’. The ‘after-school’ school that has been set up on the outskirts of the colony aims to encourage them not to drop out of school, to aid them with their homework and assist them in their reading and writing skills to help them reach the same standard as their peers. We also try to teach respect and concentration skills. Since the classes began, there has been less fighting among the students. Now we rarely hear students mocking each other. Although some of the children may be ten years old, many still cannot read or write. One little boy (10) didn’t even know the alphabet when we first met in October, over the 6 months however I gradually saw this improving and now, just before I left, he was beginning to put together letters and syllables to begin to read. It made me so happy to see them suddenly understand something when it has taken them so long, but it is an even better feeling to see how happy they are too when they have struggled with it, not given up and then finally understanding! Some lessons involved giving them new exercise books for school, other lessons food packs for them and their families. Whenever possible they were given shoes, to replace the ones with holes in or for those who simply did not have such luxuries. The kids are amazing and so open. They love anybody that wants to spend time with them and some of them won’t say anything but just hold your hand. It breaks your heart to see them crawling through the rubbish and begging in the streets, but for them this is the only way to find a few pennies to buy bread. I was walking in town one day and two of the kids from the school just ran up and grabbed me. There was a minute of complete confusion before I realised who they were and hugged them! It really hit home because you realise that these beggars that people find so annoying are actually just - kids, just like any other kid in England or anywhere else around the world. It was easy to fall in love with the kids there simply because they were just so loving. Every morning when Pete (my team mate) and I walked across the field to the school the kids would see us from a distance and run, full speed towards us. We would stand still and brace ourselves for impact before a huge bundle of kids tried to hug us, we would walk the kids back across the field and each of my limbs would usually have more than one child hanging off it! We knew, from week one, leaving these kids would be one of the hardest things to do in the whole of our gap year.

Family visits were of huge significance to the work being done there. Building relationships and trust with them is one of the most important factors to being able to provide help, aid and friendship to them. We would go to one or two families a day. There we would listen to them, talk to them, encourage them to send their kids go to school, laugh and cry with them too. Where possible we would provide aid, this could be food, blankets or clothes, but the families also just wanted someone to talk to and someone who would listen who was truly interested.

One of the homes I visited during my stay consisted of 16 people living in one room, about the size of my dining room back home. They could not afford wood for their wood stove and so they burnt plastic. Between them, they had 4 blankets. We dropped off aid over the next few days, but this never felt like enough. For the first few times of being at the Colony, I just went, did my job and left, I understood how bad conditions were, but it didn’t really hit me properly. One Sunday I went and it was raining, the kids were not in their one set of nice clothes they wear for school as it was the weekend, there was naked children running around, some kids burning rubbish. I went to one home but because rain water was running out the light sockets we didn’t go in. This was when I really saw the every day hardships the people there are facing. I went home after that day and cried. All of a sudden it seemed real, I wasn’t just doing a job there, but I loved these people and to see the conditions they lived in was shattering.

English lessons… these were interesting to say the least! I taught three hours of English in a church building in the town centre, every Wednesday and Friday afternoon. The students were aged between 11 and 19. We worked with them on their English skills both through using a book and having conversation classes with them. It was very strange to begin with because the way in which they learn English is obviously very different to how I learnt it! In some instances I believe their grammar may have been better than mine, it turned out to be an education for both, them and me included! However, seeing them progress in their English skills as the months passed was fantastic. Initially they were scared to try what they actually knew but as they gradually began to form sentences and have decent conversations with us their self confidence improved. We even began using some of the students as translators! During class conversation we would discuss topics such as family, friends, school, history, specific choice subjects. When having one on one discussion however, depending on the standard of their English, we could talk about more topical issues such as religion, history, future plans etc. Due to the classes being quite small we were able to form friendships with the students and be able to share in each others lives. It was interesting to hear what their plans for the future were. Most of them involved leaving the country or just getting married but nothing else. They are very clever students however, and I believe them to be capable of so much, even if they didn’t believe me, I hope they do one day.

I also worked with children from a village called the Slovenian Village. This is a small village just outside of Gjakova (10minute drive), the families live in prefab type housing called containers. The conditions they try to survive in are not good and the people living there are much like the Romany people and are treated almost the same, if not sometimes worse. We went previously to the village with a medical team and played with and tried to keep the kids under control while the doctors saw them one by one. The children there really grabbed us and we were desperate to find a way to be able to work with them again. We were able to talk to Danielle, an American lady who runs a club for them once a week but really wanted some extra hands. I was then able to go there and spend time with the kids before they go to school, making crafts chatting and generally just being there for them. After spending a few sessions there I could understand why she wanted some extra hands! They have such character and are some of the noisiest kids I have ever met, but they are such a laugh. Sitting on the floor was a big danger though as you would get one child on your lap… two… three… and then what feels like a million when you are squashed against the floor by the pile trying to sit on your lap!

Eternity Church is the church I attended in Gjakova. Astrit and Driton are the two pastors and the only way to describe them would be- men of God! Their passion for the church and for God is amazing. Every week there would be two services, one on Thursday and one on Sunday. On Thursday after the service I would have band practice for Sunday. On coming to Kosova my knowledge of being able to play keyboard in a band was seriously limited! Astrit however kept getting me to come to band practice and encouraged me to play, so on leaving my knowledge was greater as was my confidence in playing. For me, my gap year was very much about my faith. Working along side a church and getting involved in it was a huge encouragement for me. To see such passion for Jesus in a country that is predominately Muslim and to see so much love in everyone in a place and in the people that had been so hurt by the past was inspiring.

Eternity church distributed a lot of aid, such as the flour and oil projects and shoeboxes, and also worked out in villages such as Krushe (pronounced Krusha) and Hereq (pronounced Herech). Every week I would help them lead three kids clubs. One at Eternity Church, one at Hereq and one at Krushe. We would sing songs, one of the kids would tell the story from last week, we would tell a new Bible story with simple story telling, acting, mime, puppets and so on…! Then to finish we would play games, ranging from zap and stuck in the mud to custard and chopstick games. Each club had its own personality, and the more we went, the more we got to know what each set of children responded to. Each week we would give a message to the Bible story. Some of them there had given their lives to Christ and some hadn’t. Some would go away from the club buzzing with stories of Jesus, others buzzing simply because they had a good time, but whichever it was, it was more about sharing in fellowship with them and letting them have fun. Whether they believed the message of Jesus or not, it still taught the basic message of love and friendship which is what a lot of these kids needed. Some days we would have 10 kids, other days we would have 70. It didn’t matter. Every single one of those kids is as important as the next one, and it was just a privilege to get to know them.

Living in such a male-dominated society, there is often less for the girls to do. Emily (Astrit’s wife) set up a Girl’s Brigade in my church in Kosova whilst I was there. This was a fantastic idea and one which I really wanted to get involved with. To bring in a scheme that encouraged girls in their independence, allowed them to look to their futures and encouraged them in their faith was fantastic. It started with just 10 girls in our first session in January, but by the first week of April we were always getting between 13 and 17 girls. For the last four weeks we cooked a different form of cake every week! This ranged from rice crispy cakes to cheesecake; it was great fun, even with the chocolate that was constantly everywhere! The girls enjoyed it and were prepared to bring their friends and tell their families about it. Children were sometimes stopped from attending our kids clubs because they taught the kids about Jesus and about the Bible. For some of the teenage or older Christian believers in Kosova, families have thrown them out the house and have also gone as far as disowning them as their children because perceived incompatibility with their Muslim background. One girl (aged 17) I met, kept her faith a secret, with her little new testament Bible hidden under her bed, for fear of her father disowning her. It was hard to believe this happens when it had always been so easy for me to be a Christian and open about my faith.

Hearing stories about the war was often mind-blowing. For the first time I wasn’t just hearing these things from the TV or from the radio, but face to face from the people that have lived through this and suffered first hand from it. They wanted to share the stories, not for pity or sympathy, but so others knew what had happened, because it was such a huge event in their lives, and one that had affected them so deeply. One man told me of how his whole family were beaten badly with metal poles, consequently his son is now mentally disabled and has a hand that is ‘useless’. There is a stigma surrounding those that are disabled, either mentally or physical, and so they are kept hidden away. Others, tell of how they watched their homes being burnt, their men going missing or watching them being shot, them having to walk into neighbouring countries… It’s sad to think that for many families, the men have never been found, yet the families still have hope they will come home, that they’re just hiding in another country until they can come back. One person just commented how she doesn’t remember much, she only remembers the feelings of being scared when they had to hide in the house and stay silent for hours. I find that I can never even begin to relate to the horrors the people of Kosova had faced during the war, and I would never even try to say I understood how they felt, because I don’t. And they knew, unless someone had lived in a war, they wouldn’t. But I could listen, and in the end, that’s all they wanted, just someone who would listen to their stories.

Kosova is a place where respect plays a huge part in culture. On meeting anyone you shake hands and ask how they are and vice-versa. When someone enters a room everyone stands up and shakes their hand. The eldest person in the room is the most well respected and will sit in the middle of the seating would span two sides of the room. In any household you visit you would be offered coffee and in many cases food and as much as dinner even if they have very little. Before entering a building shoes would be removed, this goes for almost anywhere, homes, church and sometimes school too. When leaving a home I always found my shoes to be neatly placed by the door ready for me to step into on leaving. Traditional dancing is a lot of fun. It seemed that wherever possible people would dance. On Independence Day there was a big group dancing in the car park of the supermarket! Everyone does it, and unlike back at home, the guys are always the first up and dancing! Depending on where you come from in Kosova, each village, town, city… has its steps to the dance.

The weather was an unpredictable affair. We had our first huge snowfall in November, but following that the snow arrived on January 1st and stayed… and stayed… around January 18th the metre of snow finally melted! Now, I love snow but we had, in total, 5 heavy snowfalls, which is a lot of snow to keep up with... Two weeks following the last snow fall, it was 24ºC and we were getting sunburnt!

‘Coffee’ is the main social activity. Shops, restaurants and coffee bars are open until very late and so most evenings we would meet friends and just drink coffee, laugh and talk. I think if I had to choose the worst thing about my gap year, it would be the last part, having to leave. The relationships I formed in Kosova were friendships that although were only made over six months ago, it seemed as if we had all known each other for much much longer. As cheesy as it sounds, the friends became more like brothers and sisters. In all, the people of Kosova made my trip what is was and play a huge part in why I will never forget it.

Coming back home, I realise how Kosova has changed me and my perspectives of the world, not in a drastic way I might add, but it has changed me. I hope this account has given you an insight into what I have been doing whilst out in Kosova. Unfortunately there is only so much I can write, there are other things that have happened; things I’ve seen and heard, that I find I can’t yet talk about or write down. Also, so much went on it’s hard to fit it all into a few pages! The life I lived out there was different, and I honestly hope to be back very soon. The people and the way of life suited me, those that had suffered hardship and those that still deal with hardship, are an inspiration to me but I also fell in love with Kosova itself. As it turned out, it was very hard not to.

I would like to express my sincere thanks to all those that supported me and made this possible. Especially to the Bulkeley Evans Scholarship fund whose generous contribution really helped make this incredible trip happen. Thanks also to the Rotary Club, all those at St Michaels, Eltham College, all those kids that bought sweets during lunchtimes and everyone that thought and prayed for me during my time over there. Also huge thanks to Smile International that made this entire trip possible, I couldn’t have asked for anything better. To my God, who played the biggest part in my gap year and gave me the strength to do all things.

So, one more chapter of life… onto the next one?!

Robin Baddeley of Monkton Combe School spent his gap year in 2005
on the Anastasis Mercy Ship which carries out operations off the coast
of West Africa, and with The Sisters of Mercy in Calcutta.

Below are his remarkable e-mails from West Africa.

Dear Tony. I left your email address at home but have now got hold of it. These are the three big emails that I have sent home, so you can see how I have been getting on and what I have been up to. Thank you so much once again for kindly giving me money for all this...

This was sent: 04 November

Greetings from the equator...well, somewhere near it,

I was actually at the helm, steering the ship a couple of hours ago and we were off the coast of Ghana at that point, but I think we maybe off the shores of Togo by now, as we arrive in Benin tomorrow morning. In fact, for the first time during sailing we could just catch a glimpse of land this afternoon- the skyscrapers of Ghana's capital, Accra.

Well, for those of you who don’t know, I joined the mercy ship "Anastasis" in Bremerhaven, Germany on Oct 6, and on Oct 13 we sailed to Tenerife where we had a one week holiday to rest before outreach. We then set sail from Santa Cruz last Thursday and will arrive in Contonu, Benin (West Africa) tomorrow morning- where we will be docked until mid march.

I have seen some sights of outstanding beauty during sailing; The most amazing sunsets i have ever seen (which i have photos of, but for some reason i am finding it hard getting them onto the computer...photos will be sent shortly...). We have had dolphins surrounding the ship on many occasions, always entertaining us with their playful nature....the more we shout the more they jump. Sadly I missed seeing two hammerhead sharks chasing a school of dolphins- I have always missed the few sightings of sharks. I also managed to sleep through the many announcements today of whales. Those who were awake saw many giant killer whales jumping and belly-slamming into the ocean. I am so envious.

A few nights ago i was out on the bow, and leant over the edge to see the ship carving through millions of flashing green lights (bioluminescent organisms). I have seen small examples of this exciting phenomenon in Greece, but nothing on this scale. This continued for at least 10 miles, and so there must have been a expanse of millions of them in the ocean. This was accompanied by a pair of dolphins jumping either side of the wake of the bow- I was just transfixed for half an hour. The moonlight shimmered of the backs of the dolphins as their backs arched out of the water.

A few nights this week I have slept out on deck. I figured its not often i will have the chance to sail round the coast of Africa so that outweighed that fact that i got less than 2 hours sleep on each occasion. I took a sun-bed from pool deck and placed it right on the stern of the ship, with the water breaking just yards from my feet. I lay on my back and starred at the millions of starts and the fog of the milky way most of the night. The moon would slowly rise during the night and by 2 would be incredibly bright- accounting for my lack of sleep. The heat didn’t help either. The humidity during the night outside is already great enough to make you sweat- and that’s with a sailing breeze. At 05:30, after an hour’s disjointed sleep i would get up and pack the sun-bed away, to start work in the kitchen at 06:00.

Yes, work. I am working "in the dining room". This involves setting up and clearing away the food lines for the day's three meals. But essentially it is a hell of a lot of cleaning. I would be lying if i said that i experienced high job satisfaction. Scrubbing the galley floor at the end of each day when the temperature in the galley is in the tittering on 40 degrees isn’t easy. We do get days off though.

The sea is like a lake from Tenerife to here, and so there has been no rocking whatsoever. However, we were caught in storms in the Atlantic near Portugal. The ship was corkscrewing for a couple of days (up and down and side to side at the same time). It is this movement that causes sever motion sickness. It causes problems on the ship (we had 200 jars of cherries smash in dry stores). But as I didn’t experience any sea sickness, I had to work all through the sail! The storms can be spectacular to watch though. The waves are so large that they crash over the bow. You realise that the ship, once looking large in port, feels like the immense ocean's small toy which it could flip any time it liked. I still look out, in complete awe at the ocean. During the storm the ship leaked...everywhere! We had to all volunteer madly to bucket out water from cabins and bookstores, and squidgee water off decks. Let along the foot deep "river" flowing one of the corridors on A deck. At one stage we actually had to turn around, to cause the ship to list to one side- allowing maintenance to patch up a port hole in c deck through which water was flowing! Nice!

You can probably read between the lines. The ship is very old, and on its last legs. We were actually dead in the water for 12 hours near morocco when the engines stopped working (not an uncommon occurrence may I add). The discomfort on the ship frustrates people a lot, especially when they first arrive. Me most definitely included. But you slowly get used to the boiler breaking, and "liquids only toilets", problems in the engine room, and the air conditioning not being turned on to save power.

Ship life isn’t easy and does taking getting used to. You are living with lots of people from all over the world in a small space. But you learn a lot from this. Being able to be patient with people is absolutely essential, and accepting that we are used to an incredibly high standard of living that not everyone has the privilege to enjoy. I am glad that I am being challenged. And tomorrow morning, when we hit the absolute turmoil that is West Africa, the challenge is about to get a lot bigger.

One of the spin offs of living in the ships environment is getting to know a lot of people very quickly. I have enjoyed so many times with friends when we’ve been docked. In Tenerife ten of us went scuba diving, which I hadn’t done since I got certification when I was 13 in Turkey. I thought I was going to get a refreshment on the theory- but I was wrong, as the bunch of scowsers who ran the centre basically chucked me in and I had to work it out as I was equalising on the way down- but it all soon came flooding back, and us "experienced" divers went down 18 metres. I just heard today that, as one of the few certified divers on the ship, I might be able to help with some caskets on the hull, underwater, when we are docked in Benin. It wouldn’t be that deep though of course.

I share the "officially messiest" cabin on the ship with four other guys. Three American, one Norwegian. Our cabin is a great laugh, spending most of our time indulging in anti US/ anti brit banter! Its pretty small with tree bunks and looks suspiciously like a Chinese laundry. As the weather is getting hotter its beginning to smell though. We are considering cleaning it...but I don’t think that’s going to happen. We came by an electric fan somehow though. This keeps us cool during the increasingly sweaty nights. It nearly didn’t survive its second day as i managed to clothes-line the cord during the early hours of the morning in a sleepy daze, and it crashed to the floor. Looking back I think that by decision not to turn the light on so as to not wake my cabin mates backfired spectacularly.

Spent some of my day off today with other volunteers helping scrub caked oil of the engine room floor (pictures will be sent in a few days). It was, in a certain way, the most physical exhaustion I have ever experienced. The engine room is enormous, about the volume of two good sized houses. The temperature at the top is knocking on 50 degrees, and a cooler 42 at the bottom. There is a constant dominating rumble over which you can’t talk, and demands ear plugs. The worst of it though is probably the thick air. In each inhalation you get about half the oxygen you think you should. Each ten minutes you have to climb back up to the top where i drank and took mineral replacements. Funnily, though, I enjoyed it. How the engineers spend 4 hour shifts down there I do not know. I was drained in 45 minutes. Acclimatisation, I suppose. 

I’m getting increasingly anxious about reaching Benin. We've had two five hour briefings about our work in Africa. And a dvd showing of Benin just knocked me back into reality, and any others getting complacent, about the enormous culture shock that we are going to hit. Benin is absolute poverty, the poorest of the poor, it’s dangerous, and hot. I am unsure, at the moment, how I am going to cope.

I think that probably all you can be bothered to read, so ill sign off there... I’ve got to be up at 05:45 for work anyway...so I better get my token 4 hours sleep!

I hope you are all well and enjoying everything that life is giving you at the moment...

Robin.

This was sent: 15 Novemberish!

Dear all,

I am sat in front of the computer donning my newly purchased West African attire! - I don’t know how many of you are familiar with what the West Africans wear; its baggy linen trousers with a matching top which is very long, almost down to the knees, with three quarter length sleeves. Most of them are all brightly coloured, with elaborate patterns. Mine, however, is white linen with a little bit of blue, and on the front the pattern of the old voodoo kings' chair.

I have been in Benin for a week and a half now. I mainly wanted to write to tell you all about the most interesting day of my life- the first day of screening last Monday. I don’t really know where to start, and I find that words seem frustratingly weak when trying to convey my experience. 

We were bussed to the screening site- a stadium in the centre of Cotonou- in shuttle runs of the ship's 25 land rovers. It was my first time off the ship since our arrival as I had been working the 3 days previously. It was early in the morning, but my first taste of African driving knocked any sleepiness out of me. There don’t seem to any rules as to right of way at a junction whatsoever. The person who cuts up the other the most seems to have priority- and this is amongst the thousands of "Zemidjans" (sketchy mopeds) that swarm though the streets like bees. My eyes were so fixed on the people rooting through the piles of rubbish lining the streets, that I hadn’t noticed our land rover pulling into the stadium, parting a huge crowd of people.

I stepped out, and couldn’t really take in what i had just jumped into. It was like I had plunged into a bees nest, with everything buzzing around me.. But i just followed our driver, through the security into the stadium.

We had queues of 5,000 people snaking around the stadium and down the main roads of Cotonou. Some had come from as far afield as Togo, and others had queued for 3 days. All full of hope.

My first job was to accompany Anne Giles, a nurse, and a translator walking the lines, searching for those with maxillo-facial abnormalities who we knew we could operate on and could withdraw from the line immediately- saving them a day-long wait in the heat- the temperature peaking at 49 degrees in the midday sun. We had to somehow be discreet, escorting only one or two at a time, the long way round to a back entrance into the stadium. Obvious line jumping would have caused a riot. This was such exciting experience. It sounds really impersonal and not compassionate. But you really need to be focused and aware when dealing with such huge numbers of people, and the adrenaline starts to flow. We had a job to do.

Those in the line assumed I was a doctor and i was mobbed on occasion, as many showed me their problems- keloids, goiters, tumours and cataracts. And luckily my French saved me as I had to explain that eyes were not to do with me and everyone must wait in line. "Mais...je ne suis pas docteur...je ne peux pas t'aide" was a very useful phrase. It’s hard telling those who have waited so long in the heat and dust already that all they can do is wait longer in the line. At one point I tried to walk to see the end of the line, but I never reached it as it wound round yet another corner and down one of Cotonou's Zemidjan ridden streets. I found it amazing the lengths these people would go, but then i considered that the horrific facial deformities they suffered cast them out of society. They are viewed as cursed humans, and have no chance to sell to make a living. I understand that the hope that their life could be changed by our surgeons is enormous.

It was then very kind of Tony Giles, one of the maxillo-facial surgeons to let me sit with him at his station. His job was obviously to decide whether they could operate. He took me through the diagnosis of every patient and told me what he and the medical team planned to do. It was absolutely fascinating, and I never knew that half the things they do were possible. It sounds a bit like they are playing with a meccano set...." reconstructing the lower mandible with a rib, forming a ridge upon which a denture could be built, using a skin graph from the right forearm to recover the cheek, and plumbing the arteries connected to the graft into the face and neck...". I really appreciated all that Tony taught me, and it definitely wetted my appetite further for studying Medicine in October.

In between I had to show some control over the maxfax queue and ensure that those first in the queue we seen first. I enjoyed entertaining the small children with balloons, and there was a real atmosphere inside the stadium. There was face painting, music, colouring and puppet shows for the children, and lots of glitter.

What struck me most was the smiles. It first dawned on me near the end of the day, when a 9 year old boy sat down in the seat in front of me, having reached the front of the queue to see the surgeons. He had two very obvious apple-sized cysts, one under each ear; and yet he had a beaming smile on his face. Every time I would catch eye-contact with him, he would return a massive grin. He had a horrendous facial malformation and yet he was such a happy little boy. "What have I ever got to complain about?", I thought as I spent the whole day with these people who have put up with being socially outcast most, if not all their lives and have a smile on their face.

Another time as we were picking people out of the lines, a middle-aged woman tugged me to the side, searched through her secret pouch and with a wry smile on her face, full of pride, pulled out a small piece of white card, with the mercy ship stamp imprinted on the surface, as if it was a precious diamond. The card meant that she had already had surgery, and we wanted to operate on her a second time. At first i just smiled, but then it hit me; for her, this little piece of white card was the most important thing to her in her life, more important then a diamond. It was like a get-out-of-jail free card, that released her from being social outcast. I won’t forget that smile.

I feel very lucky to have had the opportunity to experience the screening process, being involved so integrally. I know that I saw something that will never be seen in the western world, and will never be seen by as good as 100% of the people I will mix with in the rest of my life. I think the others who were present would agree that any explanation of the event does it no justice. Many people find screening too hard to cope with emotionally, and as I was lucky enough to be dealing with those who we were helping all day long. I feel for those who had other jobs, especially the security men who had to spend the day dealing with those who could not be helped. I don’t know how i would have coped with so much deep, deep disappointment.

That was last week. I also went away this last week end, but I think I'll write about that tomorrow- I need some sleep.

I wish you all well,

Robin.

This was sent: 06 December

Dear All,

My plan to go to the market during my break today fell through for reasons I won’t bother you with, and so I have some time to send an update. I would have probably just been mugged or at best pick-pocketed anyway!

I have done a lot since screening, but it’s not all fresh in my memory, so i may forget some things.

3 weeks ago now, 14 of us decided to take a trip to Abomey, 200k north of here, the self-named home of Voodoo. We walked to the station here in Cotonou to take the only train in the country. Our 200k trip was to cost us £1.50! We booked ourselves into Premier-Premier class so as to guarantee some seating. We were all pleasantly surprised as we sat down in (very old) leather seats. The coach was noticeably filthy- my once blue travel towel was black after its time on the baggage rack- but at least it was comfortable. The train was scheduled to leave at nine, and any of you who know Africa will understand that as "sometime during the morning". So we were glad to set off only a half hour late.

It was to be my first time out of Cotonou- Benin's largest city in which we are docked. And the trains slow crawl out of the city highlighted some of the areas poverty.

Corrugated iron shacks, sunk in knee-high litter, line the track. These are homes. As the train passes the residents gaze upwards. It took a while for the train to eventually break free form the urban scrawl of Cotonou mess and into (slightly) fresher air.

Outside the city, Benin is a completely different country. I saw more of the scenery i expected before I came here. The countryside in southern Benin lies somewhere in-between jungle and bush land. The train crawled (at 30mph) through a dense mixture of tall palms, banana plants and long grass.

It was when we reached the villages that it really struck me- This part of Africa is so incredibly primitive. The people really are just living in mud huts. I am in the same century that I left two months ago...?

You can travel 7 hours in a national express coach in England and arrive in a city almost identical to the one you left. Or you can take a seven hour flight to a country like Benin and be deceived into thinking you've experienced some sort of time travel.

Women immaculately dressed in brightly coloured wraps and dresses walked through the dusty tracks balancing those unbelievably large loads on their heads- bright green water melons, bananas, oranges and water, maintaining a beautiful posture. They've got their baby strapped to their back and have both hands and arms free for any other business. As we creaked to a stop at villages, some would step on.

As we rolled away with my head stuck out of the window i couldn’t help thinking that i was back in colonial West Africa. i was never around in those days, but the old train with worn tan leather seats, and wooden interior certainly felt like it. And then what i saw outside.... These examples of poverty sometimes stir up sadness in peoples hearts. I however found it hard to take in that it’s all real. This IS 2004, it really is..... But I don’t know how a country can (appear to) be literally centuries behind another. What I saw was similar to living in 14th century Britain. People say you have to see it to believe it. I’ve seen it and still can’t believe it.

We arrived at our stop, which turned out to be the most hectic and dusty small town on the planet, and Tony Giles, a surgeon friend, did some negotiating (something you spend most of you time doing in Africa) which resulted in 14 of us crammed into a 10-seater taxi.

We stayed at "Chez Monique". And yes, i did get to meet Monique. The hotel's chalets are woven into the palms and other beautiful African plants, and you really feel you are IN AFRICA. The sounds, lizards, wild chickens and lots of red dust. At £3 a night the fact that we had no water didn’t seem to bother many of us...bucket showers and bucket flushing for all.

That day we visited the voodoo museum. It definitely wasn’t what I expected. This was the old voodoo king’s palace, the centre of a kingdom. This was where the figurehead of the country’s religion was based….all it was a series of courtyards and some moderately sized surrounding buildings, and some more mud huts. Used to the grand and imposing structures of our British history, to me this appeared embarrassingly primitive. That isn’t to say it wasn’t interesting. To get a taste of voodoo- a religion nonexistent in our culture- was incredibly interesting. Even the pictures carved into the walls. They were mostly illustrating means of very unpleasant death- one of which illustrated one man stuffing the other mans rectum with sand until he died. But I couldn’t take them very seriously. The art was very basic and cartoon-like. Our guide could speak good English and explained some of what voodoo means, but I still don’t totally understand it, I would love to learn more. I did however learn that the walls of one of the mud huts, under which the dead voodoo king lay, were made from human blood. 42 female volunteers were slain for the build.

The stay in the hotel was a good time within the group too. We shared meals outside under the palms. The next day back we experienced an interesting 2 hour taxi ride home. No seatbelts, heavily cracked windscreen, doors didn’t open from the inside, tariffs inscribed on the dashboard in “tippex”, and a large abundance of 2-foot-deep potholes- we drove back to Cotonou. It was excruciatingly hot, as the sun scorched us through the windscreen and there were more than your average number of us in each taxi.

I have also signed up for a programme here which allows me to visit orphanages and the like on my off days. Last Saturday 10 of us went to the city of hope orphanage. The 45 minute journey there exposed some of Benin’s slums and really very poor areas…..and most heavily pot-holed dust tracks! Arriving there was amazing. The orphanage is home to some 60 children and we were mobbed! They jumped up and clung on to my chest so hard. All of them wanted to hold your hand and just hold you. One of my friends and I organized a game of football, about 25 a-side I think. Those with no top against those with one! We won 3-1. In some instances I had to stop them freely urinating in the middle of the pitch. But I think the best thing I could do was to hug them…sometimes four at a time. One boy wouldn’t let go and was round me most of the afternoon. He would just squeeze me, harder and harder. This is what they needed, someone to hug. They weren’t particularly unhappy, they were very playful and had an incredible amount of energy (a sign that they are well fed). They just don’t have a family to love them.

One Wednesday another group of us visited a centre for malnourished children in the city. I found this more of a challenge. The children (50 between the ages of 1 month to 6) were thin and very weak. I was with the older toddlers first and just sat of the floor with them holding them, trying to get an ill one to smile….it took half an hour. He was very weak and one time I took him off my lap for a moment to avoid intense pins and needles and he fell flat on his face, as he couldn’t support his weight. We then had them all sat down and fed them, some gobbled up all their bowl of jelly-like mess and had seconds, mine, however, despite my best efforts, refused to eat. I then moved onto the babies which are in some ways easier. I managed to pick the most restless of the lot. She was very hungry and has suspected brain damage. I though I did a reasonable job of relaxing her…I had found a good position, laid back at a 30 degree angle, her on my chest,…and then …bang…within a second she had peed all over me. I fed her and she calmed down.

The centre is incredibly understaffed. It is led by a “Mother Teresa-esque” Indian lady and about 4 other sisters. I was very impressed by a Belgian girl who is volunteering there. She lives with a Beninese family in the city and works 6 days a week in the centre. It must be very hard.

Most of my spare time over the past 2 weeks, however, has been spent on the ward. I have adopted a 12 year old boy called Kodjo. He has severe burns down his back and left arm. Tertius, the South African plastic surgeon, has released the contracture on his arm using a skin graft from his thigh.

My first visit was awkward- his uncle and another man were there and conversation was mostly between me and them, as Kodjo sat shyly in the background. He didn’t say a word. I was so glad that his eyes lit up when I next popped my head in for a visit. Every time became easier and easier. At first I used to draw pictures for him. He had a children’s book full of safari animal pictures, and he loved it when I drew them for him. I was quite embarrassed at my initial attempts, but quickly learnt that he was grateful for whatever I did. My boxing lion was a personal favourite. As I drew, many of the patients in surrounding beds would gather round, and so my visits have become a community thing.

I made good friends with François too. He was in bed 5, next to Kodjo. Even at the age of 33 he would nag me to draw more and more animals for him. And he would stick them above his bed. It is something that I find very noticeable here in Africa- that some people of an older age enjoy things that would be considered incredibly childish in the west. I sometimes find myself treating fully grown adults here like children, in a manner I would be very wary not to adopt in England. They, however, find in very welcoming. This is not all Africans however.

I am spending, on average, 2 hours a day down on the ward. Francois has left and I usually take Kodjo and Aubin up on deck during the evenings. Aubin is 17, or maybe 19, (it depends who’s asking), fancies one of the nurses, and is a good friend of mine. He had a burn too.  They love being up on deck, socializing with other crew, and just getting out of the ward. Kodjo’s ward gown is a bit too big and so when he hobbles around it doesn’t look like he has any legs. Yesterday evening the ship photographer, Scott, a friend of mine, and I, let Kodjo loose on the ship with the ship camera and he was quite a character as he pulled people over in the corridors, bossing them into an orderly pose, and snapping lots of shots.

The ward isn’t like any you’d find in Britain, however. The beds are only 1 foot apart. Relatives sometimes sleep on the ward. Frequent singing and drumming- and like the rest of Benin- lots of colour. Sadly, Kodjo leaves tomorrow, and so I went to the big market in Cotonou today (officially more hectic then that town near Abomey) to buy him and Aubin leaving presents. I got them both basketball outfits.

Every Monday and Friday evening, a group of us drive out to play football in the centre of the city. It is the most atmospheric setting. It is a walled park next to a busy road, and is just one big sand pit. No grass, all sand. We drive out at 5:30 and play for an hour until the sun sets. Recently we have been playing against the locals, who, like most of city life, play fast and hectic. Being so used to playing lots of sport, it’s so liberating to run around with a ball. And I don’t feel like I’m playing football anywhere else at dusk but in the centre of a West African city, when the sun sets leaving a deep amber glow behind the silhouettes of palms, with zimidjans zooming past, kicking up the red dust.

Well, Christmas is coming. Won’t be your average one for me. There is the possibility that if I can wangle a few schedule changes/days off, my friend Scott and I might take a train to Parakou, hire a land rover, and visit the game area in the very north of Benin. It might take two days to get there. We may even venture into Burkina Faso and Niger. We would be away for about a week. It is a long shot, but would be an incredible adventure. We would leave on Boxing Day.

I apologize that my email is longer than any coursework that I ever did at school, and must have bored at least half of you to death. But maybe it interested the other half.

I wish you all the best this month.

Robin.

This was sent: 18 December

e-mail from Robin Baddeley, formerly of Monkton Combe School on the Anastasis Mercy Ship 18.12.2004

 With three days off, two of my friends, Scott and Stephen, and I, decided to go on a little adventure west.  At 4pm last Friday afternoon, after signing all the documents necessary for leaving the country, we headed into the city to find a bush taxi that would take us 2 hours along the coast to Grand Popo Beach.  We managed to pick up a nice one (it's all relative here in Africa!) who would take us for 8000 CFA (£8).  We were desperate to make it to Popo by sunset.  I enjoy the long taxi rides here; you get to see a large amount of the country and the breeze through an open window is a refreshing break from the humidity.  We got to see our fair share as we drove west, a steady mile from the coast.  Twenty minutes before Popo the surroundings suddenly opened out, revealing a seemingly endless shimmering lake upon which floated two large villages.  Locals stood in boats carved from mango trees and punted placidly through the waters.  It looked like somewhere I would love to explore in more depth than a mere passing in a taxi.  We arrived in Popo and tipped our driver.

We had arrived just in time, as the sun was setting.  We went straight down on to the beach.  You can't see the end of Grand Popo beach.  As you look left and right, the horizon disappears into the misty spray of the sea.  Wading knee-high in the water as the sun set was incredible.  With the West African backdrop behind us. it was beautiful beyond description.  We eventually managed to draw ourselves from the sea, and up to our hotel to eat.  The hotel sat camouflaged as the thatch roofs of its many huts were woven into the tall coastal palms, orange sand and deep green flora that seems to dominate this area of Africa.  We ate barracuda with couscous, and drank some of Togo's finest "Eku" lager in the hotel’s thatch-covered restaurant on the edge of the beach.

The fan in our room failed to dispel the heat and a restless night followed, but with all three of us awake at quarter to six, we decided to walk down to the beach to watch the sunrise.  I've never been more thankful to be awake at stupid o'clock before in my life.  A faint glow lingered over to the east, and so we placed three deck chairs facing the sunrise, and waited.  It grew lighter and lighter, but the sun was nowhere to be seen.  I decided to go and paddle in the sea.  As I watched the waves crash with foam lapping at my feet, tall African figures would occasionally appear from the distant haze.  Then I looked up and saw the sun, sitting higher in the sky than I expected, big, but subtle and crimson.  It seemed to appear from nowhere, but was spectacular in a very unobtrusive kind of way.  I felt so calm standing in the water.  It was completely and utterly serene.

I've seen a lot of fantastic beaches around the world - the Caribbean, Greece, the East African coast- but something about Grand Popo is, in my eyes, extremely special.  I don't know if it is the contrast between the burnt orange sand and the pure white foam of the ocean, the apparently infinite carpet of coloured shells lining the sea floor, or the mist that obscures any sort of ending to the beach.  I think it is the enormous sense of tranquillity that I felt as I walked the beach that morning.  As the other two slept in a couple of hammocks, I collected shells and within a few hours, we were off on our way to Togo.  We took zemidjans to the main road, where we found a bush taxi that would take us to the Togo border ("La Frontier").  However, the taxi had the bonnet up, and the driver was rustling beneath, with a spanner.  We squeezed in and joined the other four passengers, already waiting for the driver to finish, and exchanged pleasant smiles and waited.  After a minute or two, the three of us decided that another taxi might be a safer bet, in both senses of the word!  But our driver wouldn't have any of it.  As we climbed out of the car, he practically closed us in and assured us very confidently that it would work any minute.  And sure enough, a couple of turns with a spanner later, the engine choked to a start.  "He has done this before!" we all thought.  So with all eight of us packed in, we headed to the border.  The border is buzzing with sellers, taxis, and lots of people trying to exchange money.

We were ushered to a station, where we sat down in front of a panel of officials.  The problems began!  Let me explain.  We don't have Benin visas, as we are "special cases".  We also possess a letter from Benin's president stating that it is not necessary for Mercy Ships crew to have a Benin visa.  Here's the catch: they don't seem to care!  My French isn't great, but better than the other two, and so, after half-an-hour of visa arguments, we got to see the boss, who seemed to accept the letter, while slipping in that he would like the ship's number, as he wants some eye surgery!

We walked through no man's-land between Benin and Togo, and were led into a hut with another official sat behind an old table.  The inside of the hut felt colonial, with old posters on the walls, dusty papers and lizards scuttling up the walls.  No, we were to purchase a Togo visa.  This we expected and was necessary.  However, we didn't have enough money.  The price of this visa was, however, despite our best efforts, not debatable.  With one of us three dollars short, the official would be happy to turn us away.  Luckily Scott had some US dollars on him, and so had to cross over the border, back into Benin, to befriend one of those sketchy money exchangers, and get hold of some CFA from his dollars.  He returned.

We then had to make a very big decision.  If we bought the visas for Togo, we would have no money, but 5 dollars to get us a taxi from the border to Togo's capital, Lome.  Stephen had his visa card, and so we assumed it is an almost certain bet that the country's capital would have at least 1 ATM from which we could withdraw money.  Scott was sceptical, but Stephen and I persuaded him to take the risk.  We bought the visas and took a bush taxi to Lome.

Our "Lonely Planet guide to West Africa" showed us where the ATMs were to be found in Lome.  I'm going to cut a very long, and complicated process short and describe it simply.  NOT A SINGLE ATM IN THE COUNTRY WOULD ALLOW US TO WITHDRAW CASH.  We zemidjaned around the city for five hours, pursuing every bank, every possibility.  We considered trying to Western Union money to us from Scott's internet bank, something that is possible in Europe but not, as the Western Union employee kindly explained to us, possible in Togo.  Ah! We had pursued nearly every possibility, we had thought up some ingenious ideas.  We were now very hungry, and had to find somewhere where we could purchase food with a visa card, a posh hotel.  He found one and bought sandwiches and a drink, and paid with a visa card.  Well, actually we didn't, because the waitress returned 10 minutes later with our card, explaining that they have tried many times, but the card doesn't work.  Nice.

We explained that we did not have a single penny of cash.  We asked to use the telephone to ring Stephen's bank and find out what was going on.  We explained that they should allow us that privilege without payment.  They didn't seem to catch on that the only way we could pay them anything was to get hold of the bank.  They wouldn't have any of it.  They demanded that we tried the ATMs in town again, so we left Scott's I-Pod as a deposit and left, returning 30 minutes later with no luck.  The manager had no sympathy with us, and basically said we had to sort it out.

If you hadn't already clicked, we were about as far up that well known creek without a paddle as you can get.  We were in another country, without a single penny, and owing a hotel bill. We thought that we might be able to get home if were took a taxi back to the ship, and got some money off someone on the ship to pay the driver when we arrived.  Two flaws: not safe crossing the border at night, or taking a taxi anywhere at night (road blocks/ hijackings), and it didn't solve the hotel bill problem.

We were saved by such a stroke of luck.  As were we "debating" with the hotel management, a woman who worked at the hotel who was hovering around the situation heard that we were from Mercy Ships.  She worked on the Ship as a day-worker when the ship was in Togo a couple of years ago.  She said that she could therefore trust us, and lent us 100,000 CFA (£100)!!!! We were to return her money by Western Union on the Monday.  It was so very kind of her.

So, we were saved from our only other option, which was to be sleeping on the hotel floor till the Monday, when the banks opened- to get home.  We found ourselves a very cheap hostel (£4 each), and went out on the town for the evening.  Lome is smaller than Cotonou, but slightly more attractive and has more of a buzz.  It is however, more shady also, and we were not recommended to walk any part of the city at night, and under no circumstance walk on the beach.  That's ok; we zemidjan!

Zemidjans are great for seeing the city, much better than a taxi for getting a feel for the place as you are sat on the back, and the driver weaves through the mental traffic.  You get all the smells, and the breeze.  As they buzz like bees around the city, you glance to your left and right and you are surrounded by fellow zemidjaners.  You are often going at the same speed and so can almost hold a polite conversation with the bloke next to you.  We decided to eat very African on a street-side "restaurant".  We were balancing getting involved and experiencing the culture, and being very ill the next day.  We remembered that the toilet in our hostel did actually flush, and so went for the culture option!  After the meal, we sampled some more of Lome's nightlife, courtesy of our zemidjan drivers, before retiring for the night.

I woke up the next morning after being positively murdered by the mozzis.  Fat use buying 99% DEET insect repellent was!  We needed to get a move on, as were keen to travel to Ouida (Benin), to see a drum festival; and so we took a bush taxi back to the border.

This time we had twice as much trouble as we had coming in, and a very similar situation.  They didn't seem to give two hoots about out letter from President Keraku.  The immigration system at the border struck us all as incredibly archaic.  Not a single computer could be seen in the place. Everything is exasperatingly slow, with so much pointless paper work, and flicking through passports.  No consistency in the leadership from one day to the next.  It all taught us a very valuable lesson: Africa requires you to be very patient, and never assume anything (that a country might have an ATM somewhere that works, that a letter from the president might have some sort of influence).  We weren't that patient on this occasion; things got quite heated, and the argument lasted a while, but eventually we were let back in without a visa.

We bush taxied to Ouida.  Ouida has the most active voodoo community in Benin, and voodoo is still very much alive.  Ouida beach is also a historical site, as it is from there that the slaves were taken during the slave trade.  It looked very interesting and I saw beautiful countryside as I zemidjaned from the town to beach, passing some really remarkable voodoo figures.  The beach is a big expanse, similar to Grand Popo, but has a slightly ghostly feel to in.  There is a large imposing white monument called "The Point of No Return", with voodoo statues rising up the sides.  The houses, in which the slaves were kept, still exist, but are in ruins.  I find voodoo art really interesting, as the shapes they use are very different from those my western eyes are used too - lots of straight, hard edges, and out-of-proportion bodies.  It looks very primitive.

We were tired, though, and hadn't eaten all day.  It wasn't the day for Ouida, and we took a bush taxi home along a fantastic beach track.  I want to explore Ouida more before I leave.  We got back onto the ship, changed out of our dust-stained clothes, washed and ate.

Letter received from Liam Taylor, formerly of Bristol Grammar School – winner of a Bulkeley-Evans HMC Scholarship for 2004-2005 for his gap year with Project Trust in Guyana.

Aishalton Secondary School, Aishalton, Region 9, Guyana.

This was sent: 21 May 2005

Dear Mr.Beadles.

Kaiman! (pronounced ku-men).  This is the customary greeting in the tribal language of the Wapisania people of Guyana.  I am writing to you from a remote Amerindian village deep in the interior of Guyana, in the southernmost part of the Rupununi savannah.  I’m here on my ‘gap year’ with the organisation Project Trust, and I’m writing to express my gratitude for the generous sponsorship you provided on behalf of the Bulkeley-Evans Scholarship Fund.

I have been living here nearly nine months now, and have another three to go before I return to cold and cloudy England.  I’m working in the secondary school here, teaching maths to students in the third, fourth and fifth forms (years 9 to 11 in UK terms).  I also teach geography after school to a small group of students, and I even teach one lesson a week of agricultural science (I live in the middle of Bristol, and have no knowledge of farming whatsoever, but fortunately it overlaps with biology.)  I am entrusted with guiding the form five students through their CXL exams, the Caribbean equivalent of GCSE; it is a big responsibility.  The school is short of basic resources and is chronically understaffed.  We have only as many teachers as classes, and only two trained teachers in all, and the children have a very poor foundation in basic maths.  As a result, the task of carrying them through CXL is frustrating, occasionally depressing, and sometimes feels Sisyphean.  But I am spurred on to work hard at it, if only to do justice to the level of commitment shown by the children themselves.  Coming from a wealthy school in a developed world, where I often took quality education for granted, I have been moved by the determination of the children here to succeed academically.  The opportunity to write CXL has only come to Aishalton in the last two years (before that, promising students would have to attain scholarships to schools on the coast), and many see good grades as a gateway to a wider world that is otherwise closed off to them.  I have been trying my best, offering lessons after school, at weekends, and even in the evenings by the light of kerosene lamps.  But I am inexperienced and untrained, and I am aware that my best is woefully inadequate.  The CXL maths exam is next Thursday – ironically on Guyanese Independence Day – and I only expect one or two students to pass.

Life away from school is a constantly fascinating experience, as I find out more about a completely different way of life and the culture of the Amerindian people who live here.  One night, for example, I shared a bowl of karie (a fermented cassava drink) with the Chief of the Wapisiana people, while he talked about their efforts to preserve the old traditions.  Another time, I listened to a group of men discussing their attempts to write down the Wapisiana language, which was traditionally a completely oral dialect.  There is a real sense of pride here, and not just pride to be Guyanese, or even Amerindian, but pride to be Wapisiana.  It is a pride in identity, a pride in community, and it feels alien to me coming from the industrialised West.

Then there are the little things, too, that make daily life unexpected and interesting: chasing chickens out of the kitchen; saving my drying clothes from hungry cows; cutting the grass with a twelve-inch cutlass; seeing men going out to hunt with bows over their shoulders; watching the excitement with which children look forward to the mango season, as English children look forward to Christmas (and, having tasted the mangoes, I can completely understand it); killing scorpions in the toilet; hearing the baboons singing at night; eating warm cassava bread; swimming in beautiful creeks; waiting for transport by slinging a hammock by the side of the road and waiting several days for a Bedford truck to come past.

Aishalton itself is a beautiful village, home to some 1000 people.  The houses are dispersed over a wide area, and with their palm-thatched roofs and earth-coloured walls, they seem to grow organically out of the landscape.  Between the houses the mango trees grow in verdant splendour, giving shade, and, in season, sweet bounty.  Above all, the sky dominates, towering tropical clouds contrasting with the flat landscape to create an impression of immeasurable depth, so unlike the pale grey wash of more temperate regions.  At sunset, the sky pours its liquid gold across the tall grasses, and at night I see myriads of stars as I have never before seen or even conceived.

When school finishes in July, I plan to travel by boat down to a village called Gunnio, on the edge of the Amazon rainforest, some 300 miles and ten days’ journey away.  Even the locals describe it as a bit of an ‘adventure’, so I’m really looking forward to the experience.

As is probably clear by now, I am really enjoying life here in Aishlton, and cannot thank you enough for helping to fund me.  It feels strange writing to Yeovil from here.  I hear that Bristol Rovers against Yeovil was a 2-2 draw.

It may be some time before you receive this, as the postal system is atrocious (it usually takes at least two months*) and the rainy season is only going to exacerbate the problem.  As for the postcard that you requested, I will try my best; but as the nearest postcard is currently 400 miles away, you might have to wait awhile.

Liam Taylor

Report from Ruth Harvey, Oakham School, on her placements in India and Thailand with Teaching and Projects Abroad in 2005

Having decided to apply for and study medicine at uni, it seemed a clear option for me to take a gap year before I went into another five years of studying. I always knew I wanted my gap year to be of some relevance to what I wanted to do from next year onwards. With the generous and much appreciated donation from the Bulkeley Evans Trust and having worked for four months before setting off I was able to put together a very exciting plan for six months away.

 At the Sixth Form Gap Fairs at Oakham I initially looked into many Gap organisations that are available and chose ‘Teaching and Projects Abroad’ (TPA) for several reasons: they provide many different types of projects such as care, veterinary, medical, journalism and conservation, so I was able to choose medicine in India, and as they are very flexible and open to ideas, I chose to continue onto Thailand to do care work in an orphanage.

Sitting in Gatwick airport departure lounge it was very tempting to turn round and head home. Setting off into a real unknown and travelling totally on my own for the first time was very daunting at the time. But these feeling soon turned into excitement and anticipation as I arrived in Chennai, India and was met by Jesu, an India co-ordinator for TPA. He took me on an eight hour train journey to Madurai and onto the TPA office in Sivakasi. That first journey is still very vivid in my memory, with all those new smells, the continuous sound of horns and the traffic (eight vehicles across a 3 lane road at one point!), vibrant colours and the masses of people in every direction I turned.

Before I set off the TPA staff told me that with the medical placements there would be lots of opportunity to get really stuck in as long as I showed the enthusiasm. This certainly proved to be true: The more interest I showed in the hospital the more I was offered to do. So from day one I was helping the nurses with taking blood pressure, setting up canula and drips in theatre and observing operations, deliveries, general practice and simple medical procedures. I kept having to remind myself that back at home I wouldn’t even be able to enter an operating theatre, let alone taking an active role.

The hospitals in India are divided into three categories, depending on their facilities: primary, secondary and tertiary. During my three months I was in two placements, the first in a very small town called Vallioor, working in a primary hospital. The hospital was very basic but I was really impressed with the care that the patients there were given. There were a couple of real eye-opening cases at Annai Amaravathi hospital. The first being a lady who came in with half of her ear in a paper bag and the end of her sari wrapped around her head. Initially I thought she must have been wearing huge earrings like many of the ladies do which could have easily got caught and ripped her ear lobe. It turned out that the lady had fallen asleep in the middle of the day when her husband came home. He was so furious that she wasn’t working preparing his supper that he bit her ear lobe off. At times the Indian culture made me furious. In Indian culture this lady was in the wrong and she knew it and therefore accepted her punishment from her husband without complaining. I soon grew to accept this way of life and then became able to appreciate the culture as a whole. The second case was a young girl, aged 16, who gave birth to a baby girl one evening just as I was about the leave for the night. Normally the mothers and their babies are kept in for at least three days, so when I came in the following morning to find both the mother and daughter gone I couldn’t understand what had happened and asked Pushba, the nurse with the best English, what had happened. The girl was not married which is totally unacceptable in Indian culture, and therefore a huge embarrassment for the hospital if they were found to be helping such a person. The girl was thrown out onto the streets just a couple of hours after giving birth and the baby taken away immediately and sent to a orphanage in north India so there would be no way the mother could ever find her child.

Whilst in Vallioor I was living with an Indian family which was amazing. I felt I was living a ‘true Indian lifestyle’. They took me to the tailor and helped me buy saris and chudidah, taught me how to put on the saris properly and made sure I was well dressed every day. I helped with the cooking, washing and really became integrated into their family, everything they did I did too, from fetching the water in the mornings to attending family weddings. I felt so privileged to experience this side of India which many tourists may never truly see.

Ponra hospital in Surandai was a secondary hospital and had better equipment, was cleaner, everything just much fresher. There wasn’t such a stench in the corridors as in Annai Amaravathi, and it was even evident that the patients there were wealthier, with more of the ladies wearing silk saris. More attention and better care was just an expectation. I did realise that in India you really do get what you pay for. People will treat you very differently, even if you just hand over another 20 Rupee note, the equivalent of about 25 pence! In Surandai I was sharing a room with the staff nurse, Janaki and so when she was woken up in the middle of the night to attend theatre, I went too. We became very close and spent a lot of time together on her days off as well visiting her family and friends in surrounding villages and towns. I had one incredible memory from Ponra hospital when Janaki and I were the only two people left in the delivery room with two soon to be mothers. Between us we delivered both of the babies, who were born within five minutes of each other. It was such an incredible moment hearing the first scream from both babies and seeing them first enter the world.

At least every other weekend all the volunteers met up at a place of interest, which was a great chance to travel around and see other areas of Tamil Nadu and Kerala (the next state) including hill stations, beaches and wildlife sanctuaries. It was also a fantastic time to catch up with the other volunteers and share ideas and experiences that they’d had in different placements. From time to time it was just lovely and sometimes a bit of light relief to be able to chat about England and find out from any news from home from new volunteers! We all soon learnt that travelling 10 hours on Friday and Sunday really doesn’t matter because as long as you have one good day on the Saturday the weekend still feels very worthwhile. 

Why in particular did I get to the end of my three months in this crazy country having loved the experience so much? I think it has to be because of the people I met and friendships I made during those three months. Fair enough, India does have some less attractive aspects and the general impression of the country might be of chaotic poverty, but for me that has just added to the experience and it has been a real privilege being part of it all.

Arriving in Bangkok felt very familiar, despite the fact I’d never before set foot in Thailand. Sitting in the back of the taxi I could see Boots and Tesco stores and even the odd Starbucks and McDonalds, which felt very reassuring, even though I never went into any of these in the entire three months! My time in Thailand however was certainly not as I was expecting.

I arrived in Bangkok 23rd December and within four hours was on a bus to the island Koh Pha Ngan for Christmas and New Year with the only three other TPA volunteers out there. 26th December we were all swimming in the sea when Tash (one of the other volunteers) received a text message from her Dad in England which just said “If you see any elephants or any animals running inland follow them.” We didn’t have a clue what he was on about and thought nothing of it until we found texts and missed calls galore on our mobile phones. We ran up the hill to one of the only restaurants in the area with a television and watched the scenes repeated again and again of the disaster of the tsunami as if hit the west coast. We didn’t realise the true scale of the damage those three waves caused until we returned to Bangkok. Here I was about to begin work in a children’s home for disabled young people when TPA was approached and asked if they had any volunteers who would be willing to help with relief work in the Phuket region.

So just two weeks after the tsunami struck a team of six of us travelled to Khao Lak, the worst hit area of Thailand’s coast about an hour and a half north of Phuket. We worked and lived on camp Khukhak, one of the emergency relief camps in the area. On arrival, all the people were living in make-shift tents, made of a sheet of plastic and some hardboard for supports, but over the weeks we were there these were gradually replaced by temporary accommodation blocks made of corrugated iron, breeze-blocks, and wood. There were about 400 people living on Khukhak, about 80 families. Most people had lost at least one member of the family and a lot of the children had lost either their mother or father. There were several children being looked after by an aunt or an elderly grandparent, so one of our roles there was to support such families in particular. During the day we mostly played with the children on the camp, many of whom did not trust going back to school and leaving their ‘home’, in case of another disaster striking. We set up mini-Olympics, did art therapy, with the children drawing pictures of the tsunami and the older ones carving these into wood using a soldering iron, made small dolls which the children sold to reporters and visitors to the camp in order to raise money to help their family and did batiks with them. At the start of our time there a lot of the children were very quiet and emotional, however over the next few weeks there were more and more smiles, their paintings changed from pictures of a giant wave and people climbing up palm trees to paintings of their friends, families, animals and this was a real joy to see. In the evening we used to sing and make music with the families to encourage them to come out of their temporary housing and mix with each other. The adults learnt new skills during the day, such as basket waving and cooking so they could start up a new business in the near future. In the evenings we led two English lessons, one with the children and then one with the adults so they could all improve their chances of employment in this tourist area. I was amazed by their enthusiasm for learning and their ability to see into the future so soon after they had lost so much. Men got back to making new fishing nets and some even received funding for new boats, so the whole community joined together in helping each other.

Twice a week, during the day, we taught English at a local school about 10 minutes drive away from the camp, taking lifts in open back trucks. The school was in someone’s garage as the main school was totally destroyed and there were 92 children there. Over time we were asked to go to the school to help with sport as well. The children were just so responsive to everything we did with them. A real favourite was ‘Heads, shoulders, knees and toes’. It was so exciting one morning to turn up and find little groups of children, ranging from 5 to 10 years old standing outside singing and doing the actions all on their own.

We attended an amazing memorial service on February 26th. 1,000 monks gathered at the front of a huge grassy area, and there were 40,000 people attending, a mixture of foreigners and Thais. The service was led by various leaders from different countries, and was translated into every imaginable language. The service started at dusk and by the end we had each lit a lantern in front of us in a glass bowl and to end with 10,000 paper lanterns were lit and sent up into the night sky. It was the most incredible sight and such a fantastic way of remembering those people who had lost their lives and their families.

 One of the junior houses at Oakham School had raised over £500 to help the Thai people recover their businesses and help them rebuilt housing and support their families. I was lucky enough to be asked to use this money ‘however would best help the Thai people I was working with’. Being a fishing community originally we were able to buy the equipment for each family on Khukhak camp and another camp called Pakweep so they could make up new nets and begin their fishing again. Also, the little children and babies on the camp were not being fed properly as a result of such high costs of baby food. Soon after the disaster there were supplies being brought into the camp, but just a month later these supplies were becoming far more rare. This was really upsetting, seeing how quickly and easily people can forget that although the initial shock had worn off, these people still had nothing except that which was donated to them. So we used the rest of the money to buy supplies of powdered milk, nappies and bottles. All the people were so grateful for whatever they had been given, however big or small the gift may have been.

Leaving the area was horrible. The younger children couldn’t understand that we weren’t coming back and the adults and older children were very emotional. I had already extended the time I was originally going to be in Thailand, but there comes a point when you have to return to normality back home. It was very hard to leave them having come into their lives and built up such trust and close friendships and now to go and travel back to the other side of the world again, back to a place where people grumble when the washing machine doesn’t work or there’s a power cut.  My time with these people has really made me value things that I may have before taken for granted, especially family.

Since coming back I have stayed in contact with friends I have made both in India and Thailand. I love hearing how their lives are progressing, especially hearing about permanent housing being built in Thailand and families being able to move back to their villages. The time I spent away has been a real eye-opener, but an experience far better than any I could have imagined.

The following 'Newsletter' was received in August 2004, from Claire Bourke, in Uganda. It gives an insight into the work and experiences of a typical HMC gap year Student.

Claire Bourke, Mityana Standard Secondary School, Mityana, Uganda.

August Newsletter to my Sponsors 7/8/04

Greetings to everyone from Uganda!

I can hardly believe that it's August already and that this is my last Newsletter from Uganda. In two weeks' time I will be leaving Kagaru and my life here at Mityana Standard Secondary, not something that I'm looking forward to! However, now is, thankfully, a very busy time at the school so that I don't have time to brood.....

Exams Again!

Yet again we are having End of Term exams, so, it's marking time! This term I have 464 papers to mark because my S1 class has grown to 141 students. That means more reports too, but, luckily, with all my marking and report making practice, it's not too bad! Andrew, our director of studies, has over 1000 papers to mark, so 464 is nothing!

School Practice Teachers

4 student teachers joined MSSS for practice teaching in July. It certainly feels very weird to be showing them the ropes, when they are older and better qualified than us! It feels like ages ago that we first arrived and started teaching here; they thought that I was about 25 until I told them that it was my 19th birthday on 2/8/04!

Basket Making

At the moment, I am making a basket from sisal and banana fibres, much to the amusement of my students! I was taught how to weave by Madame Nakiyingi, the fine arts teacher and one of my closest friends at the project and I'm quite pleased with it so far, although I am progressing extremely slowly!

Meeting Relatives

Recently, we've been taken to visit Madame Stella's parents in Kampala and Madame Nakiyingi's sister in Bukandala in the Mpigi district. It's been great to put names to faces because we've heard so much about them. I even met my name-sake: Namponje, Mme Stella's grandmother.

Debating Competition

The school has been having an Intercolour Debating Competition, including such titles as: 'Should President Musareri have a 3rd term in office?'; 'Technology has done more harm than good' and 'Politics is a dirty game'. It's all aimed at improving the students' level of English and some of the arguments were extremely impressive, considering that it is their second language. I have been acting as the 'honorable debating secretary and time-keeper' and have been in the midst of some very animated discussions!

Tanda Pits

To add to our knowledge of the local area, we went to visit the 'Tanda Pits' in our neighbouring village with one of the other teachers. They are believed to be the holes made by the demon 'Walume' (brother-in-law to the first member of the Bugandan tribe) and many people still bring offerings of baskets, pots, eggs, butter and milk to lift curses and honour their traditions. It was a really fascinating experience and, luckily, still quite untouched by tourism. This does mean that getting there is a bit more difficult, though. At least us sitting side-saddle on the back of a motorbike over a bumpy dirt-track amused the local children!

Goat Roasting

To celebrate the victory of the green team in a drama and music competition earlier this term, we killed and roasted the school goat and had a typically Ugandan impromptu feast - tastes a little like chewy lamb/pork.

There is so much that I am going to miss about being here (not least random events like the above!), but I am so grateful that I have been able to have this amazing opportunity. My biggest achievement this year has been making Mityana SSS my home, but this also makes for some very tough 'goodbyes'!

Thank you so much for supporting me this year. It has been educational, inspiring and most of all, fantastic! Thank you!

Yours sincerely,

Claire Bourke