Friday 17th October

On Friday we continued to knuckle down to some school links work. We visited 11 schools starting off with two schools at Christchurch, where both head teachers were extremely welcoming and accommodating. We then continued on to St George’s Cathedral schools (made up of 5 schools) before finishing with St John’s Brookfield, both infant, and junior. The 1st set of schools is unfortunately located beneath a local church in what, I am sure, was meant originally to be the church hall. However, it is now made up of 10+ classrooms all poorly divided spilling noise and distraction onto each “separate” teaching environment. St John’s Brookfield is a similar set up, with many classes occupying a large hall. This of course is not ideal for any form of schooling. However, even with such bustle, noise and distraction here there is a strong sense of community and closeness surrounding these schools, which I am sure, is provided by living and working in such close quarters. Such communities give these schools great appeal to any school in England seeking a link to a school in Sierra Leone.

After a horrendously busy 3 days on the roll both myself, and Parksy were completely and utterly wrecked! We had planned an evening out with the Bishop’s daughter - Phina, yet fortunately the rain......how dare it!.......forced us to collapse into bed, thoroughly in need of a long night of rest. Just in case Master Parks forgets to mention it, Middlesbrough lost 5-0 today against Chelsea. Watching the match in the Seafarers and wearing his Borough shirt proudly, Parks held his head high as goal after goal by-passed the poor Borough keeper. Undoubtedly, it was difficult for Parks to take such an emotional battering. I tried to comfort him by mentioning that – “on the plus side mate, Beletti is in my fantasy football team, he scored, and kept a clean sheet eh?” Hearing this remark, Parks wandered upstairs and locked his bedroom door firmly........5 minutes later he emerged, eyes blood-shot and watery......he’d been crying the whole time.