A special visit

What a brilliant week it has been with almost wall to wall sunshine here in Yorkshire. The eleven Sierra Leonean teachers who were visiting their link schools in Craven had a perfect week. I met them on Friday when I was helping them and their English teacher partners to review and evaluate their visits (the Craven teachers visited Sierra Leone in the February half term) and joint global learning projects. We also did some action planning and discussed the possibility of setting up a teachers’ resource centre in Bo, Sierra Leone’s second city and where the Sierra Leonean schools are located. Simon and I met in Sierra Leone when we were starting our teaching careers and worked in secondary schools in the capital city, Freetown, for two years. It was a life changing experience for both of us then so I was very excited to meet the visiting teachers. 

Schoolgirls in Bo

Earlier in the week I had been wondering how they would be adjusting to our affluence; how expensive things would seem to them even in our cheapest shops and markets – Sierra Leone is one of the poorest countries in the world and teachers’ salaries are a fraction of what they are here. Then I had an idea. Simon didn’t have a huge number of clothes but what he did have was always good quality so why not choose some of his leather shoes and lightweight jackets and offer them to the eight male teachers. Lucy, the link coordinator in Craven, thought it was a great idea so after we finished the training she put names in a hat and we got out the shoes and jackets – the first name out of the hat got the first choice and so on. The four pairs of shoes went first – leather shoes are impossible to buy in Sierra Leone. They were hugely appreciative and it makes me smile when I think some of Simon’s things will be loved and worn with pride in the country we both loved.

I had a chance to speak to Millicent, one of the female teachers yesterday as we ate our lunch together in the sunshine in the Millennium Square in Leeds. She was telling me about her experiences during the civil war that ravaged the country from 1991 to 2002. She was four months pregnant at the time and had to run for her life when the rebels attacked Bo and burnt down her house. As she and hundreds of others ran many were shot. She managed to get shelter for a night in a village 70 miles to the north but the rebels arrived the following day and lined up everyone, separating the women, men and children. They all thought they would be shot and she prayed earnestly. One man tried to run away but was captured and beheaded in front of his three children and everyone else. She was spared and took the children of the man eventually managing to get them back to Bo and their grandmother. When she returned to Bo she had nothing so had to manage by collecting firewood and selling it on the roadside. Yesterday she was content to sit in the sunshine and marvel that twelve years after all this happened she was in England. She had no money to spend but she has a future and a job she loves, three children and a home. It was a privilege to meet Millicent, a lovely gentle Christian lady.