A crafty week

One of the joys about having visitors, is that they each bring across their own set of skills which they willingly share. Barbara taught me the intricacies of Excel, making my bookkeeping a lot easier. Jill spent time with head teachers and teachers, teaching them about school management and English grammar. It’s great to watch the teachers putting into practice the techniques they were taught. Sheila focussed on disability awareness not just in schools but also in the community and was able to source a number of aids including wheelchairs for many children who had previously been limited as to where they could go, as a result of their disability. Latterly Chris, Andy and Christian have worked with this sports-mad nation sharing a number of physical education and particularly football skills and training 16 young men to become football coaches.

My most recent visitor has been my sister who is a very crafty person (in the nicest possible way of course) and during the first week of the school holidays she ran a series of craft workshops in the making of “spinners”, friendship bracelets and bead jewellery with around 130 children and quite a few adults joining in as well.

Other visitors have brought with them, a very special commodity, their time. Like Libby and Niamh who spent hours and hours in the village playing games with the children and showing them how to use digital cameras and Gill and Alan who made a great impact on one family in particular. A photo of them takes pride of place within the family home.

To everyone who has been across thank you so much for all you have done and for those of you reading this, thank you for your thoughts and interest

My return ticket has arrived and I now have only three months left here, leaving on 29thOctober but there is still plenty to do. You might recall that earlier in the year I spoke about food shortages as a result of low maize yields, well the time has come where the food is running out but we have kindly been given an emergency grant to purchase maize for the most vulnerable. We are at the stage of galvanising small local communities in identifying the neediest in their communities and ordering that maize.