Sundays here in Iringa are very lazy days and not much happens, so very similar to the UK really. They tend to spend their Sunday doing chores around the house and just watching the world go by, so we took the opportunity to climb ‘The Rock’. An iconic rock in Iringa because when you do reach the top you can see the entire town. It took us 35mins to climb very rocky and the leaves make the climb slippy but it was certainly worth it because it was the most amazing view. We also had the chance to watch the sunset and it was very satisfying.
Monday 14th September took us back to FISCH to do anther coat of painting in the washroom and clean u a little bit ready for bit of plastering and then the final paint around the bottom panels of the wall. We were due to pay our respects to the boys family who lost his mum, but they could not track him down and as they don’t have mobile phones we were unable to make contact.
Tuesday 15th September was a very long and emotional day, I had the opportunity to visit a village called Itagutwa and learnt how poor this village is and no local secondary school for the children who pass primary school. Children have to travel to the next town which takes them 4-5hours each way to get to school and the girls have to wake up at 3am to carry out the chores of the house before leaving for school. This really did break my heart hearing how they have to travel for miles under unsafe conditions to and from school and that because of the ‘African Traditions’, whereby the girls have to do all the household chores and then after a 2.5hr journey back home after school at 3pm, they have to do all the household chores for the evening on top of school work.
The pictures of the sand hole we were collecting sand from.
Willhard is the head sponsor of a project along with 4 others, which include the chief of the village and a pastor who have secured 20acres of land to build a girls school which will be approx.10mins away from the kids to travel. They are in the process of trying to reach out to people for funding to help buy cement bags, windows and shutters, toilets and ceilings and of course the labour. I took a look at the letter he was sending out and hoping companies would give some funding to help and provide the resource in order to begin and start Phase One. As i read through what this project was about and how much this girls school would mean to the poorest children in that village i was really intrigued and interested in ways i could help and support this project. I went through the costs of materials and labour and overall the costs for Phase One and to give hope to the poverty stricken village came to a sum of around 700,000.00 which in GBP was around £2400. I have now offered to pay for this to happen and bring hope to the children of Itagutwa so they can begin to see their dreams in progress of a school which will no longer mean 4-5hr round trips.
In addition to making their journey to school so much better another life threatening disease is in need of major attention and this is AIDS. HIV is a massive threat to the future generation and the main cause of high infection is due to the lack of education and ignorance. These children and particular the girls attending school and education on the cause and raising awareness will help the rate of this disease drop within this village. As it stands Iringa as a whole is leading as far as the `HIV infection is concerned and therefore educating children will be in the right direction to helping reduce the epidemic which will impact the village incredibly.
So today i went to visit the site and the formations to see what was already in place and what my donation would mean to them. It was very emotional to hear the chief talk about the idea of the school, how they came up with the idea, what this means to them and the children and how the children see the school in the process of being built and knowing as work has stopped their dream of being able to travel to a school 10-15mins away could well be shattered. Hopefully my donation will certainly get the project underway so they can begin to see their dreams of going to a school close to home coming true.
At the site there was a massive hole within the sand which locals had started to dig up so we had to manually dig up the sand and use shovels to shovel the sand into buckets and take these buckets one by one about 10metres to the dumping ground where once the labourers start work will mix in the cement and begin plastering the walls of the school. We walked to the village which took us 3.5hrs as we set off at approx. 6.15am and arrived to the village just before 10am. It was a crazy walk and this was no flat road route either, there were rocks to climb and hills and uneven roads but very rewarding once we arrived and just got stuck in. We worked until 15.30 in the boiling hot sun which was not easy especially when temperatures at the best of times in the UK reaches no where near 31degs. it was not easy but we managed to get a fair bit dug out and carrying the buckets to the other side was hard work but as i said was all worth it.
Once we managed to work as much as we could without passing out, we started to make our trip back home, i personally cannot wait to see pictures of progress on this project and i will be updated each month, with the plan to visit again next year on just how well the school has come along and hopefully meet some of the new students attending the school.
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