Handwashing Stations for Schools

Sponsor a Handwashing Station for a School in Sierra Leone

While many schools in Sierra Leone have toilets a lot of them don't have handwashing facilities.

Handwashing is a simple, but vital, way of reducing transmission of a large variety of illnesses that cause significant morbidity and potential mortality. This obviously has an impact on attendance at school and educational attainment.

You can make a difference by sponsoring a handwashing station. £50 will buy a bucket with tap and stand. 

You can make a donation for a handwashing station via our Wonderful account.

If you donate via wonderful please drop us an email (info@transformsalone.org) so we can ensure we assign it to the correct project.

If you would like to gift this to someone a gift card can be arranged.

(by H Young)

Fire Update

Update on the family who lost their toddler and their home in a house fire.....
Thanks to generous donations from friends and supporters enough funds have been raised to pay a year's rent on a new home for the family and to buy some essentials.

The family are living in their new home and our sponsored girl is back at school.

They aren't ok, they are still trying to comprehend the loss of their little boy. When spending time with them their grief and dispair can be felt. It's so hard to find the right words. Words of comfort seem empty in the face of their loss.

Our little sponsored girl is too young to understand what's happened, but she knows that her mummy and daddy aren't ok.

The family have have asked us to pass on their gratitude for the donations people have kindly sent to help them through this awful time.

Please hold this precious family in your prayers.

Donations to help the family can be made at our BT MyDonate page: https://mydonate.bt.com/charities/transformsalone

Supplies!!

Three days shopping and one whole day preparing the school bags and supplies for our sponsored students!!! 

Pictured are just some of the bags and supplies.

Thank You!

Thank you so much to everyone who has kindly donated funds to help the family recently affected by a house fire.

The donations are being used to pay a year's rent on a new home for them and to replace some of their lost belongings.

It's such an awful time for the family but having this help is a huge weight off their shoulders and they appreciate it so much.

We are still accepting donations for the family at our BT Mydonate page: https://mydonate.bt.com/charities/transformsalone

Fire

There has been a fire at the house of one of our sponsored girls. The father was at work, the mother was taking our student to school and from what I’ve heard the neighbours were watching her three year old brother on the veranda of the house. When people noticed the smoke and started shouting the three year old got scared and ran into the house – he sadly perished in the fire. It’s devastating for them. Just the day before the girl and her Mum visited me so I could see her in her new school uniform – she was so pleased with herself and her Mum was so proud of her, I can’t bear to think of how they are suffering now.

The family have lost all their material possession as well as their precious son.

We would like to practically support the family by helping them to find somewhere to stay and to replace some of their belongings – we are appealing for donations to help them.

If you feel you can help donations can be made via our BT MyDonate page or directly to our bank account. For more information please contact us via our Facebook page.

(photos posted with permission of the family)

Unconscious Woman

Something unsettling happened yesterday.......

I had meetings setup all day with students and their guardians. I was just getting started on the first meeting when Junior came and told me he'd more or less stumbled across someone who had collapsed in the compound of the school where I'm working from (I borrow a classroom when it's not in use to use as an office and somewhere I can meet the students and guardians).

I went out to see if I could do anything to help, there was a young pregnant lady laying on the floor. Someone carried her into the shade. She was kind of shivering, very floppy and we couldn't wake her. Someone went off to call her husband. It seemed to be taking ages, and the lady still wasn't waking up - a few tears came from her closed eyes. We waited and waited for ages for her husband to come, and still she was unresponsive - while we were waiting someone who knew the woman arrived. Between us onlookers we decided it would be best to send her off with the women who knew her in a taxi to the hospital where she's registered for the pregnancy and for her husband to meet her there. 

It must've been at least 20 to 30 minutes since she was first spotted to getting her off to the hospital, and in that time she didn't come around at all - the general feeling was that it was something quite serious.

By coincidence one of the teachers from the school happened to be at the hospital doing her government workers registration......she knew the pregnant lady and in fact had some familial link and had let the woman stay in her house the night before - she popped in to see me on her way home to let me know the young lady was awake and talking later in the day, but they didn't know yet what the issue was.

I was left feeling pretty useless, I had no idea what to do or how best to help her.

I wish the lady (whose name I still don't know) a speedy and full recovery.

Parents Meetings

Before every school year starts I hold parents meetings with all the parents/guardians and students to go over any issues and let them know of any changes to the sponsorship programme.

Soon after I arrived back in Sierra Leone after a wonderful few weeks in Portsmouth with my lovely husband I scheduled a parents meeting. I was very disappointed that an hour after the start time only one parent and seven students had shown up out of the 70 or so I was expecting. Sometimes the seeming lack of interest of the families and students can be disheartening.

I can't start the work of enrolling the students for the new school year until we've held a parent's meeting, so all the work I had planned for the week after the failed meeting had to be put on hold.

Parents meeting, take 2 🎬 was a lot more successful than the first try!! Almost all the students were represented by a parent, guardian, or family member, and most arrived early!!
At the start of the meeting there were a few people I'd never seen before who must've seen people gathering and decided to join in, we politely explained that they couldn't stay for the meeting!!
We kicked off the meeting with Muslim and Christian prayer and then jumped straight in to go over the issues, review the code of conduct and make appointments for the individual meetings I have to have with every student.

We talked about how the parents need to be involved in their children's education, about the behaviour problems of some of the students.......and how with me being a foreigner I'm not going to wait until 7pm for a 3pm meeting!!!

The meeting went well - so well I couldn't get people to leave after the meeting had ended!!

One student did turn up 3 hours late and was politely (as politely as I could manage) asked to make an appointment for another day!

Dangers of Facebook

We sometimes run sessions with our kids in Sierra Leone about the dangers of Facebook, I can never be sure if they take the advice or just think I'm being am old fuss pot.

Imagine my shock when I logged into Facebook and some naked pictures of someone I know showed up on my timeline......but they weren't photos of one of the kids.......these were photos of an adult you'd expect to know better!!!! We'll call him Mr X.

He had send nudie photos to someone he thought was a pretty young French lady, turns out it was man hiding behind the profile and he was now threatening to ruin Mr X unless he paid them $2,000.

I have no idea how Mr X dealt with it, the photos were removed and the French lady's profile is no longer there.

How embarrassing though, I'm embarrassed and to be honest a bit disgusted that I saw the photos.
I would imagine that Mr X is embarrassed as quite a lot of his friends had commented on the photos before they were removed.
I wonder if Mr X's wife saw the photos or is aware of them (oh yes, Mr X is a married man who you'd have thought would have no business sending photos of his privates to young ladies!!).
Even worse, what if his kids saw them??

This is a perfect example though of why people need to be careful who they make friends with on Facebook and not to believe that everyone is who they say they are.

One thing is for sure, I'm not looking forward to seeing Mr X again in a hurry now that I've seen so much more of him than I'd ever have wanted to!!!!

Money, money, money

Money is the root of all evil, I'm convinced of that. People who haven't got money become desperate for it and people who do have money want more!!

A lot of the recent problems I've been having and hearing about in Sierra Leone have been caused by money. People come here wanting to help and one thing they get asked for a lot is financial help. It can be very intense and uncomfortable for the people being asked and I think people sometimes feel like they can't say no, but I think giving money too freely can cause many more problems than it solves.

Some of our students tag onto charity groups and ask for money. Sometimes money is given to these youngsters without their parents knowing - three problem that this can cause spring to mind:

• Firstly it can create a dependency on the foreigners, the kids get used to being given easy money and any little problem and they'll be back asking for more.....they will more than likely expect you to send money once you've returned home too.
• Secondly the young people have no idea how to manage money, they might buy a pair of trainers or a phone while Mum is at home with no food to feed the family.
• Thirdly it can create discipline problems within the family, the kid goes home and mum or dad tells them to fetch water......and get the response, 'you can't tell me what to do, you aren't the one that takes care of me' (some of the parents have told me this happens)

Its great when people come to Sierra Leone to help, and I don't want to put people off from coming......but if you've got teens and younger asking for money stop and think to yourself 'would I want a foreigner I've never met giving my kids money without my knowledge'. If there's a genuine need talk to the families, get advice from people who live in country and understand the culture a little more, try to think of ways to assist that can help the families to become self sufficient.

I'm not criticising anyone, just trying to think of ways we can really help, really make a difference and from what I see and hear daily I really don't think giving money - especially to kids - is the answer.....I've made plenty of mistakes myself and I'm sure I'll make more. I've been ripped off more than once too!!

I know one thing....money alone doesn't solve problems, it creates them.

My Day - Registration

This was my registration day:

3:30 woken by the man who goes around the neighbourhood calling out to wake people for their sokoli meal

4:00 still awake as now the mosque is calling people for prayer

6:00 woken again, this time by the rain coming through the window straight onto my bed

07:45 called Bob then fed the chickens, my favourite way to start the day

8:15 left home to go and register, as every foreigner has to as part of civil registration

9:30 arrived at the school where the registration takes place and joined the queue

12:30 finished registration process (and chatted to some lovely people while I was waiting!!). One of the registration questions was what time was I born, I don't think I've ever been asked that before.

14:15 arrived back in my area and stopped to pick up a MoneyGram. They said the code wasn't recognised so spent a while working that out

16:00 left MoneyGram place after counting all the funds to make sure it was correct. The largest note here is 10,000 leones which is about £1.13. Unfortunately they had run out of 10,000 notes so the whole amount was in 5,000 notes (about 56p).....there were a lot of notes to count!!

16.15 got back home and caught up on a bit of emailing

17:00 started to prepare food for the evening before it gets dark as no electricity

19:10 evening meal of Spanish omelette timed to coincide with the time those fasting for Ramadan could break their fast then spent the rest of the evening catching up with friends and family on social media (WhatsApp has made staying in touch a lot easier). Sent a postcard to Bob from the STANNP application.

11:45 time for bed

So all in all I was out for 8 hours just to register and collect some money. I'm happy to have got the registration done, I only heard about it the day before but it's a legal requirement for all foreigners who are resident in country for more than 90 days. We will be issued with an id card later in the year.

RIP 'M'

Way back in September 2015 I made a couple of posts about a girl I referred to as 'M'. When I first came across her she was in a terrible condition, because of some of her behaviours the home she was living in found it hard to integrate her with the other children. Someone kindly provided funds through Mission Direct (the mission I was with before Transform Salone) and someone was employed to take care of her, which meant her life was much improved and she was allowed to live in the main house alongside the other children.

I was very sad to hear that she passed away last month (May 2017).

RIP you lovely girl xxx

A Funny Old Week…..

I arrived back in Freetown with my niece a week ago today after a short break in the UK, it’s been a bit of a strange week……some good, some not so good……

The journey was mostly really good – I usually prefer to travel alone, but this time I travelled with Carla (my niece). We had over 5 hours to wait for our connecting flight in Casablanca, as it was Carla’s birthday we shared cakes and coffee while I sang happy birthday……repeatedly. I like Casablanca airport, it’s cheaper than most and the cakes are lovely! Carla kindly let me sit next to the window for both flights, we had a nice young man alongside us for the first flight who joined in with us when we said grace before eating our meal. The lady next to Carla on the second flight wasn’t quite so nice and dumped her bags and her smelly feet under the seat in front of Carla, in Carla’s space – but Carla managed to hold her tongue…I’m not sure I could have been so gracious.

Part of my morning routine is feeding the chickens, we have: Marjory, Deirdre, Mabel, Ethel, Gladys, Eeny, Meenie, Miney, Mo, Bernard, Snap, Crackle, Pop, Bang, Sprout, Spud and Augustus. Augustus is the biggest cockerel I have ever seen and he doesn’t like me, he really doesn’t like me. He tries to intimidate me, when I’m facing him he’s not so bad, but as soon as I turn my back he attacks me. I’m not proud to admit that he scares me!

I have a bit of a problem with my eyes, my eyelids and undereyes are really itchy and a bit scaly from where I keep rubbing them – the eyes themselves are ok, but the surrounding skin is red and swollen and not very pretty. My favourite doctor in the world, Dr Koroma, has prescribed me some tablets that I have to take three times a day so hopefully whatever it is will clear up soon, I had the same thing in September, but it cleared up on it’s own accord that time after a couple of weeks.

The weather is odd for November. I’ve always found November and March to be the hottest months, so I was bracing myself for some serious heat, but it’s much cooler this year. We have had a lot of storms, thunder, lightning, rain, wind – the whole shebang – fortunately mostly at nights so it’s not affected work.

I was saddened to find out that some of our sponsored boys played truant to go to the beach, putting their sponsorship in jeopardy – I’m sure their sponsors aren’t going to be impressed to hear about it. For two of the students it’s their last year in school and they are working towards their end of school exams – they need all the time in school they can get and any missed schooling will affect their chance of passing the exams. I’m so sad to learn that for these few boys their education isn’t as important to them as I thought it was.

We’ve enjoyed catching up with ‘our kids’ and finding out what they are all up to. It was lovely to see Baby Freecall looking so healthy and happy. We’ve been able to help them buy a mattress for Aunty and Freecall. Aunty wants to start a small business selling various items from a portable box so she doesn’t have to keep asking us for money and can become self sufficient. The startup cost will be around £75 – if anyone is interested in helping let me know!!

At the moment we are preparing for our team of volunteers who arrive on Sunday to help with our mission – exciting!!

Vehicle News–Urgent Request

It’s become apparent in the last few weeks that I urgently need to sort out my transport situation in Sierra Leone. I have an old RAV 4 at the moment, but it is costing so much to keep it on the road that it’s time for it to go. I’ve had it patched up and it’s running at the moment, so I’m hoping to find a buyer for it soon…..which leaves Transform Salone in urgent need of a new vehicle.

Crime is on the rise in the city recently and for our safety and peace of mind we have to have a reliable vehicle.

I’ve been looking around for a while and have found a car that I think is the right one for Transform Salone – it’s a Toyota 4 Runner in good condition with reasonably low mileage, just imported from the USA.

I’m going to put in all the money from the sale of my car and I’ve had some donations from very kind friends towards the purchase of a new vehicle, but we are still $5,000 short of the agreed price. Because we are so desperate for a vehicle, I have gone ahead and paid a deposit on the car with the faith that the rest of the funds will come – if we can’t raise the $5,000 by 1st November we’ll lose both our deposit and the new car.

I’d like to appeal to all friends and supporters to consider if you are able to help us with funds towards the car – any amount would be so much appreciated.

There are many ways to make a donation, the easiest being directly into the Transform Salone bank account:

Bank: Barclays, Name: Transform Salone, Account No: 43452867, Sort Code: 20-57-44

or by sending a cheque made payable to Transform Salone to:

Transform Salone, 61 Admirals House, Gisors Road, Southsea, Hampshire, PO4 8GY.

For alternative ways of making a donation email me on alison@transformsalone.org

We very much appreciate your prayers and ask that you continue to pray for us and the work we are doing in Sierra Leone.

Getting Ready for School

My main task at the moment is getting our 80+ students ready to start the new school year in just over a week.

My spare room has been taken over to store all the supplies that we’ve bought in readiness for the students…….bags, ledgers, pens, pencils, rulers, rubbers, sharpeners, geometry sets, calculators and graph paper. With so many students it’s a huge amount of stuff.

I have a number of steps that I have to go through for each student……

First of all I collect and check their report card for the last school year to see how they did over the year, if they promoted, what their attendance and timekeeping has been like and take note of any comments from the teachers.

Next I meet with each student individually along with their guardian and we review their progress together and make a plan for the upcoming school year – after this I provide the funds for the school uniforms and shoes.

Once I’ve seen the new uniforms and shoes then we pay the school fees directly to the school. When the enrolment is complete then we give each student their school bag and supplies. After that all is left is to wait for the school to issue the text book list for the year so we can buy the essential text books for each student.

This weekend I’m having our annual parents and guardians meeting to go over the sponsorship scheme, talk about what they can expect from us and what we expect from them. I’ll go over the code of conduct and the guardians will have a chance to bring up any issues or worries they have. The parent’s meetings are usually very interactive and lively!!#

Writing it all out like this makes it seem a bit daunting, such a lot to do in such a short space of time!! I’d better get one with it!!

Freecall Update

Back in May I posted about a poorly baby called Freecall (click here to see that post).

If we are friends on Facebook you might know that the Aunty who looks after Freecall was evicted from where they were living a few weeks ago when her landlord repossessed their place and knocked it down to make way for another building. This left Aunty, her daughter, and Freecall with nowhere to go and they ended up staying temporarily in an unfinished building with a leaky rook in the height of the rainy season! All of their belongings got soaked and Aunty was scared that Freecall would get sick again in that environment. Fortunately, through the generosity of kind friends, we were able to help them rent a room to live in.

I saw Freecall and her Aunty today – she is looking good! She’s put on weight since I last saw her and is much more alert and interested in what’s going on around her (she was especially interested in trying to eat the cross I wear!!). She has a bit of a cough, but apart from that she seems fine.

She’s seems happy and contented – and I loved spending the afternoon with her.

Back to Freetown

I travelled back to Freetown at the weekend after spending a wonderful few weeks over the summer in the UK with my husband.

The journey didn’t get off to the best start when I couldn’t check in online (I was had booked through an agent I hadn’t used before so was a little nervous there might be something wrong with the booking). I got to the airport nice and early……and just as well I did as I was told at check-in that the flight was overbooked and not all booked passengers would be able to fly – luckily I was one of the first to check in. The overbooking was the reason that online check-in wasn’t available.

I sat next to a nice lady from Ghana on the first flight, which was to Casablanca, we had a good chat about anything and everything and played a word game together on my tablet. The few hours I had to wait at Casablanca airport passed quickly as I spent some time chatting to a friendly group of ladies from Senegal who were travelling for their Haj. Everything went smoothly on arrival into Freetown, my luggage arrived and my friend was there waiting for me with my ticket for the watertaxi.

Not a lot has happened since I arrived, I had arranged to look at a vehicle yesterday and spent most of the day waiting around for that………it never did arrive and I found out today that someone else has bought it, so it obviously wasn’t the one for me.

Tomorrow I’m going to the school that I work out of to see my friend, the headmistress, and some of the sponsored students will meet me there so I can catch up on how they are doing.

It’s the rainy season here now, so it’s much cooler than when I left in June. Yesterday the rains were very heavy, buy it only rained for an hour or so today.

The next few weeks are going to be very busy – I have more than 80 students to get enrolled for the new school year starting in September as well as arranging for new uniforms, shoes, bags, books, supplies…..the list goes on and on – but before I can do any of that I need to go over their school report cards for the last school year and meet with each student and their guardian to check their progress and see how they are getting on and if any changes need to be made related to their educational needs.

Your prayers, as always, are vey much appreciated!!

Quick Update

Well, time seems to have got away from me somewhat this summer – it’s over 2 months since I last posted!

I’ve been spending some time in the UK with my husband, enjoying our roof garden, having nice meals together and generally enjoying each other’s company.

I had a day trip to Dublin with my niece for my birthday in July where she treated me to lunch on my first visit ever to a Hard Rock Cafe!

I had my head shaved to raise money for Transform Salone – just under £300 was raised. I quite like the bald look, but my husband isn’t so keen.

Transform Salone won a place in the 2017 London Marathon through the charity ballot, which I’m really excited about: every year my husband and I go to London to watch the marathon and cheer on the runners and next year we’ll be cheering on someone running for Transform Salone!! We don’t know yet who will be running for us – the place will go to whoever pledges to raise the most money.

I’m due to head back to Freetown in a couple of weeks – with the new school year starting in September it’s my busiest time of year. I need to check all the student’s report cards, get their uniforms, shoes, bags, supplies, text books…….the list goes on. I’m hoping for good results from our students this year, I know we have one boy who came second in his class and another who was top of his year for the whole school……so things are looking good so far!

Apart from popping back to the UK for a couple of weeks in October, I’ll pretty much be over in Freetown for the rest of the year. My niece is coming over to join me for November and we will be hosting our first joint Transform Salone/Mission Direct team while she is with me – if that goes well I’m hoping it will become a regular team each year.

I’m always in need of working, unlocked second hand phones, so if you have one lurking in a drawer somewhere give me a shout and I’ll take it off your hands!

Water Shortage

There is a water shortage in some parts of Freetown at the moment, our area included.

When I met up with Jan and Nancy at Gatwick airport a few weeks ago to travel to Freetown together they asked if there is a shower in their rooms – there most certainly is a shower but unfortunately there has been no water since we arrived and the well is dry. (well, in Jan’s room it’s more of a tap sticking out of the wall but it does usually have running water in it).

A few of our containers for collecting water

I have two big water tanks in my compound that collect rainwater, one feeds the house and the other is for general compound use. We have had two big storms since we arrived during which the tanks collected enough water for a couple of very welcome showers but apart from that it’s been bucket washes all round and as I type the tanks are empty again. Usually when the tanks are empty we can top them up from the well, but with the well being dry at the moment that’s not an option.

Every couple of days my security go with all the water containers they can find and queue at a local stand pipe to fetch water. We have to ration the water we are using for washing and flushing.

Usually we would have enough water to last us through the dry season but unfortunately a few months ago a visitor accidently left a tap open and we lost 1000’s of litres of water in one day – it’s now that we are suffering from that mistake.

Jan and Nancy have been great and just get on with things without grumbling, they soon got used to using the buckets – but I’m sure they’ll be pleased if we get a couple of nights of rain to top the tanks up.

Some of our drinking water supply

For drinking water I get bagged water which, until the tanks are topped up, we are also using to boil for tea and coffee. 20 bags of water which contain between 250ml and 500ml cost around 35p, the same price as just one small 500ml bottle of water – you can see why I chose to buy the bags, they work out to less than 2p each!!!

It feels like a storm might be on the way, the temperature has dropped a little and there is lightening in the sky so it might be our lucky night.

I will try to remember to never again take water for granted.

Baby Freecall



Freecall having malaria treatment

This is baby Freecall. She’s an orphan, her Dad died of Ebola and and her Mum died giving birth to her. She is around 9 months old but is the size of a 2 month old – she’s tiny.

She is being bought up by her aunt who is struggling to provide food for her. I recently put an appeal on facebook for financial help to provide formula for her and through the generosity of friends we are now able to get the food she needs. Unfortunately though, she was already malnourished and has recently been suffering from vomiting and diarrhoea and has lost the little bit of weight she had. Her Aunt bought her to see us last week and we took her to the Adventist hospital at Waterloo to be looked after by our great friend, Dr Koroma.

When the doctor saw her he admitted her straight away and diagnosed malnutrition and malaria - she was also starting to have convulsions and was very sick. She’s been at the hospital for almost a week and is has vastly improved since she’s been there. To start with she was very lethargic and hardly had the energy to cry…….now she is as bright as a button, very aware and hollers when she needs attention! She loves to be cuddled and doesn’t like to be put down. She is still having trouble keeping her food down and the doctor is investigating the cause of that.



Looking Brighter!

When I first met Freecall her aunt came to me to give her to me as she just couldn’t manage to provide for her. I can’t take her, I know virtually nothing about babies and I come and go to England regularly……it just wouldn’t be fair to her. Her aunt loves her and wants to take care of her and now that we are able to help with formula and her other needs she is happy to provide the maternal care that she needs.

Please, if you can, pray for this little one and send good thoughts and blessings her way – she’s had a tough start in life but with help we can give her a brighter future.

If you would like to give financially towards her medical bills please get in touch.

Visitors

I have a bit of company with me here in Sierra Leone at the moment - Jan and Nancy, who both sponsor students under the Transform Salone sponsorship scheme are spending three weeks helping me on our projects.

We have been really busy since we all arrived in Freetown together just over a week ago. We have been to the SDA hospital in Waterloo three times once to visit the doctor and the other two times to visit a baby we have admitted there for treatment for malnutrition and malaria. Today we also admitted a girl who had been bitten by a dog.

Most afternoons we are at the school I work out of and while I’m catching up on office or sponsorship work Jan and Nancy are helping the sponsored students with their reading or the times table.

This past Sunday we attended church at the Murray Town Army Barracks where my friend Colonel Kargbo, the Chief Chaplain of the Armed Services was preaching. In the evening we treated ourselves and went to The Hub restaurant.

It is lovely to have some company and both Nancy and Jan are a great encouragement and support to me. I so appreciate them and the help they are giving me and I hope this will be the first trip of many!