February 2013 Trip to Gambia

Gloz, Marje and I have just returned from a trip to The Gambia. We had a wonderful time, and achieved quite a lot in the time we had. The compound in Busumbala is well on the way to be habitable, the ceilings done, floors tiled, doors and windows in, hopefully it wont be long now till Sankung and his family are able to move in. We met quite a few of our older students who are in further education, and all seem happy and well. We intend to send out updates of our all our students to their sponsors in the next few weeks. We are providing further excercise books to Toniataba and Fonkoi Kunda schools to see them through to the end of the school year. While we were in Si-Kunda we had the well pump repaired, it had become very difficult to draw up water, so need some replacement parts. The workshop is being managed by Syah, and they need some sewing needles, both hand and Singer machine, also some very thin (ideally cotton) materials to practice their 'cutting out' skills with and basic sewing for those wishing to learn. If anyone can help we would be very grateful! There are currently 88 children registered at the Sikunda Nursery School, they would like some new toys, but nothing to bulky that would be difficult and expensive to send by shipment. We always need pencils and colouring pencils, rulers, erasors, biros and excercise books for the schools we support if anyone has any spare? We managed to get to the Independence Day celebrations in Banjul stadium. The first time any of us has been and we were very glad we went, it was the 48th year celebration of Independence. It was quite an event with the military, schools and cultural groups all represented. The Gambian president was present, also a few other African leaders. I do realise that the website really does need updating, and that is on the list of things to do, so watch this space. Many thanks to all our supporters, and the Bonus Ball continues to roll on which really does help with our revenue. Sue

Newsletter no.19

Our latest Newsletter (no.19) has now been distributed, so all our sponsors should receive one any time now. If there is anyone reading this that would like a copy, please let me know, either by phone 07717 821 604, or email sjones@friendsofsikunda.org

September 24th

Sankung is busy at the moment (and has been for the last few weeks!) organising all the payments and placements of all our students at their schools and colleges for the 2012/13 school year.

Pakalinding Upper Basic School now has the windows in the computer room repaired where needed, and excercise books were ordered for the schools we support.

We distributed our last newsletter to our sponsors in July, so if anyone reading this would like a copy then please contact me on sjones@friendsofsikunda.org or telephone on 01296 688039.

Sue

Sankung and Oumie's Garden Party!
What a wonderful day we had, the rain kept off, Sankung and Oumie from The Gambia were our guests of honour, and Sankung kept busy making Ataya tea for everyone. So many of you came who have supported our charity for all these years, and it was great for Sankung and Oumie to meet you all. Oumie had helped me make the chicken yassa Gambian style the day before so along with that and the great barbeque cooked up by Mark, with Les toiling away in the kitchen making sure everything was ready in time for our meal at 4pm, it all went well. At the same time we have raised a lot of funds as well, the grand total will be announced on the website in a few days. We will have photographs and a write up in the July newsletter.

We had so much help without which we couldn't have done it, all the trustees and committee members and families, and to name just a few Les and Kate, Richard and Myra, and Daisy my eight yr old granddaughter was a little star running the Treasure Hunt stall and collecting money for us, and I know Aiden Fran's grandson was helping too, thankyou so much to everyone!

Sankung and Oumie's Garden Party

We will very soon be sending out flyers to all our supporters to invite you to our fund raising Garden Party, to take place on May 19th, 2pm till late, at Monks Risborough. Our very special guests of honour are going to be our Charity Project Manager from The Gambia, Sankung Jammeh and his lovely wife Oumie. More details to follow, but we will be having refreshments all day - Barbeque, Gambian dishes to sample, Auction, Live music, Raffle, lots of stalls, bouncy castle, lots going on, but also places to just sit and relax in beautiful surroundings. This is Sankung and Oumie's first visit to England, and we would like to invite you to meet them and help make their trip a lifetime experience to be remembered always! Watch this space! You can if you wish contact me for details.............sjones@friendsofsikunda.org

February 2012 Trip

Anne, Matt, Gloz, Richard and I were in Gambia in February. We had a great time, and also achieved just about all we wanted to do on this trip, which is a miracle in itself! The Busumbala compound now has a roof, and lots of work put in by Matt and Yaya to make sure it was done so well. The ceilings will be put up this week by Yaya and his team. The Sikunda Village School has been painted inside and out, plus all the furniture has had attention to make sure it is all as it should be and the Community and Skills Centre has been given a paint job outside so it looks very smart! All the windows have been completed in Toniataba School and we have provided some dustbins for their clean campaign at the school. We had a meeting with the Gambia Red Cross Secretary General at the headquarters as we work quite closely with the Lower River Division Branch of the Red Cross in trying to help as much as we can. Richard worked at Pakalinding School in the computer lab with Kim a Peace Corp volunteer, in setting up new virus checking and rebuilding pc's where needed, etc., All this was done and so much more, we will be updating the projects section of this website as soon as we can. Our bonus ball is into its next session, we are so pleased to see that continue. We have just given a presentation to the Rotary Club of Bletchley this week, and had a very enjoyable lunch with them, we were presented with a wonderful donation and boxes of supplies for our shipment, we are so very grateful to them for supporting us for so many years. We have many wonderful supporters and thank you all! More updates to come..... Sue

We fly tomorrow!

We are going to Gambia tomorrow morning, 2nd Feb. Matt and Anne will come with me for the first two weeks, then Richard and Gloz will join us for the third week. We have lots to do, including the main focus this time to get the roof on the Busumbala compound plus as much more done to the compound as is possible in the time. Matt will be working with Yaya a builder who lives locally. We will of course be visiting our projects, schools and as many of our students upcountry as time allows. Updates will be put onto this website when we return, and lots of news will be shared with you in our next newsletter in July.

The picture is of one of our deliveries of excercise books in 2011 to a local school.

Sue