The BPC/Sajuka School Project Team 2012 is counting down the hours (26!) until we board our plane in Boston and fly to NYC and then on to Dakar, Senegal. We will have a one day rest period in Dakar with Nyillan Fye's family there. Her father is Director of the Red Cross/Red Crescent for the West Coast of Africa (17 nations). We will have a swimming pool and first world accommodations . . . for for one day in Dakar. Then we board a bus and drive 5 hours through the jungle to our new home Barra Village, leaving the first world far, far behind. Students will be sleeping in a classsroom that has been converted to a dormitory. Each one will have her own personal mosquito net. They will shower the old fashioned way with buckets of fresh, cool water. Oh, so refreshing! We will eat food cooked over an open fire in the courtyard outside the dormitory. No one cooks indoors in the Gambia. It's too hot do do so, averaging 100+ degrees fahrenheit each day.
However, the most important story is not about how students will be living but rather about what they will be doing. The Child Literacy Team will be training African teachers in teaching reading for comprehension to students from Kindergarten through second grade. They will also be working in the Bay Path Library one on one with older students who need help with reading.
The Adult Literacy Team will be integrating an adult literacy curriculum into the Crafts Center where women ages 15-30 are learning to make traditional African crafts such as tie-dye and battick clothing, decorative wall hangings, bags, wallets, etc. They will also be training an instructor to carry the program forward.
Finally, the Healthcare Team will be putting a nurse's station into the primary school for the 300 children who attend. They will train a school nurse and then give physicals to as many of the 300 children as they are able in the time that we are there. They will set up and stock the nurse's station with medical supplies that they have gathered from up and down the Pioneer Valley. Just today, Amanda Bergstrom, Team Leader, was able to pick up 100 first aid kits donated by Walmart's Boston headquarters. On top of the kits is a large selection of other first aid supplies. Now, thanks to the Bay Path College community, not only will the Sajuka School now have the best school library in The Gambia outside of the capital, but it will also boast the best school nurse's station as well!
We only have 25 hours left . . . and then our heartfelt adventure begins . . .!
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