Friday

Friday morning at 5am: Me and James got woken up by George and Josh getting up to go upcountry to one of the other secondary schools, Magbeni.
About 4 hours later me and James got up. We went to go and get the local breakfast, which the lady was trying to tell us what was in it. We worked out its was a bread roll with these balls, made from rice sugar and something else. They are surprisingly quite nice.
During the rest of the day Me, James and the 'IT specialist' (Ndola) revamped the IT room, cutting and making new network cables, running them around the room, and trunking them. We set up the server and got the domain running. We had our first lesson with a tutor group and everything was working fine with the internet.
Power is limited here so they turn the generator on from 1830-10, which is when we do our lessons.
That night Ndola took us out to the local bar for a drink to celebrate the lesson, and James met a local woman called Ester that took a liking to him. :)

Thursday in Freetown

On the thursday we went to Freetown with Yayah, the deputy head boy. We exchanged our money and James had to buy a new phone because he forgot to unlock the one he bought out.
Yayah showed us a big warehouse which is used as a market. The warehouse was next to 'the community' which is a shanty town right on the coast. He told us that in the rainy season the community floods and many people live on the streets during this time.

We dont have any pictures because its risky to take our cameras out due to pickpockets.

Safe Journey

George, James and Luke left Heathrow on Monday and arrived safely in Freetown. The plane arrived late, but someone was there to meet them, get them and the luggage onto the helicopter to Freetown, where Miriam met them.

Preparations continue ....

Finally got all the IT stuff together on our kitchen table - many thanks to CSC in Aldershot, the Margaret Beaufort Institute and various indivduals for the laptops and Dominic B for all his help teaching Luke how to fix and set up the laptops, networking equipment and projector. Now it just needs to get weighed, packed up and distributed amongst the six young volunteers who are going out to help in the school this term.

The things he'll do for money!

He has sold £500 worth of raffle tickets and the winner gets to shave his head tomorrow - the thatch will be gone! He will definitely need a good sun hat now, but at least he wont take as much time in the shower each morning. Know of any girls who would buy a lock of hair?

(Photo one week after 'the shave' and he was trying hard to look mean!)

12 Days to go!

Welcome to my blog! I hope to be able to make regular postings here to let everyone know how I am getting on, both before I go and whilst I am out in Sierra Leone. In the meantime, I still have lots of things to do....

If you would like to see how much has been raised for Educaid so far or would like to make a donation yourself, please visit www.justgiving.com/lukeeducaid.

Thanks