A Child's Day - video

Going to Gambia

December 1st 2013, Finland, Hämeenlinna

Our co-operation project’s “A child’s Day” work visit to Gambia is coming soon – only four nights and then we go! A group of classteachers, Jenni, Sanna and Jarkko, our photographer Jari and me, are travelling to Gambia for a week during December 6th and 13th.  We are spending a week with our colleagues from Gola Fortunate and Primary School. We have planned some lessons about Finnish nature, school, music, sports and peer mediation. But what is more important, we have an opportunity to see how Gambian school system works and have conversations with the staff.

We have planned this journey carefully with the students and with the whole school staff. First thing what the students did was that day wrote letters, draw pictures and took photos. We sent a big post paggage to the school. We have been told that the students really liked everything that we send there. The students have took pictures and made some presentations about our school day and child’s day in general. Also we have some material about peer mediaton which we are taking with us and starting a conversation with the Gambian school staff about conflict management.

I have spent quite many evenings by the laptop having conversations with my colleague Victoria via Skype. Quite often it has occurred that the electricity is off in Gambia and we have had to re-schedule our video-meetings. Also the line is usually very low, so that has made the communication very difficult sometimes.

We are taking an invitation letter with us to Gambia. We hope that a group of Gola School staff could come to Finland in April 2014 and visit us for one week. We have learned that travelling from Finland to Gambia is much more easier than from Gambia to Finland. Our Gambian colleagues need to travel to Abuja/Nigeria to apply for a visa – and that is a longlong way to go. But we hope that everything goes well and we will have our colleagues from Gambia visiting our school on April.

Our accommodation is in a town village called Kololi and Banana Villa is situated in the middle of Gambiancombounds. We didn’t want to go to the hotel area, because we think in this way we will get more realistic picture about normal Gambian lifestyle. It is a modest, but safe place to live.

It will take ten hours to fly to Gambia with only one stop at the Canary Islands. We are looking forward on meeting our companion school soon!

Ulla Sara-aho