NHA School Report by Mako Mansaray

Greetings from Nazareth House Apostolate School Kabala.

Or... should I say "Manday","Njaramah","Nparei", "Buwah",or "Cusheh", "How de body" ?

These are all greetings from some of our local languages here in Sierra Leone.

All of our pupils at NHA School speak at least one tribal language as well as the language of Krio, and all are learning in school the Official Language of Sierra Leone -- English.

Koinadugu district lies in the northeast of the country. Konadugu is the largest, the most remote and poorest district in Sierra Leone. Dismal road conditions makes accessibility difficult to near

impossible as roads becomes impossible during the raining season. This subsequently limits the amount of outside materials, opportunities and information that are available to communities.

This means that the people of the Koinadugu district must depend largely on the resources and skills that exist within their region.

Koinadugu district, despite being the largest in the country, is the least developed and has the least number of school and school-going children. A good number of children between the ages of 5 to 16 are out of school because of extreme poverty and the large distance between the schools.

Displacement within Sierra Leone or as refugees in Guinea and Liberia also contribute to the growing number of out –of –school children. As a result, the rate of illiteracy and innumeracy is

high in the district.

The rugged terrain combined with the remoteness make the area unattractive to many professionals born outside of Koinadugu such as health care workers, qualified teachers, government staff, businesspeople, and NGO’s.

Though efforts have been made through Government support to strengthening the education sector, ongoing and additional support is still needed to bring communities to the level where effective management and development of their school is within their capabilities.

As a school and a community we want to thank NHA for coming to Sierra Leone and Kabala and giving us such an opportunities as we are very much thankful to them for helping out hundreds of children out here in Kabala to get better education free of cost, school uniforms, shoes, books and other learning materials, including free medical supply. Nazareth House is doing a very good work out here.

NHA School Kabala was able during the this past week to work

and plant our first school garden on the school land.

We were able to plant groundnuts and sweet corn.

As you can see the work was done by the children,

teachers and our education superintend, Pa Foday.

We are also planning to have another school garden but this time on the plot of land that Pa Foday lends to us.

(You can see the NHA Compound being built in background!)

We hope to plant swamp rice during the holidays. We have agreed as a school with the support of the parents and Pa Foday to do the swamp rice.

This will need more

help and support, as we will need tools such as hoes, cutlasses,

seedlings and feeding to do the work. We are not going to pay any body to do the work; we as a school through the help and support of the parents are going to do the work. All we need is the help to get the tools, seedlings, and feeding to do the work.

We are praying and will continue to pray for support as we want to do the work. The school will start it final exams today 11th June. This will see the end of the school year 2009/2010.We are going to close down school on the 9th of July, but before the closure of school we planning, as a school, to organize a school PARTY for all our children at NHA. Since we were unable to have any other social activities during the school year, the school party for the children will send us all

away for the holidays with love and happiness.

We once more want to thank you all for supporting your NHA school all through this years. Your love and kindness has been a great blessing to us all out here at Nazareth Kabala.

W E LOVE YOU ALL,

JERRY MAKO