On Tuesday July 7th I arrived in Gouria after three years absence and almost 10 years since I first visited on August 6th 1999.  This year I was with Koda, Tenema and Loriana from Cambridge House (for whom it was the first trip to the village.) Superficially not a lot has changed. A few electricity wires and many more motorbikes than before, but the whole area as always dominated by the mountains, the fields and the general leisurely atmosphere of a slowly-working rural village.

            As we approach school however we can start to see a difference. There are over one hundred children on the summer school this year. Those who have come from preschool and are going to start SIL (year 1) in September, this year 37 of them, are all there. The children who the teachers felt need the extra month to raise their level a bit are revising content of the past year in order to be well prepared for next year. Missing are those who last year passed their entry exams for secondary schools. They just come to do an interview and write letters to their sponsors. The 70 students already at secondary sponsored by Malima also come to do this.  

            In education lies the biggest change in this village. Now nearly all children of school age are now at school and practically every student aspires to continue to secondary. The importance of this for the future of the area is enormous.  It has been a wonderful experience to see the students who started school in the first year some now having passed their fires secondary certificates and looking forward not to early marriage and many children but to university studies and jobs as teachers, doctors, nurses…..Time will tell.
           
            There are many other changes visible as you look a little more deeply. The electricity is beginning to spread and now quite a lot of people are using it to help their small businesses, shops with fridges to sell cold drinks, a bar, televisions used as cinemas. There are now two electric mills in the village. Both have a lot of work and the Malima mill does make money for school. These can be heard as a constant whirr in the background. An obvious sign that there is more money in the community is that there are now at least 10 shops. (All selling the same goods and at the same price!) whereas when I first went there were none at all.  

Agriculture has become slightly more efficient and fields produce more than a few years ago. This is where most of the money is made. The widespread use of fertilisers means plants produce 2 or 3 cobs of corn instead of 1.  The use of donkeys for ploughing has meant an enormous increase in the amount of land that a family can cultivate. In 1999 all work was done by hand and the application of new techniques such as planting corn in rows instead of all over the place helps increase production as weeding can now be done with donkeys too.

Loriana and I had some specific objectives as well as general ones of seeing if there were any problems in the day to day running of the school and discussing projects for the future. We wanted to organise once again a census of the children in the village to check figures for school attendance, interview all the present secondary children and check on their problems and aspirations for the future, (When I was last in Gouria there were only 7 children supported by Malima,) take up to date photos of all the children.

 The general problems were practically non existent. François has done n excellent job and the primary school has been functioning exceptionally well. To prove this results have continued to be very good and nobody had anything negative to say. This meant we could move straight on to the specific jobs.

As a result of the census we could see that nearly all children of school age attend school, around the high 90s as a percentage. Ten years ago the figure was around 25%. Among the 5-6 years olds practically all of them attended preschool last year and will go to primary in September.  There are still a number of students who do not manage to get from primary to secondary, but even that is changing and the number of years of education a child gets has risen a lot. There are still some girls who are married off early, but this is becoming a thing of the past as the value of education is understood. Also the fact that children start school at 5 or 6 and pass secondary entry at 11 or 12 means that they are away at secondary school before they are of marriageable age.

Loriana took charge of the secondary photos and interviews and was very impressed at the standard of comprehension and the ideas that the students have. Sponsors have enclosed a letter based on the interviews and the photos. It was good to chat to these students. When they were younger they did not clearly understand how you help them, but now they do they ask for news of their sponsors, send individual greetings, ask about your jobs, families… The photos and gifts we received before we went were all handed over and the children were delighted.

There is a lot more to tell about this trip. In particular I want to tell you about some of the difficulties of the children studying at schools away from the village, and what they do to try to overcome them, as well as some of some of the success stories, but that will be in the next newsletter.

Malima is in its tenth year this year. Some of you have been supporting students throughout all that time. The results of your support are clear to all.  Thank you once again.

Judith, the Malima Support Group, and above all the people of Gouria.