School

Wherever we go people wave and whistle at us - everyone likes an old car. When we stop  people crowd around us and ask questions. Strangely, we are most often asked if we want to sell the car - I think they want to know what it is worth. 

Our biggest fans are schoolchildren. They really put some energy into their whoops and yells, they are brilliant whistlers, and they frequently run alongside us, trying to keep up. 

There are schoolchildren and schools everywhere along our route. At the end of the school day the sides of the roads are full of neatly uniformed children walking home from school - often long distances. Despite the heat they wear jumpers or blazers, whilst we swelter in shorts and T shirts. 

Some schools are little more than tin sheds but most are solid buildings with several classrooms and a playground. Back in Zambia Skall visited a school for 5-13 year olds. There was a classroom and teacher for each year and the school was well equipped. 

At the borders kids come around the cars asking for pens for school, but we think the pens are used as currency to swap for stuff they really want. There’s no real shortage of pens. 

One of our conclusions from this trip is that, if we want to give aid to Africa, then education is the thing to support. With education Africans can lift themselves  by their own bootstraps. 

But nothing here is easy. There used to be a Christian Aid slogan that ran, ‘Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for life’.  The trouble with that in Africa is that if everyone learns to fish they simply take all the fish out of the lake and you are back where you started. 

In the same way, it’s a great idea to educate everyone, but then they need jobs to go to at the end. Hopefully the bootstraps are strong enough to do the lifting.