Mongegba, Sierra Leone

In November 2008, KJS Headteacher, Mr Sugden, travelled to Sierra Leone in West Africa to visit a school that was founded by a Knaresborough teacher almost 30 years ago. “In my association with King James’s School, going back to 2000, I have always been aware of a primary school in West Africa which was aided in its foundation by Ken Stone, a former Deputy Head at King James’s.  Along with church support (to lease the land) Ken arranged for the Sixth Form to sponsor the school, even paying the salaries of the teachers.  The school opened in 1983 and named themselves King James School, Mongegba.

Contact and support for our sister school has fluctuated over the years; it was interrupted most alarmingly as the school closed during the brutal civil war in that country which ended in 2002.  My interest was prompted by two things.  Firstly, our need to inspire our own students through the concept of global citizenship, and secondly by two of our own former students who contacted us in relation to KJS Mongegba in 2007.

Gary Jackson visited Mongegba just after he finished school in 1992, spending some time there teaching. Gary visited again in 2007 spending nine weeks helping to renovate the buildings, including patching up the bullet holes from the war.  The second contact was from another ex King James student, Rebecca Stringer, now working for the Department for International Development in the capital Freetown.  The links go further and extend to St John’s primary school in Knaresborough who also raise money and have sent help in the past to KJS Mongegba.

After a great deal of thought, it seemed that the only way to really get things going again would be to go out and visit myself.  This was never going to be an easy trip but was made easier by Rebecca and her brother Andrew, also in Freetown undertaking environmental work.  They could give me somewhere to stay in Freetown and then arrange transport up to Mongegba.

This is a country like none I have visited before.  Infant mortality is the highest in the world, almost one in three children die before the age of five; a baby died in Mongegba the night before I stayed.  One in eight women dies in childbirth.  Those that earn a wage average less than £1 per day.  There is no infrastructure, and the economy is just recovering from the decade long civil war.  The physical and psychological scars of the war are still evident amongst the people, some victims of amputation, many refugees and orphans.  Most Europeans in the country are either aid workers, NGO’s or United Nations.

Rebecca provided a Land Rover to take me from Freetown out to the village of Mongegba; a community of charcoal burners in a rural area amongst the lush vegetation of the Freetown Peninsular.  I took with me a 100 litre rucksack filled with pens, pencils, postcards of Knaresborough, letters from our students and photographs of King James’s.  The delight of the students and staff at my visit was self evident.  I was also able to leave some funds in US$ so that the Headteacher could buy much needed stationery and other supplies.

The Land Rover left me and I stayed in the village overnight.  This seemed to have a huge impact.  I ate with them, drank Palm Wine (not recommended!) with them, slept in one of the village huts and bathed in the river the next morning.  The hospitality was generous and genuine.  They could not quite believe that I was happy to live with them overnight; the village has no electricity, sewerage system or running water.  I think they expected me to retreat to the comfort of a Freetown hotel.

We discussed how King James’s and St John’s could help Mongegba with some long term projects such as more school buildings, provision of text books and providing a football field.  I was left with a powerful impression of their sense of community, their integrity, their laughter and the importance of religion and extended family.  Despite their poverty we have much to learn from them; Christian and Muslim happily co-exist in the same village, they care for each other and they have the highest regard for education.

King James’s School has re-established an important link, one that will help us to learn from Mongegba, as much as we can assist them as their country struggles to recover from the civil war.”