Guest Blog - Emma & Charlie

Emma (a friend and colleague of Steve) and her daughter, Charlie, are here for the first time and the Village Nursery school has already won a special place in their hearts. This is what Emma wanted to post:

Charlie teaching English Nursery rhymes

Each day this week, my daughter Charlie and I have been to a small nursery school in the fishing village which was devastated 8 years ago, where we have been playing with the children who are really enjoying the new toys we have taken for them. There's been singing and dancing, teaching numbers and colours in English. We've thoroughly enjoyed our time there and have got to know them all well. They are very kind, sweet, normal, three to five year olds despite coming from the most under-privileged backgrounds. They have loved us going to see them and have huge smiles on their faces when we turn up, leading the teachers to ask us to visit the next day, which - of course - we have. They are such warm and loving children: I can’t stress enough how welcome they have made us and how much joy we have had interacting with them.

Four others live in this single room shack

Last night we were walking down the beach and saw where these children lived. They ran out of their homes to us and welcomed us in. I was shocked by what I witnessed, and my heart went out to their whole families. I had no idea the very same children we have got to know, went to live and sleep in these awful places after nursery class ended. 

The "bed" for the family

They seem so uninhabitable at least compared to what we're used to; a whole family shares a bed - specifically a piece of old foam on the floor, and many houses don’t have roofs.  I had a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes when I left, I had no idea these children had to live in such basic conditions, and it’s simply not fair. 

The "bathroom"

Walking back towards our Hotel I couldn’t get the images of these homes and how these families live out of my mind. I couldn’t go back to England and not do anything, knowing these children are living like this. Like most people, if I had seen these homes before getting to know the families that live in them, I would have thought these homes belonged to people that had no respect for themselves. But they are far from that, they are lovely, decent, warm people that have been dealt a bad hand. 

It's an injustice that by virtue of geography and circumstance a child and their family should live in such conditions. We would be outraged if it went on within our own neighbourhoods, and distance is not an excuse to see these warm hearted people and not consider their predicament.