ON 12/12 2003 (Thursday) I left for Cameroon. It was my first trip to Africa, in particular to Cameroon. AS such it was my first experience.

The village I was going to is called Gouria and is in the far North of Cameroon. We arrived the following Wednesday. I could not stop looking and being surprised that everything was different around me. On arriving at Gouria the first thing we did was to go to Malima School. All the children ran out to welcome us. It was incredible to see the joy and smiles on the faces of those people.
During my stay in Gouria the Pre-School unit was founded and this was where I invested most of my time.
Education is a basic essential for development and the importance for future generations is immense.
At Christmas we spoke to a lady from the next village called Hellé Agnes who had some experience with pre-school to se e if she would be interested in teaching our group. She accepted and agreed to start work after Christmas.
Contracting a woman is a way of encouraging the people in the village to understand the importance of sending their girls to school., and by doing so increasing their independence and self image. In this area women are quite discriminated and they would like that to change.

What I had to do next was to recruit a group of children of around 4/5/6 years because it is hard to know the exact age of a child.
Accompanied by a secretary who had a list of 60 children I went to take photos of the children who will go to Malima next year. It was very interesting for me. Only my third day in the village and I walked everywhere!
I have to say here that Gouria has no nucleus of population so the distances between one house and another are quite large. The secretary spoke Kapsiki and explained to the children that next week they would start school. I took photos of them so that I would be able to look for sponsors for them when I get back to Valencia.
ON January 4th 2004 school opened but to our surprise around the library which was the venue there were around 100 children. We made four groups of 15 children. It was not possible to accept more since the library is only small. Each group would receive one hour’s instruction.

With the teacher I wrote a programme until May so that when I left she would be able to continue with the programme. The pre-school class was created so that the children will start school having already acquired a few skills and a minimum knowledge of French, numbers alphabet, vocabulary letter formation, songs.. and use of pencils, scissors, etc. since none of them have access to these materials in their homes and in any case they are made to work a lot( in the fields, collecting water, looking after younger children in the family...) In the library they can use scissors, slates, chalk, crayons, card...)
At 7:30 the first group started, But before this the teacher got all the children together to sing the national anthem. It was a little difficult since the children do not speak French. But it is tradition to sing the anthem before school starts every day. We prepared the room little by little, arn area for the alphabet, for numbers, etc.. We planned the classes together. It is important that the teacher acquires good work habits.

I was amazed at the interest shown by the children and how quickly they progressed
To finish I would just like to once again insist on how important it is that all children go to school. All the effort we put into helping them are really worthwhile and without your help this would not be possible.

Patricia Vidal.