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My name is James Burnford, I’m 19 years old and this year I was given the opportunity to work with the EducAid group in Sierra Leone. EducAid has 4 schools in different parts of the country which give free education to the poorest people of Sierra Leone. I was taken on as a teacher of English Language and Mathematics. However, I spent the first two weeks in the capital Freetown helping my friend Luke set up a computer room for the students with 20 new laptops donated by a company Luke got in touch with. We were also teaching computer classes in the evenings once the room was functioning.

I then was moved ‘up-country’ away from the capital to a tiny jungle village called Magbeni completely removed from even town life. I spent seven weeks there teaching the more junior students basic English and Maths with two friends Josh and George. It was fantastic being able to experience both the manic, bustling life of Freetown and the community centred, village life of Magbeni. We were made to feel very welcome in Magbeni and we had a brilliant time mixing in with the village chores (chopping wood, ploughing farmland by hand and very small amounts of cooking) and getting involved in the football matches which were a very serious affair in the village.

If this was not enough I was then given the chance to go to a third school in Rolal with a group of Magbeni exam students (they had to take their exams in Port Loko, a town close to Rolal) which provided the middle ground between Freetown and Magbeni. The school was close enough to a town for us to go there everyday without too much trouble but it was also fairly removed from the town itself. This was probably my hardest two weeks because we were only teaching an after-school exam class that lasted one hour and then a 30 minute timed essay which meant we had a lot of free time and there was very little to do in the day. However there was football in the evenings and the fierce rivalry between Magbeni and Rolal soon became apparent.

My experiences in all these schools has been fantastic though and I’ve got some amazing memories of the places, including representing the EducAid school in an inter-village football in Magbeni (I was no match for the students though on the pitch), and sharing rice and cassava leaf with my Rolal roommate Balla late at night. The enthusiasm of the students to learn is amazing and, though there is a slight language barrier with the junior students which can be frustrating, they really do learn very quickly. I only wish I could learn that fast because my time in Sierra Leone taught me so much about myself and about others. Especially about how everyone has something valuable to offer, whoever they are and wherever they come from.