Two sixth-formers recently spent three weeks of their summer holiday working with our partner, SHUMAS, on behalf of Building Schools for Africa. Oby Gompels and Monty Woodward weren’t entirely sure what they were letting themselves in for – but they declare they had a brilliant time which had exceeded all their expectations.

It was by no means an easy holiday job.  They were tasked with undertaking numerous impact assessments for projects that we have completed in the past five or six years, and this involved interviewing teachers, health centre staff, community members and a large number of Internally Displaced Cameroonians (IDPs) – mostly in French!  They were also involved in collecting data for needs analyses from IDPs and feasibility studies for possible future projects – all of which information is invaluable to SHUMAS and BSFA.  They travelled hundreds of kilometers, through four different regions, living out of backpacks – but always under the watchful eye of SHUMAS staff.

Their chance meeting with the newly appointed British High Commissioner to Cameroon, Barry Lowen, resulted in an invitation to tea at the High Commission and their trip ended with them being appointed honourary Princes of the Nso people by the traditional leader, the  Fon of Nso.

Huge thanks to our fabulous partners at SHUMAS for making this trip so memorable as well as really useful.