Ishahayi Beach School Foundation

Both George and I were sad that our time in Nigeria had to come to an end, and for me it was the village of Ishahayi that I'll miss the most. Ishahayi was were I first been asked to help build a school and joined the Ishahayi Beach School Foundation which allowed me to be involved in many more projects around Lagos.


It was Ishahayi - about 45mins by boat from Lagos - that we'd go out to regularly with donations for the teachers, stuff for the kids, food donations.

Ishahayi was where we installe dthe first computer and taught everyone how to double-click...

...where we'd spend long hot days in the shade somewhere discussing the school and the world. Where we taught the kids about hygene and malaria.

...where I could walk anytime any day and anyone who saw me would call out "Mr John"

An expat blogger in Lagos visited after I'd gone and wrote this.

Here's a few things we did in 2008.....

The swing set


A couple of years earlier someone was going to chuck these out in Lagos, so The IBSF folk somehow manged to get them into a ute, then onto one of the boats and out to ishahayi where Ben concreted them in. Since then, they've been so popular that we have to keep welding new chains on because they keep wearing out...




The Mural

IBSF member Theresa Sabatini spent a lot of time organising local artist Eugene, who'd been out at to the school before, to paint a mural on the end of the building to give the kids a fun thing to do and to protect the paintwork
we got a hand carrying everything up from the boat

Theresa and Lady Salami


The kids painting the main colours


Eugene and I sped things up a little (and managed to get less paint everywhere...)

No everyone was quite big enough to master a paint brush so we improvised



Everyone had a great day, Lady salami cooked us some fish stew and we managed to get most of the paint of ourselves


Ever the optimist, Lady Salami was teaching the kids how to learn from the mural as soon as the paint dried. Here's a video of her explaining the tap we installed near the toilets and how to spell it to a group of very excited kids...


The Lunch Lady

After we built the verandah, it allowed the lunch ladies to have a spot to come and feed the kids. This gave the women a way to make money as the school and church helped pay for each child to eat - and it ensured all the kids were getting at least one proper meal each day.




These two are orphans that lady salami is looking after for the Church

Football

As soon as school was on break, the kids would be out playing soccer in the sand. Various balls were donated by individuals over the years. These by a church in the US





The donors were diplomatic and gave the boys a blue ball and the girls a pink one
(though the boy were always trying to steal it so they had two to play with...)



Mosquito Nets

Nurse extraordinaire Desire Quinn, as a parting gesture when leaving Lagos, raised enough money by herself to buy every family who had a child at the School a mosquito net!!!

Malaria education (which the kids had never formally received before Desi did her thing) is helping to keep the kids and their families healthy and in school.

Handing out the nets

The "I just got a mosquito net" dance


GOODBYE

Unfortunately all good things must come to an end, and so did my time with the people of Ishahayi...

Here's a video of the "Uncle John is going" song that was an impromptu send off on my last day out at the village. I had to put the camera down in the end as I was crying, but this is most of it... Thanks to Aki, Shola and the kids..