Ikaare - Unity Junior Grammar School (1of 2)

The Ishahayi Beach School Foundation (IBSF) started in the small fishing village if Ishahayi to help finish a school building the local church had started. In only a few short years, the foundation had built schools or infructurture in half a dozen small villages off the beaten path that are generally under the radar of larger charity groups and NGOs.

And it was the village of Ikaare that started that expansion.

Once the children of Ishahayi had finished primary school, there was no High school on the isolated peninsula and the mainland was to far to practically get to by boat (expensive) for the kids. There was, however a run down set of ruins called the Unity Junior Grammar School in the nearby village of ikaare that was hanging on to life. IBSF saw this as the only chance for these kids if they wanted to further their education...

...so we built a new junior high school from the ruins of the old...

The building at the end of these ruins had recently been completed by the government, but no sooner than it had been completed, it started to fall down again - I couldn't believe it... (well, actually, I'd been in Nigeria long enough to completely belive it - even expect it. A sorry day)


I won't go into the details of the first building that was covered in blogs last year. Suffice to say that our new building is on the left and the crappy government one is on the right...

Anyway, before I get all soap boxy about how the education department doesn't care about outlying schools and that the once 2000 strong student body, with teachers from as far afield as Ghana, has all but disappeared here, I should just cut to the chase. The building was crap, we raised more money and we rebuilt it.

The state of the thing was unbelievable. Barely 6 months old and it was falling down as all the timber was rotting...


So we jacked the roof up (by hand) and pulled out the bad wood...

... we set proper steel reinforcement in the lintels over windows and door openings (which had already begun to fail)



... we treated all the roof timber to prevent any further attacks...


... and we gave the whole thing a paint job!!

...oh yeah, and we hooked them up to the local power pole (by hand...) so they could run lights and fans (and the principle could watch TV...)


It took the best part of a year, and as much begging borrowing and stealing as I've ever done to get this project done, but it was absolutely worth it, and I made some good friends in that village.

HUGE thanks have to got to all at IBSF for getting this one across the line, especially Lindy Edwards and Jerry Aroozoo (and of course the principle with the mostest... Chief Osaba)