St Ambrose College – Immersion to Sierra Leone

During Half Term, thirteen students from Y12 and Y13, along with Miss McCrory, Miss Donegan and Mr Hayes and myself, travelled to Sierra Leone as part of our Immersion Programme. Our mission was to foster our relationship with our twinned school, St Ambrose Academy in Freetown.

Sierra Leone is an extremely beautiful country, with miles of golden beaches along its Atlantic coastline and lush, fertile forests stretching inland for miles towards the diamond mines of the north and east. Rice fields and fruit trees are abundant, so the 6 million inhabitants should never struggle to feed themselves or their families.

However, a turbulent recent history means that infrastructure is extremely limited throughout the country. The majority of the population have migrated into Freetown in search of work, accommodation and basic services such as water and electricity. As a result the streets are chaotic and crowded, every turn revealing new sights, sounds and smells.

Immersion throws you straight into the middle of this tumultuous place. Nothing can prepare the students for such an alien environment. From the moment they step off the plane into the heat and humidity, home feels every yard of 3000 miles away. Every day we were caked in orange dust almost instantly, unable to escape the baking sun, exhausted from constant attention and interaction. To say we were out of our comfort zones is an understatement.

However, as we moved through our Immersion journey, ‘differences’ seemed to somehow disappear, replaced instead by familiarity and welcome. Suddenly, the strange orange dust of Africa became the shared earth of our ancestors, the hot sun an exciting symbol of each new day, the attention from the locals unforgettable and deeply personal moments of connection.

St Ambrose Academy itself is a school of some 650 students which only exists at all thanks to the efforts of staff, students, governors and parents of our own school. A shell of a building as recently as 2009, it is now the second best school in the entire country. More important than its academic achievement, though, is its welcoming and loving ethos.

Hundreds of students walked down to meet us on our arrival, taking us by the hand to show us their school with immense pride. The time we spent their was some of the happiest on our Immersion. To see the group dancing with the students and teaching them lessons with no supervision from us was truly memorable and moving.

But the Academy is only one side of this place. The other is poverty so extreme as to shock the system and remind us of the disgraceful disparity between rich and poor globally. A visit to the fishing community of Old Wharf or the slum of Susan’s Bay cannot be described to those who have not been there. Having been in South African townships, slums in India, and favellas in South America, I can say it exists on a level of inhumanity which is almost literally like another planet. And yet in the midst of that poverty, as far towards the margins as we can reasonably go, humanity and community are present in their truest forms.

As we reflected as a group each night back at our accommodation, more than once we discussed where God can be found in a place like Sierra Leone. On our first few forays into the centre of Freetown, watching from the safety of our bus, it can be very hard to penetrate the poverty. But we didn’t have to look too much harder. God was present in every interaction with every child at the Academy; in every local who greeted us or took the time to ask our names; in every community that measures itself on the treatment of its weakest and most vulnerable. As Jean Vanier says, “God is there, shining in the darkness”.

I now realise, reading this back, that I haven’t written about the momentous two-day St Ambrose Academy Sports Day, the school trip to Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary, Mass at St Francis’ church with its constant beating of djembe drums . . . That’s because they are not my abiding memories. What comes to mind are the faces we met, the hands we shook, the music we danced to, and the songs we sang. As Beatrix Potter said, “pay attention to the small things in life because, when you look back, you’ll realise that they were the big things.”

Finally, a word on the students, representatives of our wonderful Ambrosian community. It’s hard to put into words how proud we, as staff, are of them. Immersion is unlike any other school trip they will ever have been on. They face practical and emotional challenges on a daily basis. This group of young people met each one not with pity, but with empathy; not with embarrassment, but with humour; not with repulsion, but with compassion. In seeking not to change Africa, but to let Africa change them, they were simply wonderful.

Mr Murray