We made it!!

After having spent the night in the African rainforest and having hands-on experience with ‘ants in our pants’ (picture us running wildly through the jungle forgetting about the peril of snakes and slapping at each other to get rid of the hundreds of ants that were biting and stinging us through our clothes..), we are now in Elmina, an historical slave-trading city by the coast. Time for a final blog update!


Keeping in mind that pictures speak louder than words, I will let them tell the final chapter of the Ahunda Boso school project (although I have a feeling that we will be seeing more of each other).

Let me give you a summary of what we – we are in this together, I could never have done this without your help! – have achieved over the last weeks:

- put in a cement floor in the largest of the 4 school buildings
- completed the walls of 1 of the 4 buildings
- plastered 3 of 4 buildings, interior + exterior
- put in doors and shutters on all 4 buildings
- provided strong locks for all shutters and doors
- painted the interior + exterior of all 4 buildings, including woodwork

As a bonus, we also constructed 2 large water tanks for rain water, allowing the children to drink during the day, keeping them concentrated for school!

Since this is a joint project, the initials of all of the sponsors have received a place on the wall, as well as the handprints of all of the school children (the kids thought it was somewhat strange but fantastic to have their hands painted and then actually press them against the neatly painted walls – some even tried to get in the queue twice!).

To prepare for the final ceremony – in which I was ‘enstooled’ (named after the stool that I was placed upon and which is now wrapped up in towels and duct tape to survive the journey back to Oslo) as Queen of Development – we held a huge community clean-up, placing dustbins all around town and picking up litter to ‘beautify the place’.

In the afternoon we celebrated by drawing pictures with colour pencils and crayons, something which was oddly unusual for the children, quite a few didn’t really know what to do or how to start. But now that we’ve got them started, I doubt they will want to stop!

On the day of departure, it was Christmas-come-early and each class received a ball and a frisbee. After that, each kid received their own balloon, producing many genuine, big and beautiful smiles. The bubbling positive energy of the whole community and the feeling of change in the air were so tangible, that I felt assured that this project was just the beginning of an important journey bringing new opportunities for all the people of a little African village called Ahunda Boso….



Thank you all so much!