At our Club meeting last Tuesday evening, we had a wonderful presentation from the Rotary Club or Bo in Sierra Leone whom we have been working with for the last 18 months or so on a WASH project at the Aladura Primary school in Buedu in the far east of the country. The project involved building two VIP (Ventilated Improved Pit) toilet blocks – one for girls and one for boys. As well as providing WASH training and establishing a Hygiene Club at the school.
By the magic of technology, they connected via zoom- which worked extremely well. The meeting started with a short video showing the progress and completion of the WASH project. The video was put together by Richard Blakeman from the hundreds of photos and videos that were taken during the project.
Click on the video link below to see the video on YouTube:
Representing the Rotary Club of Bo were:Taplima Muana – the Services Project Director, Past President 2023-24
Daniell Sama – Club President 2024-25
Elizabeth Bundu – Club Treasurer, President Elect 2025-26
Consulting engineer Jonathan Bockarie of Njala University in Bo, who coordinated and supervised the building works for the latrines, also addressed the meeting.
They spoke about the challenges faced during the project due to local conditions and the remoteness of the school. Some of these
included:
included:- The local road conditions. Sometimes the roads were in such a bad state that vehicles couldn’t transverse them - the building materials required had to be transported using motor bikes. This added time and cost to the project.
- It was the wet season so really the wrong time of year to do this type of construction work. The heavy rains made it difficult to extract the sand (needed for the concrete) from the river. Eventually, they needed divers to get the sand, which was a somewhat risky operation.
- The distance they needed to travel from Bo to Buedu (3-4 hours on a rough road) to supervise the project.
Taplima also talked about the other challenges facing Sierra Leone that their Club is trying to assist with. Some examples are:- Many diseases faced such as malaria and cholera
- Woman and children frequently dying during childbirth
- Lack of adequate medical facilities
- Lack of adequate sanitation facilities in the communities
- Lack of high-quality education facilities.
Taplima thanked the Rotary Club of Glenferrie for the support given to the local community in providing the Toilet blocks at the school in Buedu. They commented on Richard Blackman’s structured process in managing the project via the use of “Phases and Gates” to pass each milestone. They were also very complimentary about Don Moore’s amazing architectural drawings which they said they wanted to frame.The presentation was very informative and was greatly enjoyed by the members of our Club.
We thank the Rotary Club of Bo for the incredible support they provided during the project and look forward to working with them on future projects.
To see more photos of the Sierra Leone project in action, click on the photo album links below: