Munyama Primary School is situated on the shores of Lake Kariba. It was quite a challenge for us to visit in March 2018 as we needed to travel across the lake by boat to do so.  The District Education Board Secretary was kind enough to offer the use of the Office of the President’s boat to make the trip. We paid for the fuel and by so doing enabled the community officer to accompany us to speak to the villagers about cholera prevention. An environmental officer also came to fix a water pump there.

We installed solar panels  to provide power for lighting and charging of laptops as well as a Raspberry Pi server which enables access to RACHEL learning resources.

Munyama Primary School has a wonderful choir. We hope to record them on our visit in June 2019. Pupils wanted to sing for us – lovely melodic singing- and say some poetry. One little girl in particular moved me when she said, “We children are all the same. Why should not the rural child have the same opportunities as the urban child?” This is an inequality we are working to redress to the best of our ability.

The school had been obliged to close because there was no water for handwashing and flushing toilets. We took a boat round to the waterpump. The water engineers had brought a pump with them to get things working again. We watched with bated breath as they tested it – thankfully all was well.