Rita Edmond from the Primed project has kindly sent these pictures to us. They show four out of the five vehicles. The L200 from the St. George Foundation was out and about on a job and therefore wasn’t available for the photograph.

However, everything is still not a bed of roses and finance is constantly a problem. Rita, in particular, has a constant battle to raise the wages for the teachers in the school she runs. She would like to know if anyone can help her get some regular money from Hull City Council. So if anybody reading this can assist then please contact us Email: jonathan@hullfreedomtrail.com

I’ve recently received this email and wanted to share the news with you!

I just thought I would drop you a line to update you.

Just last week on the 27th and 28th November, ‘Hull Freedom Trail’ was screened at St Barnabas Church in Swan, East Yorkshire and in "The Collection" in Lincoln.

Overall, around 70 people attended both events and watching the film and learning about the issues really touched people. Talking with them after the event, it was great to hear their opinions and about how much they enjoyed the film. Many were surprised how much of an easy watch it was. They previously thought it was going to all be ‘heavy going’.

Surprisingly around £900 was collected and a large proportion of this will go towards Rita Edmonds school project in Sierra Leone.

Thanks to everyone who contributed and attended. It’s very much appreciated.

Thursday 27th November is an opportunity for you to see the film of the Hull Freedom Trail at St Barnabas Church in Swanland. One year on from our arrival back in the UK and it would be a great time to reflect on the situation in Sierra Leone before Christmas starts in earnest. 

It starts at 7.30pm and entry is £5.00 on the door. There will be either a glass of wine or fruit juice as well as some nibbles to eat. We’ll also have a Fairtrade stall for those essential Christmas presents! Souvenir DVD copies of the film will also be available at £12.00 each.

You can help

Even if you can’t come, then please help out by circulating the PDFs or the JPEG of our flyer to whoever you think would be interested in coming. Thank you.

Film Night Flyer Low Res PDF

Film Night Flyer High Res PDF

How time flies

In some ways the past year has both flown by and seemed like an eternity. We departed for our adventure, to help those less fortunate than ourselves, on the 25th October 2007. You can see the news item on departure day below. Brings back waves of emotions I’m sure, and makes the passage of time feel so quick. The month of the trip seemed like a year in itself!

Departure Day BBC Look North Feature

Feelings then and now – post your comments

As we all take time to reflect on the past twelve months, I think it would be really good to take the time to post your feelings from this time last year as well as now. You could include some thoughts about the work we embarked upon as well as some reflections on your personal journeys since arriving back from Sierra Leone.

To get you started, I’ve collated together some footage which I think is mostly unseen footage. You can probably see why, but I thought it would be interesting and entertaining on this 1st anniversary. Seems to include rather a lot of me, so you can see how much I was edited out of the final film! Sit back and enjoy/cringe/weep!

Unseen Footage

Let us not forget 

For those we have helped, things have changed since the addition of the vehicles to the aid agencies. This post contains details of the support they have provided and the difference they have made. But the picture is not all rosy. Rita Edmond from Primed is struggling financially with her commitment to the school her friends and family run. They rent out the vehicle to raise money to support the school but times are hard for them and we will be running an appeal to help her soon. Below are some pictures of her vehicle in action with the children.

Extracts from reports from HANCI and the St. George Foundation

HANCI - Impact on the Street children’s project in Bo

Since its arrival in November, the vehicle has been making an invaluable contribution towards the attainment of the objectives of the project especially the tracing and reunification of beneficiaries. Before the arrival of this vehicle, social workers encountered great difficulty in tracing the families of street children. Many of these families had fled to distant places during the war so it was very time consuming and costly to trace them if one does not have their own means of transport. Social workers used to take almost three months in tracing the family of street child especially for families that were located far away from Bo.

However, the arrival of the vehicle has brought about dramatic changes in the project in the reunification and follow up processes. With this dynamic machine, social workers can now promptly follow on information about the whereabouts of parents of street children in the remote concerns of the Southern province. We now spend just a couple of days in tracing families in distant places which hitherto used to take months in achieving. It is now possible to reunify children with their parents as soon as they could be located.

Download the full report here

The HANCI vehicle in action

St. George Foundation

From the date of donation onto this present moment, St. George Foundation has observed a number of distinct achievements such as:

• The vehicle is used for patrolling in and out of the city for identifying street children and recruiting them at the centre where they will undergo counseling and rehabilitation.

• The vehicle is used to reunify children with their parent/care takers. And the reunification is done in the Western Area and the provinces. since the time this vehicle was donated to us, all the staff and children demonstrated a great deal of excitement.

More so, we say so many thanks and appreciation to Hull Freedom Trail team for the good thing they have done for us as this vehicle as created a great impact in the standard of the organization, without the donation of this vehicle, it would been a great constrain for the organisation. As we are praying that God will provide more for them and they will put us in mind for any further assistance.

Download the full report here

Pictures of the St. George vehicle seen around town

(above) 25 children in the back of ‘Hannah More’ on their way to the beach on Christmas Day. Photo Steve Tong.

Their work is a collection of over 60 photographs out of the 8000 that were shot during the expedition. All of the prints are available to purchase for £20 after the exhibition is over and you can reserve yours by visiting the gallery and filling in the form that is in the Live Arts room there.

BBC Look North featured the exhibition on Monday 6th on their lunchtime and evening news slots. You can see the video below.

DVDs and Books are available for purchase from the Gallery shop and entrance is free.

Some people have expressed an interest in the very large prints that appeared at the film premiere and are now hanging on the walls of the gallery. These will all be on eBay towards the end of the exhibition with the proceeds going to the aid agencies. Leave a comment on this post to make sure you receive the email telling you when the auction starts. Grab a piece of fantastic art as well as a piece of history.

Hull’s current Lord Mayor Brenda Petch addressed the audience and spoke of her enthusiasm for the project and how she followed the trip from beginning to end. Later a reception was held were the book and photographic prints were available.

You can download a PDF of the article here

Initial funding has been secured to make a start on the editing of over 75 hours of footage shot during the trip. Julia comes with extensive experience of editing these sorts of films and is excited at getting started after viewing the footage.

Further funding will need to be sought for her to continue on the film until it’s conclusion and the HFT team along with Claudio von Planta are working hard to make this happen.

Click here and a new page will open

For those of you who can’t see this, as soon as my laptop is back from repair (having died due to rigours of African traveling) then I’ll make a more widely compatible version for you.

Jonathan

Sounds like we need to get together and talk through some of our experiences. If you’re a Trailblazer or a supporter and would like to listen or share then maybe you could help organise an evening? Comments and ideas below please…

Thanks and our thoughts go out to Steve who singlehandedley drove Goliath to Freetown. As we receive more news of the progress of the shipping of Goliath we’ll post it here.

Keep on Truckin’ Steve!

Thank you to everyone who came…

It’s quite disorientating when you travel. Sometimes it can take as long as three weeks to get somewhere, sometimes only a few hours. Today it has taken only a few hours and the landscape has changed dramatically and so have the people. We’re all looking forward to seeing family and friends and the young people are enjoying the facilities of modern living, such as their merbile ferns and aye-pods. They talk constantly of soap operas, McDonalds, hot baths, proper food (pizzas!) and their own beds. Some things never change.

Today we said good bye to Claudio and Mike James. We are all excited and apprehensive at seeing our loved ones. A month away from home is a long time for all of us and it was quite a surprise to see frost on the cars in the car park of Gatwick at 5.00am this morning and a Christmas Tree!

Of one thing there is no doubt, we are all changed in some way by this journey. For some people the change is obvious and for others the changes will be more evident in their actions and words in the future. We are sure that the aid we have given has been received with open arms and that is is aid of true value and worth but also we have gathered compelling evidence that modern day slavery exists in all of North West Africa and indeed the practice is rife and we know that we have produced a documentary and the material for a book that will display this in an engaging and understandable way and we look forward to sharing that with you when they are finished.

Jonathan

Well, well, well, the final day! I’m sat in the reception of the hotel with a flakey internet connection sweating (literally) over this final post. I’m reciving texts from my wife saying that it might snow in Hull… bonkers! It’s around 30C already and it’s only 10.00am.

Today we pack, shop for gifts, deal with the paperwork for the vehicles and make our way towards the 2.00pm rendezvous for the coach to the airport. Here, you have to catch a ferry to the airport at 4.00pm and get there at 6.00pm for a 5-6hr wait for the night flight to Gatwick. Then we are catching the Hull Trains service from Kings Cross to arrive in Hull around 12.20pm on Saturday. A fairly straight forward day on this crazy adventure called The Hull Freedom Trail…

On behalf of all the team I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for their prayers and support throughout our journey. This won’t be the last entry into the blog but it will be the last from Freetown. Further updates will come along regarding the documentary as well as news from the recipients as time goes on.

See you on the other side…

Jonathan

Today was the final day dedicated to filming for the documentary. We travelled to the St. George Foundation’s facilities in the Grafton region of Freetown. This is up in the mountain behind the city and necessitates negotiating yet another rough and rocky track. Our mission was to film some of the stories of the boys and girls who now live their.

Sammi ,Steve Tong and Claudio spoke at length to a girl and a boy who’s stories are too graphic and strong to communicate here. Both Sammi and Steve found this time with the children especially moving. Later they travelled to the places were the boy and girls used to live and ‘work’ before St. George rescued them. Horrible places. St. George really has given them a fresh start in life and a chance to salvage what is left of their childhood.

Later in the day, the staff and friends of St. George as well as the other recipients produced a meal for us and kindly gave us gifts to take home. It was a time for reflection for many and a chance to think about what we have achieved and the difference we have made to each project, not only with the gift of a vehicle, but in morale support and with the opportunity for them to work together.

Still split into two teams (one in Freetown and one in Kabala), we woke in the guest house and after a simple breakfast of bread coffee, drove into Kabala to a Muslim Agricultural School. One of our recipients, AMNet, works here to provide support for the girls who are suffering in a similar way to the girls at HANCI. It’s amazing to be able to rock up at a school completely out of the blue and assemble a collection of girls who are willing to talk on camera about a quite sensitive subject. It would never happen in the UK…

Becuase these girls are attending full time education, asking them in front of their friends is a more delicate task. We gathered them together in a small concrete classroom that appeared to be an unfinished construction site but we were told was the biology lab. Interviewing them one by one soon revealed a darker side to their lives. Many of them recognised the value of their education and that was the reason why they attended, but so many of them were concealing a darker side to their lives which included being orphaned but also many of them were forced to ‘work’ in the evenings to pay their school fees and some had to abandon their children (some as young as 4) during the day just to attend the school.

Time and time again we are coming across these stories and situations. On the surface, Sierra Leone is a beautiful place with friendly people, but many still bear the scars of a brutal recent past. Also, we have observed some attitudes we believe are holding this country back. Especially in the cities there is a culture of laziness, with many of the young people expecting handouts or help from the outside rather than a determination to fix the problems for themselves. This country has everything. Everything grows here, it has a high mineral wealth and a favourable climate and on the face of it there is no excuse for the poverty that prevails except the attitude of some of the people. Let’s hope the new President can stir within the people a culture of self-help rather than rely on handouts…

Today a small team of us went to Makeni which is a town in the northern province of Sierra Leone. HANCI have a project there that principally helps rehabilitate young girls who are victims of rape either by rebels during the civil war or shortly afterwards. We were interested to see how HANCI is going to use the vehicles we have supplied to them.

It’s a 3 hour drive to Makeni on mainly good roads. When we finally arrived we took a small trip over some of the rough roads that exist around the region and were greeted by nearly the entire population of the project in full voice assembled in a small covered area near one of their shelters. It seems to be a tradition here that everyone greets so-called ‘important’ visitors with songs and it’s really touching and humbling to be treated this way. Faced with a sea of black faces old and young, Jonathan attempted to say something meaningful and intelligent to the assembled crowd. He’s not certain whether he achieved this though.

Afterwards we took a tour around their facilities. They do great were there in sometimes difficult conditions. The clinic was quite a surprise for some, with very basic facilities and quite poor hygiene. There was a small cat sat on the doctor’s chair and it was commented that it’s unusual to see a cat ‘that big’ because usually the kids catch and eat them…

HANCI’s primary role is to counsel the young people there and they do a fantastic job. This was born out by the fact that we spent several hours interviewing some schools girls with their children and the grace and strength with which they described the horrors that they had endured was simply awe inspiring. All of them are true heroes.

After we had finished filming, we drove on even further North to a place called Kabala. This is in the highlands of Sierra Leone and has much reduced humidity levels. We came across a small guest house with basic facilities (it had a flushing loo!) and stayed the night.

Most of the remaining team spent a relaxing afternoon on the most beautiful beach with members of the agencies receiving the vehicles, where they helped us take a well earned rest.

On Monday our paramedic Alison Olner handed over medical supplies to a free medial centre which served the whole of Sierra Leone and our fireman John Olner handed over a vital piece of vehicle cutting equipment that had been donated, to the fire service.

The ferry port on the way to the airport was full of rusted abandoned old ferries and other boats.

Justine

Today is Monday and we lose a second load of Trailblazers – Anna, Justine, Mark, John O, Ali O, Steve S & Bas. This leaves just Jonathan, Mike James, Andy Paxton, Kayla, Kayleigh, Sammi, Ian, Nick, Becca, Steve Tong and Claudio to finish our filming work here in Sierra Leone before we fly back to England on the 23rd November.

This morning, Claudio and a small team went back up the mountains to film more of the ‘Primed’ project, not before spending the night before until 3.30am searching for street children with the AMNet team. After lunch and the frantic dash for the airport coach in the centre of town, Jonathan, Andy P, Steve Tong, Sammi, Becca, Ian and Nick paid a visit to a Catholic Convent school near the centre of town.

This school holds a nasty surprise. It is a surprisingly nice school. Made of concrete painted bright blue with a lively population of over 1000 girls all dressed in bright blue pinafore dresses, public school hats, white ankle socks and smart black shoes. Quite different to how many of the population appear. We were holding a ad-hock briefing session to a number of years groups in the playground under a sheltered area. Around 500 girls arrived as we stood on a staged area and preached about child trafficking and child prostitution. Imagine our surprise when we were told by AMNet that over half the population of the school are actively involved in prostitution in order to fund their school fees. After the session was over we were inundated with requests for more help. How ironic and quite disturbing…

Now we have lost both our photographers back to Blighty, for the last few days of the trip this will have to be a text only blog. So apologies for this. Maybe Mark and Justine can upload some more images from the UK when they are back.

For the next two days we are going up country to Makeni and Karbala to film some more gritty sequences for the film. I’ll let you know how we get on!