This charitable life

The villagers, through their pastor, told me that as we were building the school, we could also give it a name. That took some thinking about. The Brian Sydney Haill Memorial Trust School For All Comers had a nice ring to it, but I finally settled on The Australian School and that's what they're going to call it.

The worst hiccup came when the local education authorities went out to check on the building progress, and dropped their bombshell. Rural schools in poverty-stricken Malawi had to make do with outdoor toilets that consisted of makeshift affairs of tree foliage and branches that not infrequently dropped their users into the proverbial. Now, we were told, the toilets had to be built with bricks and cement, with doors and secure iron roofing. I never thought I'd find myself rhapsodising over toilets, but having cast about and found the money to build them, and seen the photos, I feel like a hen with a clutch of fluffy chicks.

We get no government funding, and we've had no paid staff for the past three years now, but we've found that little apples are sweet. The little that we struggle to bring in is producing what some people elsewhere regard as miracles from heaven. Who are we to say otherwise, given that we don't have the money to even advertise.

If you want to see the pictures and read more, you're invited to visit our website.