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Foday Ansu     à

Kadiatu Junisa

Profiles of Students

                  
Foday lives on the edge of Jokibu, a village of about 2000 people.  His father is Ansu Salia, and his mother is Fatmata Ansu.  Together with Ansu’s other wife, the extended family has four girls and six boys ages 7 to 22.  Foday’s oldest  brother, Bockarie, died from malaria (the biggest killer in Sierra Leone) at age 25, and a baby sister died at the age of 2.  Foday’s father, Ansu, is the hard-working and innovative blacksmith in the village.  Their home is always bustling with activity since Ansu trains many blacksmiths and also organizes people into work groups to generate income from soap making, a tree nursery, tailoring and other initiatives.

Students in Sierra Leone have other work besides school work.  In the morning, kids clean the house, sweep around the home (to keep rodents and snakes away) and fetch water for cooking breakfast.  After school, they go work on the family farm so they have food and also do other chores such as laundry (as in the photo above) and meal preparation, in addition to their homework.

Foday is in Class 5 (5^th grade) at the Jokibu primary school, which is in his village, so he does not need to walk too far.  Until now, the school only has had three classrooms for six classes: for example, there were 120 1^st and 2^nd graders in one small classroom!  Thanks to generous donations to the Sierra Leone-Plymouth Partnership (SLPP), Jokibu has a new three-room addition so that each class has its own room.  Foday is also fortunate that the school has a water well with clean water and some latrines for the students to use as bathrooms.

Foday LOVES to read and write, but paper is difficult to find and he has no books.  He loves to write so much that when he was given a new notebook of paper from SLPP in May, he was up often until 3:00 am writing furiously and gleefully in the notebook.  With recent donations, SLPP plans to send more notebooks and reading books this week! 

Name:              Foday Ansu
   
Age:                 12 Years

Grade:             5th

School:            Roman Catholic Primary School

Location:         Jokibu