African Adventure Day 5

Last night, we gathered around the camp fire, just outside the village to celebrate the work we had done. The campfire chiefs chose games and songs to sing and we all toasted marshmallows in the embers as the fire died down.

Following a night spent in the village itself, we tackled the remaining problems. Firstly, we foraged for food in the woodland, supplementing the giraffes and antelope caught earlier in the week, with bananas, avocados and sweet potatoes. The final problem involved cleaning the water that supplied the village. This required the children to make their own water filter using a range of different sized stones, some hosepipe, a funnel, tins, buckets and some handkerchiefs.

The results were a huge improvement on the filthy water that we started with, but still not drinkable, so we returned to the village to see a slow sand water filter in action. This used the same principles as the children's filters, but on a much finer scale. The resulting water tasted clean and looked as clear as anything you would get from a tap.

Before saying their final goodbyes, the children learnt that thanks to their hard work, a water filter, costing just £40, had been built for a real African village in Sudan, providing clean, safe water for the villagers. They were challenged to think of ways of raising money to provide more of these filters and go some way to redressing the balance for the 2/3 of people in the world who still live with dirty water.

For the last time (until next year), this is Dikolo, signing off.