It's been a busy season of educational excursions for the kids at the Bitame Lucia International School in Cameroon. 

We realize that education extends outside the classroom - so we have been providing excursions to different locations to ensure our children have a diversified and complete education experience.  YOUR support has helped make this possible.  

As part of the Youth Week activities the kids visited a number of locations that they had never visited before. Starting on the 5th of February, the class 3 and 4 pupils visited the Reunification Monument under the Ministry of Art and Culture. During the two hours guided tour, the children were guided by Uncle Emmanuel and Aunties Solange and Comfort. They welcomed and took the pupils around explaining the origin and importance of the monument.

See more photos of trip to Reunification Monument

On the 8th of February, class 5 and 6 of our school went to an excursion to Mefou Park, a sanctuary for apes and monkeys near Yaoundé, to discover new things which we have never known before.  During the trip, guided by a fellow of the park, we saw monkeys and apes.  Our guide explained that the main work of the sanctuary is to protect animals and ensure they survive. The animals are kept in a piece of land surrounded by a fence to keep from running away - where they might be harmed or might harm humans.  We learnt that the most important difference between monkeys and apes is that the apes don’t have tails, and they resemble humans more than the monkeys in reasoning. New animals that arrive in the sanctuary are kept in quarantine, in order to examine them before they join the others.

See more photos of trip to Mefou Park

Our visit to Mefou was not just about animals, but we also had a small walk in the forest, where we saw the two biggest trees of the park, the Babena,  which is 200 years old, and the Ebeche which in French is commonly called Ayos.  We enjoyed nature and the fresh air - and we learned a lot about the importance of protecting our natural environment and the animals.

The class two pupils accompanied by two teachers, Madam Pauline and Mr. Vincent, two volunteers and Madam Collette, the founder of the school with forty-seven pupils and two school buses went to visit the Conference Centre in Yaounde.  The Bitame Lucia family was warmly welcome by the workers of the centre and one of them was assigned to take pupils and teachers round.

The first stop was the biggest room in the centre, a well-furnished hall with beautiful chairs and well-decorated red carpet on the floor, where the President of the Republic usually has the international meetings with his peers. We were told that the hall can host two thousand people.  We also stopped for a moment at the entrance of a smaller room, the place where Senators usually have their meetings. This hall was restricted from entering.

The last room that we visited was a General Hall which can host two hundred people. Here the children had the opportunity to put on earphone and microphones and take some pictures. From there we moved to the restaurant of the centre.  This concluded our trip.

Thanks for reading through all this!  We wanted to give you the opportunity to read through the experiences of the kids that YOU helped make possible.  Please take a look at the photos linked in this report.  Does this bring back any memories of excursions you went to when you were growing up?

We would deeply appreciate your donation today - helping to ensure that these children have a rich education.  Thanks so much for your on-going support!