Beating the January Blues - By Ben Skelton

As our British readers may be aware we just lived through what some people think is the most depressing day of the year if you live in the UK – ‘Blue Monday’, the third Monday of January. Apparently someone somewhere has calculated that this is the most depressing day of the entire year because it’s so very cold, everyone has spent all their money at Christmas and no one has kept their new year’s resolutions.

In our office all this was not helped by our heaters breaking or the fact that we are sat shivering on the end of Skype meetings with our colleagues in East Africa who are complaining about the fact it’s ‘too hot’.

The 'fundi' or contractors, showing us the newly constructed pit for the latrines in August 2014.

So, in this depressing time it was especially wonderful to receive an email from the school management and parents of Ndanai Township Primary School who we’ve been working with for the last year. They wanted to let us know that:
“… the project has yielded instant positive results: there were minimal reported cases on hygienic problems, the learners were able to entirely concentrate on learning, and as a result, the school has managed to produce the best boy in Sotik Sub-county [the county in which the school is based]”

That was all we needed to shake the January blues. Now just need to get the heaters fixed…

The finished latrine block, January 2015.

Thank you to all Dig Deep’s volunteers and supporters as well as all the teachers and parents who support the students for making this possible.