Tikhtak

Ghana schools link trip

Last year around this time we went to Sierra Leone on our CMS Free For All tour to perform a play about the abolition of the slave trade bill with children from local schools. As a follow up to that trip over the next week a group of teachers from schools in the Uk will be visiting and connecting with schools in Ghana. We hope that they will make links that will continue for many years to come. Mark Berry is also going to represent CMS and  Telford united FC and look at ways of developing a football connection. This trip will be followed up again for schools from the UK next year with a trip to Kashmir in India. Thankfully Anita Matthews from our Youth team at CMS will be leading this one and she and others will be contributing from a blog that you can follow by clicking on Ghana schools link blog

Free For All at Lambeth Conference

We arrived at the Lambeth Conference not sure how Free For All would fit in or indeed whether the Bishops wives would throw themselves into it or not. Unfortunately down to a clash of programming and very modest advertising we will never know as we only got one Spouse, Donna. Her husband is the Bishop of Iowa and she was in fact worth about ten Spouses. She herself is an Actor and she fitted into the team as if she had been with us all year. Check out some pics from the rehearsals on flickr. The performance was attended by about 20 in a the massive spouse conference space but we gave it our all and it was received well.

Life after Free For All

As a way of documenting our Free For All year of touring 30 plus cathedrals and working with hundreds of school children to commemorate the abolition of the slave trade bill in 1807 we have published a book of some of the images from every cathedral we visited from Peterborough Cathedral on the left here to St Georges Cathedral in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Check out an on line version of this book as well as see what we plan to do next

Free For All at Worcester Cathedral - The End

So that's it! Free For All came to an end last week at Worcester Cathedral with a bang... Between Tuesday and Friday we saw 650 children and it all ended on Friday with a magical rendition of Swing Low Sweet Chariot. I am sure it will be focused on the next trax16. To catch up with more photos and a report for the week check out the Free For All blog.

Voices of hope from Sierra Leone

On our recent Free For All trip to Sierra Leone we took our MP3 recorders with us and interviewed Mohammed a YMCA volunteer who fled to Freetown during the civil war, children from our Free For All performance, Verity a CMS Missionary doing health work  as a physio and Zoe from the team who meets family from Sierra Leone she never knew she had. We also have footage of a trip to King Jimmy's market, a historical site where slaves were loaded on to ships 200 years ago. Check out Voices from Sierra Leone on tikhtak's youtube. You can also hear them featured on our trax16 for January. In this picture I am interviewing Mohammed, the YMCA volunteer while Anita interviews Verity. The interviews were not all carried out on the beach!

Latest Videos from Free For All, Sierra leone trip

I am systematically making clips of the highlights of our Free For All trip to Sierra Leone. You can see them by clicking directly on the pictures in the side bar and they will play in their own little window. Check out the most recent ones of Anita being lost and found in Freetown and our road trip to Moyamaba. I will also be sharing about the experience at the connect service at Holy Trinity, Clapham on Sunday evening.

Tikhtak on Youtube

I have put a bar up in the right hand column linking to Tikhtak's youtube channel. To check out the latest video from Sierra leone of our helicopter ride from Lungi to Freetown just click on the first one on the strip. I am impressed that it does not divert you away from the page but opens up it's own little box. I will be putting up other snippets from the Free For All Sierra Leone trip in the following weeks.

King Jimmy's Market

Perhaps one of the highlights of our time in Sierra leone was being shown around King Jimmy's Market in Freetown. It is situated on one of the best natural harbors in western Africa and hence the reason why it led to the city’s founding as a refuge for freed slaves in 1787. Now it is a functioning market but also situated in a very deprived part of town. Anita, Mike and Myself were taken on an inpromptu tour by a few of the traders from another market nearby. Mike bravely snapped the pictures and you can see them on my flickr Otherwise check out this video, which gives a tour around the market with some of the history by local commentators. Also see all our pics of the Free For All project and our time in Sierra leone. Here is a picture of Nash one of our guides. As we travelled through the area we picked up more and more guides along the way, but we kept close to our trusted market guides.

Moyamba, Bo and home

We left early to get to Moyamba in good time. It meant traveling on some rough roads and in all it took us about 4 hours to get there. On the journey we saw many burned out buildings where rebels in the civil war had left their mark and many obsolete train stations. We arrived in the village and was led into a mud and wooden building, which was in fact the school. Inside sat 100 or so children and teachers and we sat on a top table. The school head welcomed us and after greeting and introductions we were treated to a cultural programme of african dance. The singing and rhythms banged out on the drums and percussion instruments made our ears tingle and it was an amazing welcome. We were shown the school being built - a concrete structure which seemed a bit out of place with the rest of the village. They explained that a further £5000 was still needed for its completion. After returning to the current school we said our goodbyes and continued on to Bo.

Bo is Sierra Leone's second city and unlike Freetown is supplied by electricity, although only a few buildings seemed to be connected. The cathedral was smaller then Freetown but the space to work in was actually bigger. There seemed to be much more of a relaxed and laid back atmosphere in Bo and working with the children we felt this too. A highlight for us was splitting everyone into smaller groups one day when waiting for lunch with a Free For All leader working with each one. As each group started to sing songs and dance it  led to an impromptu celebration as one of the students lept to the drum kit and started to play. We must have danced and sang as a group of around 150 for about 30 minutes. We performed on to an audience on Saturday and the children were great. It was possibly one of the best performances we have done. On Sunday we attended the Cathedral and expressed our thanks for a great few days. Bishop S Gbonda was delighted to get a Free For All T shirt and we presented all the T-shirts we had left to the Cathedral.

On Monday we took a last trip to the market for gifts and memorabilia and then all spent the rest of the  day on Laka beach. It was desert island like and a great way to say goodbye to this special country. These 11 days have been a special time for us all and we have all made our own individual connections. Perhaps for Zoe (Our Singer) it has been the most special. She had knowledge of her Grandfather living in Freetown but had never met him or that side of her family. Although he had passed away, the tight knit community were able to lead her to other siblings who turned out to be her aunties. As we say goodbye we have all been touched by this place and has been the perfect finale for the Free For All tour. Check out all our photos in the gallery and I will put a link to the video highlights of our trip in due course. To see photos out and about around Freetown and Bo click here

Freetown performance and trip to King Jimmy's market

After a good performance in Freetown cathedral on Wednesday with some fantastic individual performances from our Susannah and Mbe the greedy tortoise, Mike, Anita and I decided to have a quick look in the local market. Walking around Freetown in our Free For All tops has sparked a lot of interest and after getting into a conversation with some local traders about the slave trade they asked us if we wanted to see the place where the slaves were chained up and kept before being taken. It was in an area called King Jimmy's market (an old Portuguese market from the 15th century). As we were led through rocks along the coast and muddy paths, through tin-shack homes we realised we were in a slum. People just seemed to be sitting around everywhere and our presence of course attracted a lot of interest. We were shown into some ones home and a bed was pulled back exposing chains in the wall. We were taken to two tunnels where the slaves were led through to board the ships, now filled with young men taking drugs and lying around. We were taken to what is now a market with very little to sell, which had been used as a holding place for all the slaves with shackles exposed in the walls and with what looked like messages and pictures in them. Although it was a risk and not the safest place to go, we trusted our guides and kept close to them. For all the work we have done this week in Freetown with the children this was a real highlight and a privilege to experience. The next day we were bound for Bo with a stop off at a village called Miamba on the way to see a school building project. Check out this video made about King Jimmy's Market.