Bridget Howard’s first recollection of Africa is being shown slides of termite hills in the Belgian Congo during a Sunday school class. “From a young age I had a sense of purpose from God that I would one day teach in Africa”.

Bridget is not one to freely give out her age but it occasionally does slip out that she first went to Congo to work 26 years ago when the country was still called Zaïre. Her first assignment was as a teacher at Rethy Academy, the Mission’s school for children of its members. Her next assignment was as a school inspector in Zandeland where, as she puts it, she: “cycled around inspecting teachers and outside toilets of the church schools!”

Following evacuation from Congo as a result of the fighting that errupted around the Great Lakes in the wake of the Rwandan genocide, Bridget worked at Aim’s International Office in Bristol. She returned to Congo in 2005 to teach English at the Institut Supérieur Pédagogique in Bunia. The ISP exists to prepare students to teach at secondary schools run by the CECA-20, Aim’s partner church in Congo.

Since her return Bridget has been sending her ‘blog’. She admits that ‘composition’ was not a favourite lesson when at secondary school but writing has become less of a chore as she told friends back in the UK of her daily experiences of life in Africa. “Maybe it’s an exalted sense of my own importance as being ‘From Our Own Correspondent-like’ I can pretend to be Aim’s very own Kate Adie!”