Last time we visited Bagri School, we met the Head Girl, Precious, who took us back to see her home and meet her parents. When we arrived at her house, we had a shock. Not that the buildings were any different to the others in this area: mud walls, thatch roof, a sprawling complex of buildings – with a fire alight in the compound. But we immediately recognised it: we had been here many years before…

The house belongs to Thomas who, in the early days of Savannah, was the tailor who made the blue uniforms for the first ever pupils to attend Bagri school. But it brought back a painful memory too. All those years ago, we had been visiting a bereaved house. Their young daughter had recently died. Undiagnosed and untreated, she was part of a generation in which nearly one in four of the children died before their fifth birthday.

We were then told how Precious received her name. She was the first child born after that bitter bereavement. What a precious gift to her family! To us, she also symbolises the precious change that has occurred in this village since the Savannah school arrived.