In December 2021 our family house in Conakry, the capitol of Guinea, was burned down. Although, miraculously, no-one was hurt, everyone lost everything. This is a country where there's no insurance, no social security or other welfare services: and with a rather startling level of poverty, even for West Africa. We did some fundraising shortly afterward: gathered a bit of money that way - other people helped us - and we've been sending as much as we can since then. The house itself has now been rebuilt. Counting all the children about 20 people live in/use this house so we've not managed to restore everyone's possessions yet by a long long way.

Given the level of poverty in Guinea in general and in our family in particular, we need more help. It's now Ramadan, in the Islamic tradition a time of charity and thinking of those less fortunate than ourselves, as well as spiritual cleansing, and we'd love to be able to replace the beds in the house at least by Eid, the festival at the end of the month of fasting and prayer. This will be around 21st April this year. Most people are still sleeping on the floor as we've not even managed enough money for mattresses. Although this is not uncommon in West Africa, some of these people are elderly women and we'd like to make their lives a bit more comfortable.

A bed, plus a mosquito net, works out at about £150 in English money. This is a country where co-sleeping is common so we're not talking about 'single' or 'double' beds here, think of a sort of 'king size' plus. There are 4 sleeping rooms in the house so four beds, plus 'good' nets, would be about £600.

Any help you can give would be most appreciated, really, truely, every tiny bit helps.