Big Brother stars' African trip

Aug 16 2009 by Coreena Ford, Sunday Sun

In the Karunga Village school the lads taught youngsters simple words, and also how to play easy games such as Noughts and Crosses and Cat’s Cradle.

And each night they slept in a typical village hut which had no electricity or running water. After a first-night hiccup involving a giant spider running across his mattress, Liam said he soon settled in.

“It was quite ‘Big Brothery’,” he said.

“The toilet was a hole in the ground and each morning we just washed with water from a bucket, having only had about four or five hours’ sleep.”

The runaway highlight of their week was the MAD World Cup, a sports event involving hundreds of children from surrounding villages for three days of football coaching and fun.

Liam said: “The kids were amazing. Some lads were running around with no shoes, some with one shoe they just didn’t care.

“We got a little bit of a hero’s welcome from them. They didn’t have a clue who we were but we had footballs and that was good enough.”

Anthony said: “The kids were just unbelievable, and once we whipped out the footballs it was carnage. They were fascinated by the tiniest of things too. I was taking photos of them and showing the pictures to them and they were just amazed.”

As well as helping villagers during their stay, the friends plan to raise thousands of pounds for the foundation, to be ploughed back into other projects. To find out more and donate cash visit www.justgiving.com/liamgoesmad