Gordon’s pupils make history in Sudan
Sudan isn’t usually top of the list of destinations for school trips but pupils and staff from Gordon’s School recently spent a week there. The visit is believed to be the first by a European school. The trip included a boat trip along the Nile and to the Meroe Pyramids, a tour of the National Republic Museum, camping in the desert, tea at the British Embassy and a screening of the film Khartoum, starring Charlton Heston!
Gordon’s shares a unique history and connection with Sudan’s capital city Khartoum. The school is the national memorial to the British war hero and philanthropist General Charles Gordon and it was founded following his death in Khartoum in 1885. The school also houses a bronze statue of General Gordon astride a camel – the statue was originally at a crossroads in Khartoum.
In 2017 Gordon’s School welcomed the British Ambassador to Sudan, His Excellency Michael Aron. The invitation for the historic visit came from Samia Omar and her husband Osama Daoud Abdellatif, who co-founded the Khartoum International Community School (KICS). They were keen to establish links, having discovered Gordon’s School when helping their son with a school project on General Gordon. The DAL Group of companies in Sudan, which supports KICS, part-funded the trip.
A seminal moment of the visit was when Tom Gordon, General Charles Gordon’s great-great-great nephew and a Gordon Foundation trustee, shook hands with a direct descendant of the Mahdi, Vice President and Minister for Trade (whose son was a Gordon’s School pupil in the late 1990s).