STUDENT Fiona Beach-MacGeagh has spent three months of her gap year teaching at a church school in Uganda.

Through an education charity, the 19-year-old from Hyde Lane, Marlborough, took up a voluntary post teaching geography and PE at a boarding school near Kampala attended by 600 girls.

She was amazed, she said, to discover that the girls began their school day at 5am and finished at about 10pm. "It was a hard task for anyone yet they still managed to keep their amazing smiles," she said.

Another western student, American Andrea Halpean, was also at the school, helping teach the girls aged six to 14.

Together Fiona and Andrea had to adapt to the Ugandan way of life, no running water, sporadic electricity, a diet of rice and beans and an archaic lavatory full of cockroaches.

The rice and beans they received were regarded as a luxury by the pupils whose basic diet consisted mainly of a maize porridge called Posho.

Fiona said she was surprised to find a high standard of teaching at the school.

"For the girls English was the escape route to a better chance in life as without English they have no chance of getting the better jobs Uganda has to offer," she said.

"All the girls I taught had the most drive and aspirations that I have ever seen and were so hard working."

Many of the girls were orphans whose parents had died from AIDS. "Going into class each day knowing that some of the girls might have AIDS was the most heartbreaking thing."

Fiona is due to take up a place at a college in Plymouth to study public relations in September, but before then she will be spending a three-month working holiday in the USA when she plans to meet up with Andrea again.