TWELVE students have returned from a trip to Africa with a new sense of humility and worth after visiting and helping communities in Malawi.

During their stay, the 12 girls from Darlington's Polam Hall School and Teesside High School, in Eaglescliffe, helped to supply a village with vital items needed to open a new school.

Little more than 12 hours after returning to the North-East, the teenagers are full of excitement as they chat about their travels and how good it made them feel to help, even in the simplest ways.

The first week of the trip was very much about acclimatisation at the Lengwe National Park, where they worked with a school of youngsters in their late-teens, carrying out a number of projects, including clearing a campsite - trailers and all - with their bare hands.

After a second week spent climbing one of the country's highest mountains, Mulanje, at 2,900 metres, the group moved on to the Mwabvi National Park for the third week, and and then on to Liwonde National park for the last week.

"We each had our own personal aims that we wanted to get out of it," said Gemma Lonsdale, 18, from Teesside High.

Caroline Shields, also 18, from Polam Hall School, said: "We went on the trip practically as strangers and we came back as good friends."

One of the most humbling experiences was sitting with a group of African teenagers during the first week, discussing HIV and realising how the small amount of information they knew was a major education for the youngsters in Malawi.

The following day, they were being approached by some of the group who had further questions.

"It was really touching to know they felt they could actually ask us," says Gemma.

"But, at the same time, it was shocking to know our limited knowledge was answering all their questions."

The Darlington and Eaglescliffe students slept in tents and cooked on camping stoves, while the small communities they were visiting relied on mud huts for school buildings - if they had them.

One community did not. But Caroline said: "Because we went there and took a collection of things, they can set up a school. We are really proud of that."

Gemma said: "We almost felt humble that the little we did was pleasing so many people."

As she passed a small child begging in the street, she took a ragged old T-shirt, with its sleeves missing, out of her bag and handed it to him.

"I've never seen someone so pleased. It was the dirtiest thing I owned, but he was just so pleased," she said.

Rebecca Galbraith, 18, a Polam Hall student, said: "One of the things we hope we have shown them is that we are not the superior race, because they acted like we were, bowing and things."

In sporting activities, the English girls were beaten hands down, even when they arrived for what they expected to be a gentle football match.

Rebecca said: "We got to this place where the game was and there was about 400 children swarming around us and they put up this tunnel to walk through.

"We felt like international footballers," Caroline said.

The trip included safari expeditions, with hippopotami, elephants and bush babies among the animals on view.

One village sent people out to find a goat for the group, so they could see it slaughtered.

The girls took bags of items, including toys, education packs, gardening tools and musical instruments as gifts for the African communities. They returned with a massive sense of achievement and a new group of friends