When nearly 300 children swarmed from their school building in the middle of the Namib Desert to greet their long-awaited Lanarkshire guests, Douglas Allsop’s throat tightened with emotion.
Having repeatedly hit the buffers due to cancellations and other set-backs posed by the pandemic, the trip to this dilapidated school in Southern Africa was three years in the making.
And when the pupils, giddy with excitement, sang and danced to warmly welcome the arrival of 20 Scots, Douglas had to pinch himself.
