(Laughter) I lived nearly two years without heat, woke up out of a dead sleep multiple times to gunshots, was attacked by a pack of wild dogs and ripped my kitchen cabinets from an abandoned school as they were actively tearing that school down.

So what we want you to do is re-plan our entire building, and we know it's going to cost several million pounds, but we're reconciled to the fact."

What originally brought me to Makoko was this project from a friend of mine, Kunlé Adeyemi, who recently finished building this three-story floating school for the kids in Makoko.

So with limited student interaction, with underqualified teachers and schoolhouses that are barely furnished and not insulated, rural students have long been disadvantaged, with almost no path to higher education.

In schools, children defecate on the floors and then leave a trail outside the building and start defecating around the building, and these pits have to be cleaned and manually emptied.

Now, the reason I say that, because, afterwards, I was thinking -- well, I went back into the school -- I felt dirty; I felt betrayed; I felt ashamed, but mainly -- mainly, I felt powerless.

You see, what had happened was, over the last two decades, India had been fighting the challenge of access, having enough schools, and enrollment, bringing children into the schools.

So instead they tried to figure out what one room they could go into in each of these buildings, in as many buildings that they could, and fix that one room so that they could improve the lives of the children inside as they were studying.

And Richard says, "Well, the top shelf has to be low enough for the kid to reach it, but I'm in a big old building, and the ceilings are really high, so actually I've got all this space up there and I need something like a mural."