Eating akara, dancing to Baatin and saying goodbye to The Gambia

Thursday morning and it’s our last full day.

After another school visit in the morning (on behalf of The Gambia Experience’s School Development Fund), Shelagh and I spend the afternoon visiting our Guinean friends to say goodbye. More chatting, more singing and a few more photos. We are really touched when they give each of us a wooden carving. They are wonderful but I can’t help thinking that they shouldn’t have. No, they really shouldn’t have. They have so little. I will treasure the carving and when I am sitting at home on a cold English winter’s evening I’m sure it will bring back many happy memories of my friends in Africa.

That evening we enjoy chatting to some of the other guests at the hotel who we have made friends with. They really are a lovely bunch of people.

There’s a band playing on the restaurant’s terrace – an interesting mixture of reggae, jazz, blues and traditional West African music. It’s our last night and when some of the waiters and waitresses start dancing I join in and soon most of the other guests do too.

Afterwards I have a chat with the band. Baatin, means something along the lines of righteous passage or telepathy – a higher plane of thinking perhaps. They sing in Wolof, Swahili, Portuguese as well as English. Ebrima Touray, the male lead singer and co-leader of the band has a lovely gravely voice well suited to the blues. Kumba Sowe, who sings female lead for some of the songs has a beautiful rich, velvety voice. Originally from Senegal, Baatin met Ebrima in The Gambia and he introduced the band to the blues. You can find out more about Baatin and listen to some of their music on myspace although the information is rather out of date.

Our last morning, and as I step out onto the open stairway outside our room I breath in the smell of burning churia banta. A type of wood sprinkled over charcoals or heated in clay pots to perfume the air. The walk through the gardens to the restuarant is lovely in the morning sunshine.

I have never tried the local breakfast dish akara so I pop three of the small round balls and a little of the sauce onto a plate and sit on the terrace overlooking Ngala’s gardens with a glimpse of the sea through the palm trees. The akara is great and I’d wished I’d tried it sooner. The balls are made of  black-eyed peas grounded into flour and deep-fried, served with an onion, chilli and jimbo (seasoning) sauce. I found them really delicious, crispy on the outside and smooth and light on the  inside.

After breakfast there’s plenty of time for relaxing by the pool before we have to head off to the airport and I think over what a wonderful week it’s been.

This is my last diary entry until my next visit to The Gambia, but I’ve lots more to tell you in the coming weeks from this trip including  interviews with the fascinating chef at Ngala Lodge and the wonderful Kora player, Bajaly as well as my morning with Ida cooking fish benechin and I have been given a Gambian cook book to review so I’m really looking forward to trying some of the recipes when I get home. Plus I’ll be answering some questions, such as why do you see flip-flops nailed to trees in West Africa and how do you play wuri?

Time to start planning another journey! Where next?

Children’s smiling faces and shouts of “Kathryn” and “Shelagh” greet us in Jeddah, a poor district of Brikama.

It’s Wednesday morning and we’re off to visit Jeddah Progress Nursery School in Brikama (for children 4 to 7 years old), a school Nyodema has been supporting since 2007. We’ve organised teacher training courses, distributed mosquito nets to every child and helped with the upkeep of the building which really is in a sorry state. As is typical of schools in The Gambia, it was built on a very low budget with mud bricks, no proper foundations and poor quality timbers supporting the corrugated steel roof. Luckily, Friends of the Gambia Association (FoTGA) have been able to step in and build a new school next door to the old one.

Driving through the outskirts of Brikama into Jeddah we hear some children calling out “Kathryn” and “Shelagh” which we find a welcome change from the usual shouts of  “toubab, toubab” or “minty, minty” which are calls any passing tourist or traveller would usual hear. (Toubab is a common term in West Africa referring to someone of European decent.)

When we arrive the children and teachers are all at the gate to meet us outside the Lower Basic school (for children 7 to 12 years old)  and lead us back to the nursery school in procession singing as they go. The new school building looks wonderful, very well built and beautifully painted in orange and red with bright blue doors and window frames. We are delighted as are the children and all the teachers. I was surprised and sorry to see that the new school building is not big enough to accommodate all the children and one class is still being taught in the old school building.

The youngest children haven’t met us before and look at us a little warily, however, the older children know us and greet us with smiles.

As well as seeing the new school we meet Ebrima,who has recently joined the teaching staff. He is not a qualified teacher but we are very impressed with him and we offer to fund the teacher training course he will need to become a qualified teacher. It runs in the school holidays over 3 years and costs around  D6,000  (£130) a year which is way beyond the means of most Gambians.

The teachers have organised lunch and we gather round a large bowl of domada, a popular Gambian dish of rice with vegetables and (sometimes fish or meat) in peanut sauce. It is traditional in The Gambia to all eat from the same bowl using your hands. our hosts kindly give us spoons knowing that we are not used to eating with our hands and would probably make quite a mess if we tried! Shelagh really doesn’t like domada and barely eats any so it is down to me to tuck in.

We then visit the home of Lamin the headmaster, and I’m pleased to see that he can finally afford for his wife and two children (who were living up country) to live with him here and I meet them all for the first time. Lamin’s little boy spends much of our visit playing with a deflated football with his friend. The ball may be broken but their enthusiasm is endless. We are offered another domada lunch, but explain that we ate at the school.

On to visit Lisa and her family. I’ve sponsored Lisa since 2005 through FoTGA. She was attending Jeddah nursery school the first time I visited which is how I become involved with helping that school. She is now at the lower basic school next door. I’ve brought some exercise books and coloured pencils for Lisa and we give Lisa’s mother a large bag of rice. We are offered lunch and a large bowl of domada appears. I eat what I can but don’t do it justice. There really is only so much domada a girl can eat. (This is beginning to feel like the episode of the comedy ‘The Vicar of Dibley’ in which the vicar feels she can’t refuse any invites for Christmas lunch and ends up eating 6 in a row.)

Back at our hotel the contrasts of how we live and life in The Gambia once again hit home. It’s easy to start thinking every time you spend any money… ‘but that would buy three mosquito nets’  or ‘that’s enough to buy a bag of rice to feed a large family for a month’ and so on, but you really have to try not to think like that most of the time.  Occasional thoughts like that, however, are no bad thing (and I probably should do it a little more often than I do).

More photos of Jeddah Progress Nursery School can be seen on Flickr

Cooking fish benachin and visiting the newly built school at Dairuharu

Monday

I’m up fairly early today as I’m going on an excursion run by The Gambia Experience ‘Cooking with Ida’.

Nine of us from various hotels arrive at Ida’s and are shown two racks of colourful Gambian clothes to change into. Now I wasn’t sure about this, but as I have always found that Gambians love visitors to their country wearing local clothes, I picked out a bright green patterned top and matching wrap around skirt and got changed. Then we were all off to the market to pick up the ingredients for fish benachin, a spicy fish dish served with rice. Shopping in The Gambia is an experience in itself and the fish market on the beach in Tanji is a colourful bustling example of daily life. (As most Gambians don’t have electricity let alone a refrigerator, catching or buying food is a daily event.)

I’ll tell you all about the wonderful day we had preparing the meal, playing wuri (while the delicious cooking smells wafted around the outdoor kitchen) and then eating this tasty traditional Wolof meal in a forthcoming post.

Back at the hotel that afternoon I catch-up with the fabulous chef at Ngala Lodge, Jonathan Groves. I’ll be writing about his fascinating career which has taken him to a number of countries, soon too.

Tuesday
This is the day I’ve really been waiting for as we are to visit the school in Dairuharu, a district in Brikama, that we have helped build. I haven’t been here since January. The foundations were laid and the walls were up but their was no roof, nor windows or door fittings. The school was finished in April (the first classroom, a store room and an office) and since then we’ve provided desks, benches and a blackboard but I haven’t been able to see the finished school for myself until now. It is the Muslim New Year today which means the school is closed and everyone is at the mosque. We arranged to visit the school a few weeks ago and we didn’t realise it could clash with this important day in the Muslim calendar. The actual date was only announced a couple of days before as it depends on the cycle of the moon. Unfortunately it was too late to change the day of our visit as the rest of the week is fully booked with visits to other schools. I’m assured that it really isn’t a problem and that the teachers and some of the children will come to the school anyway.

On the way we pick up Fatou. She has been very involved in the building of the school encouraging the other villagers to lend a hand in the construction and she has been given time of work to join us.

When we arrive in the village we are met by Yama, the headmistress and one of the teachers, who is also called Fatou, plus Kaba, who managed the build and Ebrima, chairman of the school’s committee. Sadly, Amie who also teaches at the school, isn’t very well and is unable to come.

I’ve brought a plaque to put up in memory of Lucy, whose family and friends raised much of the money needed to finish the school and some photographs showing how the money was raised. It includes pictures of us drumming and singing at Nyodema’s festival which also raised money for the school. BIG MISTAKE! When we go into the the classroom all the children sing for us in English. I’ve recorded some of it (and some of the other music we heard during our visit) which I will set to some of my photos and put on youtube when I get the chance. When the children finish singing I’m told it is my turn. I wasn’t expecting this – I’m used to singing in a choir not on my own!… deep breath.. I sing them a song in Susu that our drumming group and choir have performed together. They seemed very pleased so I think it was OK. (Don’t worry, I didn’t record that bit.)

It is really wonderful to see the school in use but the floor is very sandy and the dust that rises up gets in your throat so sorting that out is next on our list of things to do. Yama and Fatou explain that they’d like to use what was intended as an office as a second class room for the older children. We think this is a great idea, so next on the list is some more desks and benches.

From the school we go back to one of the villager’s compounds (home) where we are joined by the Alkalo (head of the village) and his assistant. Under the shade of a mango tree we all discuss what further needs to be done including the flooring, more desks and very importantly access to water and a toilet block!

The Alkalo and his assistant both already have three wives yet they say they will each marry one of us (Muslims can marry up to four wives). When Shelagh says her husband probably wouldn’t be too keen on this they offer to wrestle our husbands! Wrestling is a very popular sport in West Africa but I’ve not heard of Gambians wrestling over potential wives before. I wonder who would win!

Tomorrow we are back in Brikama visiting the school in Jeddah that we have been helping since 2007 and after that we’ll visit Lisa, who I sponsor through FOTGA (Friends of The Gambia Association) and her family.

See more photos on Flickr

More on the rest of my week coming Soon!

I’m getting excited!

This time next week I’ll be in The Gambia – luxury hotels, European women with their African toy boys, sunshine, sea and poverty. An incongruous mash-up of the extremes in life, The Gambia gets under your skin, if you let it.

Once again I’ll soon be jetting off to the smallest country on mainland Africa with the biggest smile, commonly called ‘The smiling coast of Africa’ and having spent anytime there you will soon know why. The people are some of the friendliest you can meet anywhere.

Since 2007 I have visited The Gambia regularly, partly for work photographing hotels, partly to relax in the sun but also to oversee projects set up by Nyodema – a community group I founded with some friends whose slogan is ‘Fighting Poverty with Music’. It has been the most amazing few years as what started as a one-off music event to raise enough money to buy some children mosquito nets has turned into an annual festival, a world music choir and an African drumming troupe and our projects include funding teacher training programmes and buying hundreds of nets.

Photograph courtesy of Adam White

Throughout this time I have also been on an exciting personal journey going from someone who was terrified of even just reading out the winning raffle ticket numbers at an event to someone who sings in and conducts the Nyodema World Community Choir, loves drumming with the Nyodema Drummers and is happy to speak in front of an audience about Nyodema. OK, I do still get nervous, but I’m passionate about what we do so I’ve just got on with it!

Even though I’ve been there many times before I am particularly looking forward to this visit as I will be going to the school I have helped to build, admittedly not physically myself, but by bringing people together to make it happen…

..including the couple who first told me about the school in Dairuharu (or rather the lack of one!), the other Nyodema committee members who got behind the idea 100%, Pete and Pete who drove an old car from Bognor Regis on the south coast of England to Istanbul and back, Hannah, who climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in memory of her friend Lucy and Pa Louis, from the charity Karmic Angels, who kindly project managed the build plus all the people who performed, volunteered and made donations at our festival.

The first classroom, an office and a store room are finished and benches, desks and a blackboard are in place. Next week we will be taking a plaque and dedicating this first classroom to the memory of Lucy – a lady I had never met – but when I told her mother about the project her family and friends raised the remaining money needed to finish it, in her memory.

It will my pleasure and honour to take a plaque to put up in the school that reads ‘This classroom is dedicated in loving memory of Lucy Ritchie’.

In the words of the villages’ Alkalo (headman) ‘Now we can say that we have a school’ and I’m grinning from ear to ear – my smile is as big as any Gambians!

Read about my first visit to the school at Dairuharu.

Read my diary Part 2 - Arriving in Africa and catching up with old friends