A month in The Gambia

A month in The Gambia….

Time passes and gradually I have really started to feel at home here. I have noticed on this journey that once I have stopped somewhere it doesn’t take long for the inertia to kick in and make it harder to leave to hit the road again even after a short rest, but this time it feels particularly difficult. Arriving in The Gambia well over a month ago did somehow feel like reaching my destination as it is here that I feel most connected to the place and people having spent more time over the years. However I did always have it in mind to continue my journey to Bambako in Mali. I was there once before but it was long ago. I have always loved the music, both traditional and more modern that one hears out of that place and it feels like a logical destination for this ride. The Mandinka people of The Gambia originally came from Mali and when I tell people that I’m heading that way, once they have got over the initial shock of the idea of me traveling there alone by bicycle, they often tell me how they have relations there. Tata Dinding told me how his family of musicians or ‘griots’ traveled from Mali and how he would love to visit there one day but sadly was not up for joining me on a bike. Now that the time has come to part with my friends and family here it’s so hard to leave. But Once again the open road calls and soon I’ll be back in the red dust of that highway heading east this time and following my dreams.

                                          looks like some one's hitched a ride.

But what of my time here? Well as I mentioned in the last post about the Fresh Start Foundation I have had a chance to connect with their projects here and help out in a few ways as well as get up to all sorts of other adventures including hosting Ramsey and Tom from the Visions Series filming for the big movie. They stayed for 10 days and we had a great time interviewing all sorts of characters talking about my cycle ride, the power of music in community, education, climate change, and how we can bridge cultures creatively. We interviewed Lamin about the work of Fresh Start and the inspiration to bring about truly positive change and even went out into the bush and took a boat on the magnificent River Gambia with my old friend Wandi to see some of the stunning wildlife of the region.

                                          

I took them to meet Tata Dindng in Brikama and we were blessed to be able to film a fantastic jam in their compound that will provide some great music for the film. The following day we traveled with the band along sandy bush tracks across the border with Senegal to a village in the Cassamance region. This area has been troubled by rebels fighting for independence for years and just this week more fighting broke out not far away and I have recently heard that Kwinella village is preparing to receive over a thousand refugees. Presidential elections are due this month and reports of trouble across Senegal has been coming through the crackly air waves of the little transistor radios that play in the shade of mango trees as the heat of the afternoon passes. We were in the village for a music festival and thankfully all was peaceful whilst we were there. The people of Dombondir village are largely from the Jola tribe and the music and performances was very typical of their culture. The drumming and dance was stunning and some great bands played over the weekend but the highlights were the kumpo dance and the traditional wrestling on Sunday afternoon.

The Kumpo involved all the women on one side singing and playing hypnotic percussion rhythms on bits of metal and all the men gathered in a line opposite them. Into the space in between leaped the crazy Kumpo dancer completely covered with long grass like a huge whirling hay stack sending ripples of excitement through the crowd. Every one sang beautiful call-and-response songs whilst the men or women would break away from the lines running towards each other, or the spinning hay stack, to bust some crazy cheeky dance moves and then escape back to the safety of their lines. Other costumed characters appeared including a scary black baboon and a one armed figure dressed in sacking who danced beating the earth with a stick. The whole event was accompanied by full power drum rhythms specific to each of the costumed dancers and involved everybody who was up for it. It was dark and I was too enthralled to take any photos any way but I did get a few snaps of the wrestling the next day.

These guys know how to work a crowd and must have spent a good couple of hours strutting about and dancing before any wrestling actually took place. Wrestling is a big deal in Senegal and top wrestlers are famous stars in the country so it was all taken very seriously and in the end one team won…. And the other lost.

Tom and Ramsey had left the festival early to go and do some more filming with Tata’s band and so when it came to trying to get home on Monday morning I was reminded of one of the reasons why I had chosen to travel by bike in the first place. I hate waiting for lifts in Africa! I was ready by 9 in the morning for a car that by 4 in the afternoon looked like it wasn’t going anywhere after all. Instead I walked with a friend through the bush, passed beautiful rice fields and crossed the river that is the border between the two countries. We never did see any immigration officials or actual border controls and it all felt wonderfully clandestine out in the wilds of Africa.

Tom and Ramsey are back in the UK now armed with lots of great footage to make the movie and I’m ready to embark on the next stage of the adventure. The money’s all finished long ago but the road lies ahead calling and the journey continues.

There’s so much more I could say about the joys of village life in rural Africa but I’ll leave that up to your imagination for the moment and for my part step back out into the reality of the unfolding experience as I’m reminded of an old eighties kids TV program that sang out those immortal words;

 “Why don’t you… switch off the TV and do something more interesting instead!”

Time to get off the computer and water the vegetables in the sun baked plots over in the garden..

Much love to one and all

Ed

The Fresh Start Foundation

The Fresh Start Foundation

As many of you know I have been raising money for the Fresh Start Foundation here in the Gambia and I thought it was about time to tell you a little about the fantastic work that they are doing. I have been in the country for just over a month now and soon it will be time to hit the road again, this time east towards Mali but whilst here I have had the chance to check out much of the charities work and even lent a hand as best I could. You can find out more about their work at www.fsfgambia.org.

First of all thank you so much to all those who have donated money through my just giving page for this project. Having witnessed first-hand the importance of this work I can assure you that all the money will be used responsibly and go directly towards the positive change that is the focus of Fresh Start. Your donations will be used specifically to support an ambitious tree planting project in the village which I am really happy about and know will be extremely important for the future.

The charity was set up by my good friend Lamin Daffeh. He is the eldest son of Daffeh family with whom I lived in 1995 and on every visit since so that now I have been adopted as a member of their family and am always so well looked after.  Lamin now lives in the UK and set up the charity a few years ago initially to help with the education of vulnerable children in the village of Kwinella but now their work has expanded in so many ways and I will try to outline some of their different projects here.

Education and Skills Development

• Fresh Start has provided educational materials to 12 different schools in the region of Kwinella and continues to support the village school in various ways.
•  They funded and built a wall around the school grounds, created a library and continue to provide books, computers, resources and pay staff to make it a positive learning environment, they renovated class rooms and other facilities, dug a borehole that provides much needed clean drinking water, they provide funds to supplement the school meals with fish and vegetables, seeds for the school garden, and support a number of orphans throughout their education.
• Fresh Start recently received funding to run a series of workshops on the theme of climate change in a number of local secondary schools and as you may know I have run many similar projects with Movingsouunds in the UK and so offered my services to provide a week of workshops to all the year 7, 8 and 9 students. This was great fun and very different to UK schools in terms of the issues it raised and also the response of the students.

                                          In the school getting down to some climate change education.

• They provide sponsorship to a growing number of students through their secondary school education to help with school fees and this makes a huge difference to the poorer families and enables the young people to continue their education.
• Fresh Start is building 2 very ambitious skill centers, one in the village and one nearer the city to provide education for orphans and further education and vocational training to young people to help them find work.

                                          This is the skills center currently under construction

Health

• Clean drinking water is critical for good health and Fresh Start now provides the village’s main source of clean water through solar powered boreholes. This has made a huge difference to the lives of the local people.
• They have provided equipment to the local regional health centre, renovated the building, wired in the electrics and built accommodation for the health workers.
• They provide regular eye screenings to villages in remote areas and fund much needed cataract operations. With so many incredible life changing success stories this has become an important focus for their work.
• They also provide follow on support, drugs and reading glasses when needed.

Agriculture and the land

• Their ambitious Kunko project in Kwinella aims to provide a community garden for the village with a reliable water source and training in horticulture. I spent many happy mornings helping to create beds for the veggies and water the banana plants. I can’t wait to see the gardens blooming in a few years time.

                                          The first seedlings are transplanted into the new beds.

• They plan to also support animal husbandry projects and initiate a small agricultural revolution by educating about organic farming methods and sustainable land use. As most of the food eaten here is grown locally this will have a huge impact on the lives and diets of the village community.
• Provide seeds and try out all sorts of new varieties to see what grows best.
• They will be planting 1600 trees in the region and educate about the importance of the trees in terms of environmental stability and biodiversity. Gambia is extremely vulnerable to the impending impacts of climate change and deforestation is a huge issue here so this is important work and will be funded by your donations to my cycle ride.

This is just a brief outline of some of the work that the charity is currently undertaking but having met the team I know that so much more is going on than I could mention here and new projects are being developed all the time. Lamin came to visit a few weeks ago and I was amazed to see the response of people to his inspirational work and I hope to be able to continue my support of this project.

Once again many thanks for your support and if you feel so inspired it’s very easy to make a donation, however small at my just giving page. 2p provides a school meal so every little helps.

Much love to you all and more tales of my time in Gambia will follow shortly.

Ed

Back home in the Gambia

Well once again it feels like such a long time and another epic journey since I last wrote a post from the Daffeh's compound in Brufut on the coast of the Gambia. I spent around 5 days there with the sisters and Dembo who was visiting from Finland. Dembo had been my student in the village primary school when I was teaching here in 1995 but now lives in Finland and is part of a new generation of Gambians living the dream of a European life. It was so hard to leave the warmth of the family home but the time to move on came once again.

First 30km south to Kartong, the last village along the coast before the border with the troubled Casamance region of Senegal. This is a lovely area further away from the tourists and infamous beach bums and hustlers that prey relentlessly upon toubabs (white people) on the beach up north by the hotels.  I had planned to stay with an English guy called Peter Verne who I had met at sunrise festival in the summer who has a wife and compound here. I met him through our mutual friend Billy, otherwise known as Undercover Hippy, from Bristol, who spent a few months here with a guitar a year or two back winning over the hearts of the Gambians with his musical talents. I have met many people who talk fondly of him and he seems to have made quite an impression on the crew here. Peter was away in England having left just a couple of days earlier but Mamboi, his wife, and the rest of the family welcomed me into their forest compound with true Gambian hospitality. Here was another example of people living the dream amongst the palms and trees of the forest; Oh the simple life out in the bush!

I stayed just a few days but had a great time exploring the village, forest and nearby coast a little and just hanging out with nice folk in the compound. 

the boys fixing the generator again.....

Mamboi and the kids making baobab juice from the fruits of this amazing tree.....

Palms on the river bordering Senegal.

From Kartong I travelled just a short distance inland to Brikama; possibly Gambia’s largest town and stronghold of Mandinka culture. Here I stayed with another old student of mine and good friend called Famara but like so many Gambians is better known by his nickname of Killy. He took me around town to visit all sorts of people including almost a hundred members of his family. We also visited some local musicians and had a fantastic time hanging out with Tata Dindin and his band. I took a few lessons from the guitarist learning some funky little Afro Mandinka riffs and one afternoon went with the whole crew in a heavily loaded minibus, with the entire sound system stacked up on the roof, to a concert in a neighborhood to celebrate the president’s recent election victory. It was a wild experience and quite unlike any party I’d been to. The band rocked it with their Kora driven afro funk and the audience of women dressed in wonderful colorful patterned dresses praised the band by literally throwing money at Tata as he sang. Tata continues the Mandinka tradition of the griots as praise singers and the more he praised the individuals of the local community the more money the women lavished him with in celebration. Take note all ye poverty stricken Brighton musicians if you want to make some cash!

We also paid a visit to a couple of up and coming reggae singers called Philantropist and Messiah… Yes there’s a singer here that calls himself The Messiah which seems kind of extreme in terms of bigging your-self up even for a reggae mc. They were both sound guys though and once again the whole crew were fantastically friendly and welcoming and were very happy to spend the day in the yard chatting, jamming and cooking up a feast of rice and peanuts in new variations….. Yes I have eaten a lot of rice and peanuts by now but still I love it. Tonight we had rice with fish cooked in palm oil, another classic of West African cuisine.

From Brikama it was time to make the trek up river 120 km to the village of Kwinella where I lived all those years ago and taught in the primary school at the tender age of 19. I lived with the Daffeh family here, and it was to their compound, the Daffeh Kunda, that I was now heading. Of course all the children have all grown up and moved on and Ba Felidge (the dad) complains of the place being too quiet now. On my first visit both his wives, Kadi and Fatou, were here and at least a dozen of his children filled the place but now things are quieter and the old simple rooms have been knocked down and replaced by new larger buildings that even have water and solar electricity. Development is slowly coming for some Gambians whilst it seems for others the simplest amenities such as water, housing or enough rice to feed the family can be a real issue. It is here in this village that the Fresh Start Foundation concentrates many of the projects but more about them to come.

It is so good to be back here. Every day I am greeted by people who remember me from back in the day. Some people that I haven’t seen for 17 years but still joyfully sing out my name in greeting and very quickly the kids all join in the call. It really is somehow like coming home after all those thousands of miles traveling through unknown places and meeting people for the first time but here there is history and shared experience and so much kindness and openness that’s almost overwhelming at times. As well as catching up with old friends I’ve been helping to establish a community allotment project set up by Fresh Start and have been digging the rock hard sun baked earth and watering seedlings. It’s so inspiring and great to get down to doing something useful. I am also running workshops on climate change in the secondary school all week which will be a whole different story from working in the UK.


View Larger Map

 I’ll be here in the village for the next week or so and then Ramsey and Tom from substantial films will be here filming for 10 days.

Check out the movie trailer here…..http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7tVFHv6a-A
and their visions project here.... http://visions-series.com/

And then the adventures will continue into Mali!
Much love from West Africa.
Ed