Mawgablog

The Gambia is a former British colony oddly poked into Senegal

I recently had the good fortune to go to The Republic of the Gambia as part of a youth-based charity partnership. London’s Play Action and Cardiff City Council have teamed up to assist some ongoing work by Gambia’s National Youth Council (NYC). Together they train youth workers from The Gambia in Britain, and head over there to help build play centres and offer strategic assistance to the NYC in Gambia. I went along on one such visit in order to lend a hand and to see what editorial and publicity I could generate for the cause.

I had a swank pen and a groovy notebook with me at all times, so I did my best to write a sort of diary for Mawgablog as the days unfurled. I was more successful with this at the start of the journey rather than at the end, but here it is. I’ve edited my words very little, mostly a tweak for spelling and clarity. Apologies for any dodgy sentence construction, flowery language, punctuation and the like. This is my first entry, dated Tuesday February 9th.

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9 February 2010

On the way to Banjul. It is currently 13.15 in the afternoon. To my left, Vince snores away, able to fall asleep at incredible short notice, with such little notice, provocation or effort. It is as if it was his superpower.

Darren naps calmly by the window

To my right, Darren naps serenely. The jovial figure of Bernie has just come over once more to ask that all-important question: where are we going [an address needed to put on our landing forms]?

The morning started out – well, actually, for me the morning did not really start at all. Mornings surely start after an evening has ended, and as I didn’t go to bed, the whole morning and night thing was more a strange gradual, graduated blend rather than two periods delineated by the boundary of certainty.

So, I waited in the cold and dark [at Victoria station] for the National Express coach 25 to take me to Gatwick. [At Victoria coach station] I found a random selection of folk, each with a tiny, wheeled hold-all, each ignoring the buses marked ‘A6 – Stansted Airport’. As long as there was no coach to Heathrow, it was surely the right place to be.

Vince dropped off in the aisle seat en route to Gambia

But it was a cold night, the start of many, according to the weathermen. Fabulously, this time around, I was not destined to find out whether London would in fact be ground to a halt by a blizzardous blitzkrieg on Thursday or whether schools, trains and roads would be closed shut on Friday, or just how often a Tannoy would begin a dolorous announcement with the phrase – ‘due to the inclement weather …’

I was due to go to the Gambia. I would soon by plucked out of London – like the eye Uma Thurman plucks out of Daryl Hannah’s head in Kill Bill Vol 2 – by Monarch Airlines and transported to Banjul, the capital of The Gambia. There I was due to meet some lovely people being assisted by the charity Play Action to find out what they are and who they’re helping here. I know very little about it so far. But here it is.

Incidentally, my confirmation letter said I’d be off on the Friday, to return the following Friday. But that was wrong, I discovered on the Sunday. In concluding a talk with Vince – one of the charity’s organisers and also my cousin – he began a concluding sentence to our conversation with: “The flight on Tuesday … “

“Woah! Woah! Woah! Woah! Wait!” I pleaded. “Tuesday? I thought it was Friday!”

“No!” he replied. “It’s Tuesday.” Having planned a week of finishing some work and applying for jobs, I had some thinking to do, especially as my financial position right now is the equivalent of putting a bit more water in an empty washing up liquid bottle to see if you can get one more set of glasses and plates cleaned with it. Monday would be my day of finding water.

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The coach came on time, at a few minutes before 3.30AM. We piled on, the hold-all holders and I. Even the super groovy, young guy who seemed to have nothing to say except to succinctly kiss his teeth intermittently while cuddling the most beautiful girl you ever did see. So cuddled she seemed to be oblivious to the world. Unlike her sentry. I dubbed him Young Stchoopsie, after the Trinidadian word (as I understand it) for kissing one’s teeth.

Young Stchoopsie seemed to be looking at me every time my eyes wondered inadvertently in his direction, giving me a look that was an N-Dubz remix of the Beat’s “Hands Off, She’s Mine”. I can’t be sure I was really looking. But then again, maybe I was.

The coach crawled through south London with barely heat or passion. No motorway roar, no comfort, no relaxation. Just a creak through Clapham and Brixton and, I suppose, Streatham and Mitcham, the silence pricked and sliced by the shrillness of an Italian girl who could be heard, but [could] not herself hear. Her subtle male companion would tell her something or other to which her immediate response would be “AH?”

Gatwick was cruel. We arrived just as I was feeling a wafer of comfort from the morning/night. A bit of sleep; a bit of warmth. A dream of some sort. Though what, I can’t recall. And so I waited to check in – due for 6AM. It was 4.30 when I arrived.

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Currently, we’re flying over the Sahara – so breathtaking is this sight that I felt I had to write shit down. I had this thought. It’s like you gave a box of sand to an idiot savant and he creates in to hours something so marvellous, bold sometimes, subtle others, streaked and moulded and shadows and light that the best you can offer is stunned silence. It’s magnificent. I poked Darren to show him, because he was so excited to see it.

Not terribly discerning picture of the desert, but there it is

Darren, whom I’ve never met before was so kind and comforting earlier that I’ve been really touched. Really affected. At about noon, following our 9AM departure, the plane encountered some high altitude turbulence. It’s that stuff that takes your gentle 29,000 ft cruise and turns the flight into a narrative of plunges and climbs, sudden lurches left, shudders and rattles.

Nothing is more guaranteed to send me into a blind panic. I practically climbed up the fuselage with a low moan, my eyes agog. I grabbed both hand rests as a dog would if it had thumbs and was sat in a chair at the vet’s. Darren reached over and gave me a comforting grip – almost a handholding – but in a very masculine and undoubtedly comforting way. As a loner, this simple act, and his reassurance that “It’s okay, brother” meant for that slice of the flight, as the atmosphere became Incredible Hulk with a grudge against our puny A300 somewhere in the sky above Morocco, I was able to maintain an emotion that was not ‘beside myself in terror’.

And so we saw the Sahara, that vast expanse of sand and nothingness, that now looks as if it barely exists below us. It’s wonderful. It’s 14.00 on 9/2/10. I can’t believe I’m here.