Mawgablog

If you’re a regular (haha!), you might have seen my previous entry about my trip to The Gambia with Play Action UK, a newish nonprofit organisation dedicated to youth workers in the UK and Africa. The trip was all about getting a youth centre off the ground in the city of Basse (pronounced Bassay) way inland, up the Gambia river.

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The Gambia is a funny little country, like a finger poked into Senegal, following long and skinny along the Gambia river. Banjul, the capital is situated near the enormous mouth of the river at the Atlantic coast, so a couple of days of the trip were spent driving inland. I spent time scrawling in green and purple ink in my gift Moleskin book trying to note what was going on, what I was thinking at the time, and, as Leonard Cohen once droned, “keeping some kinda record”.

Anyway, here’s evidence of day 2, pretty much word for word from my notebook.

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And so we’re on to day 2. We’ve just been to the Gambia National Youth Council (NYC) building to be welcomed by the executive secretary Marchel Mendy, who runs the NYC. Hence the scrappy writing. I’m in the back of the pickup, writing.

I’ll tell you about how I came to be Mr Tapalapa here in the Gambia. Bernie from London and Sosa from the NYC here went out early today to get coffee and breakfast. For five Dalasis you get a piece of bread, like a baguette, called a tapalapa. It’s extremely fresh and soft and a little bit sweet. Being that I was very hungry I really fancied it. And I was so delighted by the word ‘tapalapa’ that I couldn’t stop saying “Tapalapa!”

(We’ve just driven past the presidential palace and noticed vultures in the trees. Funny political metaphor.)

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Right now we’re bobbing across the Gambia river beneath a raging equatorial sun. There’s a chug-chug of diesel, like an idling lorry guiding us benevolently to what I think is the north bank. There’s not much to do except wait for deliverance. It is 12.55.

I’m still freaked out by Marchel Mendy’s figure, that 67% of this 1.6 million-strong country is aged 18-30. That’s absolutely insane. Sobering perhaps. I’m also revelling in my new name, Mr Tapalapa.

I’m trying my best to be able to speak a word or two of the local non-European languages. People here speak mostly Mandinka and Wolof. I can just about say thank you in both: abaraka and geragef, respectively. Abaraka seems to get a decent response. Geragef, well, maybe my Wolof accent leaves a lot to be desired. But effort is everything, right?

I even just managed a conversation in broken, knackered, clapped out French with a

Francophone Gambian, whose name has just eluded me. I was able to ask him whether he was from Gambia or France (Gambia), his name, to tell him I was from England, London to be specific, and to find out that he had a little brother called Ibrahim.

It is 13.05 and we’re turning around to dock on the opposite side. Bernie’s work boots have split in the sole, and a passenger has just produced a jar of noxious solvent – having earwigged the

situation – in order to fix it.

The funny thing here is that everyone – or rather, the young men – are on a permanent hustle. It’s as benevolent a hustle as a hustle can be, but it’s very much a hustle. We’re attracting a fair bit of attention because, well, to be honest, we’re such a mixed team. Three young white girls, and old white guy, a dreadlock and bald-heads me and Vince. Darren’s dreads have been incredibly popular. Everyone calls out “Rasta!” He takes it in good grace, of course.

Then, they come over to help you. As fellow black people, there’s this sense that

they’re curious to know about you, where you come from, the sort of fellowship of brotherhood. Your name, where you’re from, etc. Then there’s the help. They want to give you some help, carrying, fixing, etc. Some guy was talking to Vince, and produced brushes and shoe polish from a bag and began shining boots. It looks like help, but it is hustle. If you have nothing to give, they’re forlorn, but accepting and give you God’s blessing all the same. It makes you slightly wary to engage in conversation, as you wonder what’s the end game. But people here are

stupendously warm and welcoming and relatively proud of their small country of 1.6 million, most of whom are children and young adults.

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It’s 14.20 in the afternoon and we made it safely to the north coast of the river, to Barra. We then negotiated a second car, as the pickup truck trying to take, like eight people-plus was never going to be sufficient for our trip to Basse.

We’re in a long Peugeot estate, a station wagon as the Americans say, with an extra set of seats in the back. Darren and Vince are there, with Sol, Ams and Abdoulaye in the middle and me in the driver up front. The road is endless and largely cut through a dry expanse of red soil and scrubland, much of it showing evidence of recent large-scale burning. There are children everywhere. They’re all so young, vivid blue and white clothes, round black bald heads on buys, Muslim head coverings for the girls, all of whom look like incarnations of 1960s black power ideals of African queens and princesses centuries back; dignified, dark, stately and unfathomably beautiful.

We’re miles away from anything. There’s no sign of street light, telegraph pole, the lot. But Sol is, at times, on the phone to the pick-up.

I was wondering, what do we mean when we say “development”, when were talking about this place? What does it mean? Do we need this place too be built up, urbanised, bureaucratised? Commercialised?

What do this people ‘need’? You know, there’s no KFCs and McDonalds or any of that here. People here are lean and strong and purposeful, and they are staggeringly commercial-minded and driven. The kids you see in their blue uniforms – cobalt and clean – walk for miles and sacrifice so much just to learn. What do they ‘need’? When I ask that, I don’t mean simply – I don’t mean to imply that they live in a world of ignorant bliss – far from it. The hustling kids you meet in town are restless and want so much more.

But what do they ‘need’? On thing struck me, though. I was thinking about the mobile phone and its ability to traverse featureless terrain. (As we came over a bridge into Kerrewan, a set of mobile masts rose up out of the horizon.)

I thought of the iPad and the potential that kind of technology has for places like this. It’s all relative of course. People here don’t ‘need’ YouTube. But just as mobile phones are an enabler of all things local here, personal and commercial, surely a mobile Internet on a touch screen device is also an enabler, once the price is right? But that’s surely like five years-plus away? For what, I don’t know. Really I don’t. But I think something’s up with that.

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It’s 16.00 – quick interview with the NYC programme co-ordinator Abdoulaye Faye at the Farafenni Youth Centre. Five kilometres left and right is Senegal. The centre has been around since 2003. It was redone in 2008. Local guy did the murals. Now in the minimarket.

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Time: 17.25. We’re heading east still, en route to Basse. Long ago, we were in Farafenni.

We are, in fact, in Wassu. I’ve just been informed that it is the home of the Wassu stone circle, a century’s old monument. I’m not sure what the stone circle was used for, but by the time I get to type this up, I will have checked it out and provided a link. It’s definitely UNESCO-protected.

We are still on the parched land, but everything is very, very   African village-looking. All around, you see small compounds with some sort of local brick construction, circular huts arranged in circles – from time to time cattle, goats and sheep wander into the road – cows in a nonchalant dare to drivers, goats more nervous and well aware that up against a 4×4 they’ll lose heavily.

We’re also subject to a lot of police and military check points. The first was by a lone soldier, all fatigues and severity, who glowered with authority that bordered on annoyance. He gripped very prominently what I imagine to by an M16 machine gun. In truth, I have no idea what type of gun it was. But it was his best and most intimate friend, follower and sensei.

He stood alone across 100m or so of road, with cars, buses and trucks pulled up on either side. He summoned them over, one by one, staring silent and severely. His eyes instantly and immediately said: “I am NO laughing matter. I WILL use this gun if I have to. Have-to is, to me, a very broad and imprecise term.

He was situated not far out of Barra. Upon our turn I thought, do not be seen to be using a camera or recording device.

At each check point I’ve put this notebook down and place my large hands over my pen.

In face, a second ago, we just passed one. The guns looked a bit like AK47s.

We’re at the crossing at Koto. It is 17.45.

We crossed into Janjebureh. There’s a slave fort there, a staging post for the slaves, where they would have been held before being transported west down the Gambia to join the Transatlantic trade triangle. Next to it was a prison in which they kept rebellious slaves, starving them of water – sluices let in water at high tides, in effect, until [the slaves] broke. Someone like me, with a whole load of my genes was in a place like either of those buildings before being taken aboard a bobbing misery to the West Indies. That’s a hell of a thing.