A visit to The Gambia |
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Returning to The Gambia after an absence of ten years I expected to see some changes, the airport is now a proper terminal - instead of a shed in the corner of a sandy airfield, there is now a metalled road which runs north-south of the country with a metalled cross roads which boast The Gambia's only traffic lights - but the smiles of the people are the same, the sense of safety in a strange country is the same, and when I arrived at the airport and saw Ismaila Sisay's face - ten years older but warm with affection in the crowd - I felt as if I had never been away, and I was sorry that I had ever left.
I wanted to visit a site where tourist money had been used to benefit the people and I was directed to his school where a tour company The Gambian Experience, had financed the building of the classrooms. He showed me around, and then he asked me: would I consider making a contribution to his next project - a well for the school yard? He told me that a garden in the school yard would supplement the children’s diet of rice from the World Health Organisation, would teach them sustainable agriculture, and might even make a small profit which could be used to buy books and stationary for the school. I decided to take a chance on this stranger and gave him the full cost of the well: £300. A fortnight later, when I was back in England, he sent me a fax to confirm the well was on stream. It seemed like a small successful miracle of trust. Then he told me that the next door school had asked could they have a well. It seemed an utterly reasonable request, and I wrote an article in Woman’s Weekly – a UK women’s magazine, asking for donations. They poured in, in small and larger amounts and Ismaila and I started a partnership which has gone on to build more than sixty wells in Gambian primary schools, and put a few wells into community gardens and other venues. On this, my first return in so long to The Gambia, Ismaila had a demanding schedule for me and Ed Hansen, the BBC North East documentary producer who had asked me if he could come too, and make a film about the project. Ismaila was desperate to show me how much had been achieved and how much more he hoped we could do. We started with a well that needed only a pulley and a rope to complete, and arrived through a road lined with singing and cheering children.
To my dismay I learned that the pressures on the World Health Organisation (and this was before the terrible effects of the tsunami) mean that they are withdrawing their feeding programme in most of the schools. Our little gardens which have done so much good in supplementing feeding programme, will now have to step up their game and be the main provider in these schools or the children will go hungry from morning till evening. We visited school after school to the same enthusiastic welcome, and again and again had the same sense of the urgent need that our wells are assisting. The country is the poorest in Africa (excluding those damaged by war) and the people work tremendously hard and effectively with the little help they get. The climate is getting drier and the Sahara desert is encroaching. One of our wells at the village of Kerr Mama, which was on stream at a depth of 30m ten years ago, is now dry. We are helping the village apply for a government-paid pump to reach the water and they may have to go down 50 m – too deep for one of our hand-dug rope and bucket wells. Some things we will develop with your help in the future. We have put two wells into women’s gardens. One is a brand new well – we shall have to see how they get on. It was paid for by the BBC and they have named it the Inside Outside well after the documentary title. The other is a success story which delighted me. The women were so successful in producing vegetables in the garden based around our well, that the Gambian Agricultural Research Authority asked them to trial some rice strains. The women hand-dug earthworks around a massive forty acres and used our well and the rains to flood the area to grow rice. They brought off a magnificent crop, and now they are responsible for the biggest paddy field in The Gambia. They produce and sell good yields of early rice, they feed their own villages and they distribute seeds to other farmers. It is a tremendous success story and it started with one little three hundred pound well given by us.
It took us nearly all day to drive to it going almost cross country on roads which are nothing more than sandy tracks. The farmers there, were aware that their lands were getting drier and their yields poorer. On their own initiative they agreed that they should form an agricultural college and try and improve their farming. A few years ago they asked us for a well. That was just the start of it. With our well at the centre of their fields they applied to Canada and European governments for aid. They now have a residential block for visiting trainees, a seed bank, a centre for alternative technology, tutors, a restaurant, an orchard, a vegetable plot, an explosion of projects and enthusiasm which is rolling out across the country – all based on our first little well. The village of Njawarra used to be a colonial centre of some importance but when the British left it fell into disuse. In the centre of the village was a well, opened in 1962 by the Queen on a visit. The well had gone dry and had ceased to be used until a couple of local lads decided to renovate it. In their own time, and making their own bricks, they dug out all the rubbish and the earth from the collapsed well, they renewed the wall and the coping, and they have appealed to us for funds to renovate the area with trees for shade and a seat for the elders, and a small garden around the well. I wrote to HM The Queen and asked her if she would like to support ‘her’ well, and she very kindly said that she would, and sent a donation. In a moving and also comical ceremony the village elders who had greeted the Queen forty years ago, came to meet me and hear the news that she would support their well. They remembered the day that she had come up the River Gambia with Lord Mountbatten, and the celebrations which went on for days. They made long speeches of welcome and gratitude, as we stood in the burning hot sunshine. Ismaila, who was translating for me was visibly tiring. it was the end of a long day. One of the headmen tried to find words to describe the pleasure of the day when the Queen came to visit. Ismaila paused, searched for the right word… ‘It was Groovy,’ he told me.
I have seen how the benefits of one well can transform adult farming projects too – the women’s rice field and the Njawarra agricultural college are major sources of change in this poor country. I foresee that we will continue to invest in schools and well-organised groups. Of course, since my return also we have seen the terrible devastation caused by the tsunami and the desperate need of the people whose lands were in its path. There are moments when I think we all feel that there is too much to do, and that it is difficult to choose what one should do. But even in these circumstances I do ask you to contribute anything that you can readily afford to Gardens for The Gambia. Any sum of money will go direct to The Gambia and will make a tremendous amount of difference to people who really deserve a chance. If you can help at all, I thank you very, very much. Philippa Gregory Donations made payable to Gardens for the Gambia should be sent to: Gardens for The Gambia, |
In December 2004 Philippa revisited The Gambia to catch up with her charity and visit some of the new wells. 
Ismaila and I met a decade ago when he was a primary school teacher in one of The Gambia’s 250 schools and I was researching for the novel which would become the book, and then the BBC Drama Serial A Respectable Trade. 
The well has been on stream for a season now, and the garden is growing well, green, rich, well-tended and in orderly little beds each marked with the name of the child who has taken responsibility for their particular patch. The food they grow is taken to the school kitchens and prepared with the feeding programme rice for the poorest children. 
Since my return, just before Christmas we have started three new wells, and I am determined that this project will go on. It has directly fed thousands of school children and taught them methods of farming which will make their own children safer from hunger in the future.