Today, with huge pride in all the work that we have done, my partner in The Gambia and I have closed our charity and NGO Gardens for the Gambia. Those of you who have followed the progress of this little charity with big effects will know how much it has meant to me.

I founded it in 1994 by accident more than design, with a gift to a small rural school of the price of digging a well in the schoolyard. Then it was £250 and I was on a research holiday, working on the background to A Respectable Trade a novel about slavery in 18^th Century England. A trip out to a tiny rural school in the middle of dusty dry fields brought me to the head teacher Ismaila Sisay who asked me would I contribute to digging a well in the schoolyard. He told me that a well would be used to teach the children – mostly the children of subsistence farmers – how to irrigate for crops, and how to grow salad and food crops so that they did not have to rely on the increasingly unreliable Rainy Season. Around the garden they would plant nut trees and citrus trees and the products would be sold to provide stationary and pens for the schoolchildren who currently had to learn from rote – there were no schoolbooks or pencils.

It was such a little cost, and such a great project that I was happy to write a cheque for £250, and glad to hear from Ismaila that the well had been dug, had found water at about 15m, and they were planting the garden. He also said – (and this always makes me smile) – the next door school would like a well too!

It was such a lovely project, so simple in technology, so aligned to the needs of the people and how they could change and improve their own lives that I was glad to send another payment – and that started a process which turned, in the end, to a registered UK charity, a fund raising campaign, and an NGO in The Gambia. All the funds I raised I sent to The Gambia, and Ismaila commissioned well diggers, saw wells built, and gardens planted. Over the years we have commissioned more than 300 wells, Ismaila has visited England and I have returned several times to check on progress, and we have fed thousands of hungry children with the produce of the gardens.

Some wells stand out in my memory – the deep well we put into an urban school with a tap to serve the whole village with clean drinking water, the borehole we dug with International Rotary to service a clinic on the border of The Gambia and Senegal, and the well that we put in The Gambia’s sole agricultural college so that a generation of farmers could learn irrigated farming. And I will never forget the women’s co-operative who created a rice paddy starting with our well and brought off a crop of valuable rice. I danced with them (looking like an idiot of course) under a baobab tree to celebrate.

Of the many creations in my life, even including the novels, I think my wells in Africa have given me the most pride and pleasure. I can’t say that I planned the ending of the programme any more than I planned the beginning; but I started to think that if I could put as many wells in The Gambia as there are schools (250) and put most of the wells in rural schools then my work would be done. This year, I diverted all our funds into sending soap towels and disinfectant to the schools, and Ismaila and I agreed that the time had come to close down our project. We had an affectionate and emotional phone call and agreed to do one last well. I have made him, from my own funds a present to say thank you for years of loyalty and honesty which made the project possible, and created a triumph of collaboration between two strangers from two different cultures who were able to trust each other to improve the lives of children in the poorest peaceful country in Africa.

It’s been a truly wonderful experience. And I would leave it saying only to anyone who thinks of taking a risk and being generous – do it! If you can afford it – do it!