My trip to the Gambia was the second portion of my college course/trip. After spending a few days in Senegal, it was time to move on to the Gambia. The most rewarding experience from my time in the Gambia was a home stay that I did in a traditional Gambian village. Here is my account of this experience:

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Today we left the beautiful Coco Ocean Resort and headed towards a village near Tandaba. We participated in a festival with the village as well as with other students from Juniata College. The festival started as soon as we got off the bus. There were two drummers and a guy dressed up in a red costume on stilts. We walked up and down the streets of the village. All the little kids ran after us and we held hands with them as we walked. We then made our way to a large circle where we were able to sit down. We got assigned our host family for that night and then went back to the circle for more drumming and dancing. Boy do these people like to dance. Everyone in the village gets up and dances the whole entire day. We had a tailor make us matching shirts, so we blended in well with the villagers. When watching the dancing, I always had at least one kid sitting on my lap. Occasionally, a classmate or a mother would pull me from the perimeter of the circle to come and dance. I would bring some of the kids and they had a fun time.

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We went back to the where our buses were parked to go eat lunch. The village mothers brought out these huge dishes that had rice, chicken and vegetable in them. What I did not realize was that this lunch must be eaten with your hands. I understand eating maybe some vegetables with your hands but rice? I even eat popcorn with a spoon so you can imagine how different this must have been for me. So two students from Juniata, myself, and two other W&J students all sat on the ground around one of these huge plates and ate lunch. I ate the rice with my hands and they were so sticky. They did not have utensils so I had no choice.

 

After lunch, we went back to the festival. There was more dancing, drumming, and music. I think people from other villages came over to the festival too because there were more people than there were before. My friends and I played with the local kids and got pictures with them. We tried to go see the local mosque, but some lady yelled at us and tattled on us to some other guy. We went back to the festival and the kids followed us. A wrestling match was going on and it was quite intense. The festival got quite loud, so I went back to sit around the buses. The kids followed us again. We taught the kids head, shoulders, knees, and toes and some other short things in English. I have never seen so many happy kids in my life.

            

After a long day of festivities, it was time to go back to our host family for dinner and sleep. I met up with my host, who was a 16-year-old guy. He spoke very broken English, but enough that I understood him. It was pitch black at this point when we were walking back to his home. Each student was paired with a different host family so we all parted different ways. I used the flashlight on my phone to make sure I wouldn’t trip on anything. It was around 7:00 when we arrived. His house is very small: 3 rooms, one for his father, one for his mother, and one for him. There was not electricity and no running water. The walls seemed to be made of mud or hard clay. I was surprised that there were no little kids in his family. I had seen so many back at the festival and now there were none. We waited around for dinner and I tried to ask him questions. He seemed a bit shy and the language barrier often got in the way.

            

My host is 16 years old and is in 10th grade at a secondary education school. He mentioned that he goes to school Monday-Friday and the school is over an hour away by foot. And he walks everyday… Today he had afternoon school from 12:00-6:10. He hopes to go to college after 12th grade. He said that the University of Gambia is too far away so he will go to another university first and then transfer to the University of Gambia later. There were long moments of awkward silence so I pulled out my course booklet for this class and began showing him the maps. He seemed very intrigued by the maps and would study them for minutes each. I asked him to show me where Gambia was on the map and he pointed to a place but it was incorrect. I was very taken aback by this. He kept telling me, “This is very nice book.” I am curious to see if students have access to maps. There were also maps of the United States in our book so I was able to show him where I live. He also enjoyed looking at the pictures in the book even though he did not know what they were.

 

It was now dinner time and we had a big plate of rice. I ate only a little bit because I was not very hungry. We went to bed around 9:30 and I slept in his bed. The mother gave me a very small pillow but he slept without one.

 

Another very rewarding experience was visiting a local village school:

 

Today we visited the local Tandaba school. This school holds grades 1-6 and has 67 students. There are three classrooms at the school and a teacher in each classroom. We visited each grade level and met each teacher. We started with the fifth and sixth graders. I was surprised by how much the classroom had. There were tons of posters, a chalkboard, desks and chairs, and all the students had textbooks. After seeing the poverty in the Gambian villages, I thought for sure that the schools would have much less. The chalkboard is divided in half: one half for the sixth graders and one half for the fifth graders. The teacher will give a lesson and present an activity to the sixth graders. While the sixth graders are completing their activities, the teacher will give a lesson to the fifth graders. This will repeat until it is time to change to the next subject. The students have English, Mathematics, Science, a class about health and culture and the Koran. The principal of the school explained that the government provides a curriculum and textbooks for the school. There are three different kinds of schools in The Gambia. There are public schools, mission schools, and private schools. The Tandaba school is a top ranked public school in the Gambia. They score very high on their end of the year state exams. We had the opportunity to look through the students’ textbooks. The students were learning science at the time. They were learning about circuits. There were many science experiments in the textbook with circuits. However, I doubted that they would have all the materials to perform these experiments. I approached the principal and asked her about the materials and she said she does her best to find the needed materials around the school and the village. I also asked the principal about the cost of the text books and she said that they are about $5 US dollars and are updated every three years.

 

We then went to the third and fourth graders classroom where they were learning math. The fourth graders were learning how to subtract decimals and the third graders were learning long division. This brought back many memories. Their teacher was in training and is 23 years old. Some of my classmates attempted to teach a few problems to the class. We were a bit out of practice. We soon left this classroom and went into the first and second grade classroom. They were learning Arabic from the Koran. This teacher was 28 years old. I am amazed how well the children cooperate and how badly they want to learn. The last room we saw was the school library. I was a bit disappointed with the library. All the books were covered in dust. There was no organization or structure and the book choices were very poor. For example, there was a set of Encyclopedias and a book on how to play the recorder. I do not think that these children would get much out of these books. I wish that I could go in and restructure the library and bring new and exciting books for these kids. Books such as the Magic Tree House Series or Junie B. Jones would allow these children to use their imaginations. Additionally, colorful but informative nonfiction books about certain topics would also be useful.

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My other favorite part about visiting the Gambia was walking with the lions. I was waiting for this the entire trip. The lions were very calm and were very beautiful. I was in my happy place. Food in Gambia- pretty much bread, rice, chicken, and fish. I ate this every single day. I was really craving a fresh piece of fruit during the entire trip. Culturally, the Gambia has some of the nicest people I have ever met. They have so little but would do anything for us to make us feel welcome. Sometimes, they are a bit too friendly. 

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I am extremely grateful for having had the opportunity to go to the Gambia. I learned a lot about their culture and quickly learned to be grateful for what I have. 

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