When I say the word Gambia, I’m overflown by the memories of laughter, brown colour, braids, drums, dance, board games, the boat, red soil, crocodiles, tapalapa, the rickety van, Slovenian song “Kranjski Janez” and other songs. I’m overwhelmed by the wonderful memories I’ve experienced during my three weeks of volunteering in The Gambia through Charity Pearl humanitarian organization.
Let’s start at the beginning.
LAUGTER
When I think of a smile, I see a brown round face with a smile from ear to ear and a gap between the upper two teeth – Ebrima. Even when I first saw him, I smiled at his carefree smiling face that showed happiness, curiosity and liveliness. I was fascinated by his smile which was full of the joy to live. That smile stayed with me throughout my three weeks of staying in Senegambia and still now when I’m home, I smile when I see a gap between teeth on a mischievous child’s face.
KINDERGARTEN
We taught the children at Mo-beta Nursery, which is slowly growing into a primary school, every day, from Monday to Saturday. We were part of a summer camp, which took place in July and August 2014. Timi (a volunteer from Slovenia) and I were teaching children aged from five to six years in Nursery 3. We had a lively but calm and curious class.
First we assessed their level of knowledge through play and different tasks, ranging from simple to more advanced, on which we based our future activities. We saw that the children have a lot of knowledge, but very little understanding. That’s why we wanted to work mainly on that. We were learning about the human body together, how and why certain body parts are used and about human senses. We traced one of the children with a crayon, the children coloured it and we named the body parts together.
We learned new things through play and revised the old ones. We learned about orientation in space, because I was surprised that 6-year olds don’t know what’s left and right. We repeated the numbers to 20, colours and shapes. The children became more familiar with life under the sea, we learned to act out the story about The Rainbow Fish and also made the fish ourselves. They learned new songs, games and got used to hygiene and order at lunch time. The boys and the girls were competing against each other in sports games, where I uncovered another surprise: the girls were better than the boys in most cases.
There was a timeline on the wall in the classroom which showed what we did every day. It enabled us to revise everything during the morning circle and then we went on with the program. I felt great as a teacher in my class and I enjoyed it very much. Every day was a new challenge, how to introduce a subject to the children that they are going to need in life.
TAPALAPA
When I think of the word tapalapa, I feel the fresh taste of the heavy and dense bread preferred by Gambian manual laborers. The locals gave us strange looks when they saw that us tuobabs (white people) buy them every day and that we like them. There are many memories connected to the tapalapa but the strongest one is of a boy, who was chatty and smiling like all Gambians. One evening three of us went out to buy bread. After we went to three stores and didn’t have luck with bread anywhere, we decided to try at another shop. There was a young boy sitting in front of it with dark brown eyes and a lively look. While the other two girls were busy buying bread (fortunately they had it) I got into a conversation with the boy in front of the store. We were cracking jokes about tapalapa, workers and the bread shortage in Senegambia. Because I praised tapalapa, he promised me that he will get them for me the next day for 6 dalasis (the regular price is 7). I agreed to this deal and we happily went home because now we had bread for breakfast and dinner. It’s true we didn’t go to the shop next day because we had enough tapalapa, but I went the day after. The young man didn’t even have to be reminded about his promise, he recognized me straight away. He said that a true Gambian always keeps his promise which is why he will pay for all my bread. I didn’t agree because this wasn’t our original deal. But he insisted and that day we got tapalapa for free. While we were walking in the market a couple of days later, a car suddenly started honking and the young man from the store put his head through the window and yelled excitedly: „Tapalapa, tapalapa!“ Now the word forever carries the face of this young man in my mind, who payed for the bread of a volunteer, although he is barely getting by himself, just because they had a little chat.
DRUMS
Even now when I’ve been home for a month, the sound of drums still echoes in my dreams and I feel like dancing although I’m not a good dancer. They really got under my skin. I loved it when a children’s song in kindergarten finished with drums and when the melody turned into a dance. I admired the drummers who put their heart and soul into the street drumming competition and the end result were beautiful beats. I was surprised when a young man sat with us on the beach and started teaching us how to play; we had a jam session: drums, a singer, palm tree-back vocal. I will never forget the image of the sea, the sand, palm tree houses and the decaying boat holding two boys and two girls. And of course the melody: „soon or later, it’s better to come today.
SLOVENIAN SONG KRANJSKI JANEZ
It happened one evening when a group of volunteers was preparing for the Saturday lessons in the kindergarten and we were brainstorming how to introduce Slovenia to the children. „Let’s teach them an action song“, suggested Spela. It was a good idea but we had problems finding the right one. Timi solved the problem when he suggested Slovenian song Kranjski Janez. We knew it was the right choice after Timi, Zana and Spela performed it. And it was true, we didn’t sing it only the next day but Kranjski Janez, with his hat, red carnation, suspenders and shepherd’s crook became some sort of summer camp anthem. The children and the teachers learned it right away although the lyrics aren’t easy. I was surprised at the speed of their learning: they hear it twice, the third time they already sing along. They found it very interesting and they liked singing it. We sang it countless times at the kindergarten, to the Gambian journalist, to the children of the town Nyemtempo in upriver Gambia, in the van during the drive …
THE VAN
I have to dedicate a special paragraph to our beloved van and our driver to Buba. It was a white van with red roses on the windows and the door that only he knew how to open. We drove to the kindergarten with it every day and he took us on all the trips too. And what made this van so special? It witnessed all of our playful conversations, singing Slovenian songs, yelling the kindergarten anthem on top of our lungs, expectations, tired volunteers, who fell asleep on the way home exhausted from heat and hard work, drive on the president’s safari, hauling water from the store, president passing by, sunsets, holes on the road … Although we were thrown around and we got many bruises, we loved it. When we got another van (which had a television by the way) we complained and wanted our old van back. And we were happy like children in a candy store when we got it back after two days. Even an old rickety van can make you happy in the Gambia.
Buba was a very shy driver at first who was just doing his job. After daily drives and seeing that tuobabs (white people) are a bit crazy, he became a lively driver who went on trips with us, climbed on palm trees, taught us how to dance, played the drums, took our photos …
SOCIAL BOAT WITH CROCODILE ON RED SOIL DECORATED WITH BRAIDS
There were so many experiences that it’s difficult to summarise them into a single story: there are the board games we played in the evening and laughed while creating new rules for UNO; the brown skin that was different at first, but soon white skin turned brown and felt more at home alongside it; the boat drive from Barra to Banjul where they fought who gets to carry us ashore, breathtaking colorful boats at Colourful Village, Kachikally Crocodile Pool, where I go to pet a crocodile for the first time; the inescapable red soil; the black braids that the teacher of Mo-beta made all over my head with the help of fake hair and which brought the spirit of Gambia to Slovenia.
I spent wonderful weeks in the Gambia which are now a part of me. I’ve captured a piece of Gambia in my palm that is like African fabric: rough at first, but it becomes soft with washing while always colourful and lively.
Meta Zgur
