Gambia - a sixth trip

By James Holden, African Oyster Trust Founder
Written 12th January 2009

Tomorrow we’ll be opening a clinic near the town of Gunjur – a reasonable sized town deep in the south of The Gambia near to the border with the Casamance region of Senegal. It’s not safe to go across the border into Casamance just now. As any Gambian will tell you, there are murderous rebels at large demanding independence from Dakar control. Travel a bit further south of Gunjur to Kartong and you have to pass through a miliarty checkpoint whiles a teenager waves a rifle in your face while smiling and asking ‘how is de day?’. That’s the Gambia all over – a place of sweet and sour irony that somehow manages to make you smile despite everything.

The clinic will cater from well over 1,500 children and it’s the first one they’ll ever have had. It’ll be stocked with paracetemol, basic malarial and ringworm treatment drugs, disinfectant cream, bandages and plasters. That will be pretty much all the medical care that most of the children will ever get. Even if they are really sick there won’t be that much more help available, not unless they are incredibly lucky and find someone to sponsor them – usually kind-hearted tourist.

They’re happy enough playing in the sun and their dusty school yard, but about half of them won’t make it beyond their teenage years, and every woman loses one or more children to a preventable illness or accident of one kind or another. It’s salutary, and when I first came here I just couldn’t get my head around it all. I still can’t at times.

Note: We will be publishing further extracts from James' trip diary over the coming weeks. For more information on our work in Gunjur, click here.