Market Garden Project in The Gambia

Last year, as President of Soroptimist International of Slough, Windsor and Maidenhead, I chose, as my President’s charity, to support a project being undertaken by our friends of the Banjul (The Gambia) Soroptimist club. They are helping to develop market gardens run by local village women; these will enable them to not only feed their families but also to sell produce to buy other basic necessities. Through the hard work of Jacky Flynn and her fund raising team, and the support of our club members, we were able to give £3000 to SI Banjul for the project.

I have recently been fortunate enough to visit The Gambia with a friend, Anthea Naylor of SI Reigate and my first visit to Africa was certainly an experience! Thanks to the help of Angela Andrews, Federation Councillor for The Gambia, we stayed in a hotel in the tourist area, away from Banjul and nearer to where all the SI Banjul members live. The hotel was delightful but it was a bit disconcerting to meet monkeys and a four and a half feet monitor lizard on the way to breakfast. She also arranged two day trips, one in a four wheel drive (actually a converted army lorry) through the countryside and visiting a village, a school, a family compound, an open air museum and one of the nicest beaches in The Gambia. The other was a called a “lazy day cruise” and was just that – a cruise among the mangroves on the tributaries of the River Gambia, eating and drinking, swimming, fishing, bird watching etc. Gambians are lovely friendly people (Gambia is known as the smiling coast) and always want to come up and shake hands and ask you how you are.

The highlight of the trip was, of course, the visit to the garden project and the journey was an adventure in itself. We were met by President Elizabeth and Catherine Goswell (their former FEC, whom we met at the Barbados conference). A bit later on we joined up with another taxi carrying 4 more of the Banjul members including Beatrice Prom, their Programme Action Coordinator, who several of us met at the Manchester and Cardiff conferences. All went well for a while as we travelled on a tarmac road south to the town of Brikama. Shortly after that we left the road and travelled on a dirt track which was very deeply rutted because of the heavy rains during the wet season. Fortunately, our driver was very sensible and drove slowly, even asking us to get out and walk in the really bad bits. The driver in front obviously thought that he was taking part in a grand prix as he set off at great speed and missed seeing an old tree stump, which ripped open his oil sump. This didn’t seem to phase the Gambians one bit; the drivers pushed the car off the road and the ladies in that car started to walk the rest of the way. Our taxi took us on to Kabekel, one of the villages supported by the project where the village ladies were waiting to greet us in their best dresses. Once there, we sat under the tree in the village square and were fed fresh peanuts by the local ladies (they even peeled them for us – obviously they thought we Europeans weren’t up to that!) whilst Elizabeth and Catherine persuaded the driver to go back and pick up the others.

President Elizabeth and the village ladies took us around the fields which were full of very healthy looking crops. That morning, they had just started harvesting the year’s second rice crop (grown during the wet season). Harvesting will carry on over the next two to three months and is a very labour intensive activity as everything is done by hand with quite primitive tools. All of the rice will be kept by the ladies for their families as it is their staple food. As areas are cleared of rice, vegetables such as okra, cabbage, sweet potatoes and tomatoes are planted. They keep some of these to eat but most are sold to pay for the basic necessities, including their children’s education. One of the things which members of SI Banjul have done is to help them market their produce more effectively. They were getting about 100 dalasi (£2.50) for a huge bowl of okra and are now getting about D480 (£12.00).

To put the money into context, our funding raising amounted to about D130,000. It has been used to pay for:

• Wood for fencing
• Men to build the fences (these are nearly complete but they intend to buy some barbed wire to make the fences more secure)
• Seed – now that they have improved their marketing, they are being asked to grow particular varieties of vegetables
• Packaging (again this is tied up with the marketing)

I have no doubt in my mind that they are using our money well and will continue to do so (they have only spent the first third of it so far). They work extremely hard and live in conditions which we would not countenance in this country but they seem happy and contented with their lives. Despite the fact that we had no common language, it was absolutely clear to me that they are enormously grateful for our support.

Eventually, we left (and passed the broken down taxi with the driver having a nap under a nearby tree) and had an uneventful journey back to our hotel in Kotu. We later learned that the rest of the Banjul Soroptimists were picked up by a local policeman, who took them to Brikama where they were able to get a taxi home. And the poor taxi driver? He was towed by a tractor to Brikama, where the sump was patched and filled with oil and the taxi was soon back on the road carrying passengers.

The next evening, we were invited to meet other members of SI Banjul at the home of Aminatta. We ate a feast of typical Gambian dishes which were cooked by all the members. We had terrific hospitality from our friends in SI Banjul and were very impressed by all the work which they are doing. In addition to the garden project, they also sponsor the women’s surgical ward in Banjul hospital and sponsor the education of a dozen or so girls. I feel that the £3000 which we raised has been put to good use and will make a real difference to the lives of the villagers in the Kombo Central District.