For ten years or so, I have been keeping in touch with a young Gambian, met when I was holidaying in his country. Not long ago, he gave up trying to make a living as a birdwatchers’ guide because Ebola had decimated the tourist industry, rented a plot of land and began to grow water melons, with the dream of having a market stall or even a little shop, where his wife would sell them and other ‘daily basics comodeties’.
I admired his enterprise and shared his excitement as the first shoots began to appear, but have been so obsessed with Trump and Theresa May and the disappearance of a Labour Party, that I had not noticed what was going on in the Gambia, so to read this, in an e-mail the other morning, was more of a shock than it should have been. I quote:
I hope you might hear what is going in the Gambia because you are current on the news any way people scared shoulders are all over the country with heavy weapons it look like they are ready to fight and Senegal is saying if he say he is not going to give up they will flush him out by force people even started to evacuate there families to Senegal in my village every day people are living their compounds to Senegal very few are left in my village . . . . *
Thinking that, before acting, I should get a clearer idea of what is going on, and that I needed to do this fast, as communications could break down entirely, I googled the British Embassy website and rang a number which seemed appropriate: if you are concerned about a British national in The Gambia . . .
Of course, Ebrima is not a British National, but I still did not expect to get no further than the switchboard. Was there really no one available to comment on Gambians leaving their compounds and fleeing to Senegal . . . ?
Apparently not.
But how could I give up on Ebrima who told me he was going to name his first child after me, long before he knew its sex! Happily, the first of his three children was a girl, or there would now be a little Muslim boy called Esther in that Gambian village, or perhaps already on his way to Senegal
* Ebrima owes his remarkable command of English to the local Islamic Institute where he received his education.