The Gambia - Jammeh has Gone - What Now?

Small boys playing in a mechanic's yard near Banjul

The Gambia is a poor country that has tried to survive in the shadow of a cruel dictator who gained control through a military coup in 1994 when he was an ordinary soldier. One of his most outrageous acts was to claim he could cure aids. He regularly sent out his soldiers to kidnap innocent people in the dead of night under false charges of witchcraft. Banjul Prison is notorious for its practices of torture and execution, and many Gambians who "disappear" are believed to have been detained there. 

Most Gambians survive either through the vital tourist trade or through the harvesting of their natural crops, peanuts.

Now Yahya Jammeh has taken himself off to Guinea with a fortune equivalent to over 11 million pounds, leaving a terrible legacy of poverty behind him.

Here is a video by the BBC showing joyful Gambians celebrating the tyrant's defeat.

Jubilation in Banjul

Having taught in The Gambia in 2009 and read many press reports in the independent newspaper The Point, I just hope Gambians will find the resources and support they need to gain their longed-for democracy and a decent standard of living. But it will be a hard slog.

The Tourist Trade - Will it Recover?

As a result of Jammeh's election defeat and final ousting, tourists have flocked back to Europe, depriving Gambians of much needed revenue to buy even basics like rice to feed and support their families. 

It's not hard to figure out the attraction between comparatively wealthy, mature Europeans and impoverished young Gambian men. It also works the other away around, as elderly men and young Gambian women seek each other out for mutual benefit. While this is not an ideal situation for young Gambians, it is an essential way of surviving and supporting their families.

It can be wearing for a woman travelling alone in The Gambia; it's not possible to take a walk or go shopping without being followed and harassed and the persistence of these young men is relentless. The procedure is always the same: 'What is your nice name?' 'Where are you staying?' 'You are very beautiful.' It can be helpful to learn to say: 'Stop bothering me' in Wolof or Mandinka. Having a few basic phrases of their languages tells the locals that you, the visitor, are fully aware of their system.

Handsome young men in The Gambia all appear to have taken a degree in writing love letters by text. They all have a mobile as tourists often take their old phones to The Gambia, knowing how they are prized. The men mill around with time to spare, drinking ataaya, a very sweet green tea, at the roadside. This is a long, complicated process involving copious amounts of sugar, and then transferring the mixture, newly heated, from the hot coals, pouring to and fro from one glass to another while it thickens. They drink tea and wait for an opportunity, or just while away the day. 

As one charity worker told me, 'In The Gambia, courting European women is seen as a legitimate way to increase their income. Sometimes it all goes badly wrong and the man does a runner. But I have been surprised to observe a large number of very successful relationships between young Gambian men and older European women.'

Young Gambians have extended families to support

The truth is, most young Gambian women don't want them. The women prefer to pursue older European men who can support them and their own families, rather than destitute Gambians. Besides, no poor Gambian man wants to support a new family; there are already impoverished sisters with small children, elderly parents, aunts and uncles, a grandmother, all making demands on whatever little money he makes in the hotel/tourist industries, or as a craft artist or security worker. 

European women are a viable option. They are past child-bearing age, have expendable incomes and are sometimes lonely. The men need ready cash and often are lonely for female company themselves. Sadly, Europeans can also be regarded as trophy partners and there is frequently an unnerving subservience in the way Gambians behave towards them. Women are addressed as 'Boss Lady', an epithet most find repellent and sexist.

Yet most cultures make do with what's available and viable. Europeans in their home countries might be looking for an opportunity to better themselves through a relationship, seeking to attract a wealthy or beautiful partner, or mate without paying the price of responsibility. Gambians are pretty much in the same situation as many white women were in previous centuries, needing to find a good husband to rescue them, and sometimes their families, from hardship. Gambia, in some ways, seems to resemble the world of Jane Austen, transported to a different time and location and with different rules.

Just as in Jane Austen's time, today in The Gambia, as the charity worker explains, genuine relationships, even loving partnerships, can arise from this unpromising situation of economic necessity. Although it is hypocritical to judge, it does seem that any woman embarking on such a relationship takes a huge risk, both with her finances and her emotional well-being. There are cases of women who married their men, and faced the barrage of red tape and expense to bring them to their home countries, only to be abandoned once their partner was established. 

Having shaken himself free of his need for support, the young man realises he has choices for the first time in his life.

It is common for mixed-race couple to marry and set up their own apartment, paid for by the woman, who may choose to spend as much time in the Gambia with her man as she can, or even relocate there. Sometimes, though, the women can make unwise choices. An Englishwoman married a young Gambian doctor about thirty-five years her junior in the local mosque. At the ceremony the groom was offered five goats for his bride. A tried and tested little joke, just for the occasion; the Gambians know how to make Europeans feel at home. 

When the bride returned to UK a few days later, she remarked she wasn't sure if she'd ever come back to The Gambia. The wedding would not, in any case, be legal in England. It is hard not to feel cynical because she had nothing to lose since her young doctor had to remain where he was. 

Of course, it's still the practice for some more wealthy Muslim men to take multiple wives, and no doubt the runaway bride might send her husband money. It was refreshing, though, to speak to Gambian men who said they believed in the Western way of one-to-one partnerships.

Another Gambian/English couple regularly travelled to The Gambia with a van-load of gifts for the local people and supplies for schools; they already lived together in Brighton in England and had been in a committed relationship for about four years.

'He's so great-looking,' the woman says, 'I'm terrified he'll leave me one day. But I think it's worth the risk.' In the end, it really is a matter of personal choice, but it should, at least, be an informed choice.