EID AL ADHA OR TOBASKI 2014 (PART TWO: 'AND I LIFT MY GLASS TO THE AWFUL TRUTH...')

So…

We’re back in The Gambia after only a year being away and not much has changed apart from the children have got a bit bigger all around the village.

Times have got a bit harder for the population because it would seem that all the money goes to feed and pay the army and everybody else gets to wait.

There is definitely an undercurrent of desperation all over, and we, living in the UK as we do, are regarded as rich.

That’s a laugh because if they only knew what we have to go through to get it, then maybe they wouldn’t think it, but because Haddy is in touch with most of them by ‘phone our closer friends know the truth.

Ok, we don’t live under a dictatorship but the way things are going UK wise right now, I wouldn’t be surprised if we flew back to find ourselves in one ?

It’s hard wherever you are right now and nobody is winning it would seem, except politicians and bankers…

So we go through the congratulations on new babies and commiserations over family bereavements and try and stay sane in the face of it all.

Because everything has been done in a bit of a rush we haven’t had any time to order anything up for Tobaski, but one of our neighbours has sorted some lamb out for the kids and now we are there we can chip in for some chicken for the following day.

Once Tobaski is out of the way we can relax.

Sainabou and Granddaughter Adama are going to be with us along with Baddou and most of his family and in all honesty that will do.

Sainabou and Adama

Mariama and Jalika look very pretty in their matching new outfits as does Ida when she pops over to join them, but Awa cannot decide which of hers to choose ?

Mariama, Jalika and Ida

Her husband had sent her money for one and she'd got the other done herself.

Decisions, decisions... 

Awa and Mum

Awa

Much to their disappointment the twins matching outfits were still at the tailors shop and not finished and so they were a little put out to say the least.

I know who WON'T be getting the contract to make them next year, so let's leave it at that...

Some of Baddou’s family are visiting friends.

In the compound with some of Baddou's family

Omar, the lad who had ‘nutted’ one of the nuisances last year was back but in Western clothes this year. 

Omar on the left and friend

He’s off with one of his mates and won’t be hanging about.

Too many and nobody will be able to get a word in…

Baddou's eldest daughter Haddy

Still, everybody who’s been told we’ve arrived seems happy to see us again and that’s a plus.

The minus is that I got put in charge of some of the cooking.

Now let’s get one thing straight from the start.

I CAN actually cook.

My problem is cooking with charcoal.

It’s alright being told how long to do it but the variables that come up regarding how much heat you are going to need mean that if I do it then it’s not going to be foolproof and it could come out a burnt mess ?

It didn’t, but I listened to Sainabou…

‘Uncle Chris, stop cooking it now or it will burn…’

‘Ok, I’m on it’.

As for our Granddaughter Adama, she still hasn’t got used to me and even cries if I give her wonjor, but she’ll get used to me eventually…

Hopefully ?

Kawsu

Tufa

Buba' Sanneh

And let's not forget all the children...

Little 'Tapha

Bubacarr

Pa Musa

 And then there’s the cat.

A very heavily pregnant Princess is definitely about to drop kittens which she proceeds to do on the second day of Tobaski.

If it’s not one thing, it’s another…

She’d made herself a bed in the darkest corner of one of Haddy’s two unrented shops where we store all the stuff we send out there, and about three days later she’d proudly picked up her kittens one at a time and taken them all into the house and into one of the girl’s bedrooms.

Unseen by any of the family of course, and so the first we knew about it was when the girls heard their piteous mewing when Princess had gone to eat…

Aaaaaarrrgh !!!

Ok you lot, out you come...

Much to their Mother’s annoyance of course.

But now they’re back safely in the corner of the shop.

Princess, the other new 'Mum'

Poor old Princess looks exhausted, as well she might with six new babies so I think we’ll have to do a cat food run on Monday when all the shops re-open.

And so Monday we went to the bank and then went shopping or at least we tried to, but everything we needed they were sold out of or they’d stopped selling it.

What the fuck is going on ?

Ok, it’s the end of the rainy season and the tourist season starts in about three weeks hence the astronomical air-fares but you’d think…

No.

Hang on…

It’s The Gambia so DON’T think, just go with it.

Which we would if we could, but it seems impossible ?

Try another supermarket…

Same as.

And another ?

That one is shut and looks like it’s closed down…

We’re not doing too well here, are we ?

Let’s go home before I blow a frigging gasket…

So back we go with pretty much sod-all of what we went out for.

We definitely need advice as to where to shop because I have no intention of going all the way to Sennagambia just to buy a few bits of food for us and the cats especially when they will all be marked up for tourists.

Right, we’ve taken advice and and neither of us has actually gone to where we’ve been sent, but we’ll have a go this afternoon …

Taxi back to our bank in Westfield and then a couple of roads walk and Voila !

There it is, but has it actually got anything we want ?

Yes, it has at least sixty per-cent of our shopping list including cat food.

I think we’ll have to ask somebody what’s going on when we get back because this has never happened before, well, not to us anyway ?

What an absolute pain in the arse.

We’ve wasted nearly one whole day trying to find somewhere that has a few ‘specialist’ food bits, like a small jar of Basil, some frozen chicken frankfurters and even cat food, but at least this place seems to have some of them, including the cat food…

Right… That’s that, so let’s get home before the rush hour starts, shall we ?

Well, that was a first-class failure.

We are now totally jammed in, cars are stuck front, behind and right.

I haven’t the faintest idea why it was so heavy on the road and neither has Haddy but the truth is that if we hadn’t had the shopping we could have walked it quicker than that taxi ride, but finally we’re back.

God knows what time Sibo will be back from school if it carries on like this ?

About nine fifteen and the poor girl is exhausted...

Come on Sibo, just get in the top twenty five and all this will stop.

It's going to be easier said than done if it carries on like this, though...

   

The reason the supermarkets haven’t got any stock is because they all seem to be changing hands ?

Apparently the President didn’t like the fact that most of them were Liberians and sending money home to their families.

So he basically ‘asked’ them to leave the country and that occurrence was quite recent, hence no bloody stock…

So now we know.

The following day is spent sorting out the boxes of clothing that we’d sent out.

There are three boxes going to Killy, mostly children’s clothes and the rest will be given out in the village to those that Haddy knows need it.

If you’ve ever tried sorting out eight boxes of clothing into male and female and then approximate sizes then you will know what it does to your arms and back.

Needless to say, I don’t recommend it.

The only thing we’ve kept back is the one bag from one box which are the clothes for the girls and which we’d bought specially, and those will have to wait until the following weekend when at least we can all be together, although the possibility is that we’re hitting one of the hotel’s swimming pools with the younger ones on one of the days ?

It hasn’t been decided yet but it does look likely.

EID AL ADHA OR TOBASKI 2014 (PART ONE: 'IT'S A LOSING PROPOSITION BUT ONE YOU CAN'T REFUSE...')

It feels odd flying into Banjul that bit later than usual.

Instead of the middle of the afternoon plus an hour-ish if there wasn’t a wind, that being the case we’d usually be there bang on time.

Now we’re heading in very late afternoon into that early evening bit which never seems to last that long in The Gambia ?

But that’s what being closer to the equator does for you.

Grab the bags when they come off the belt and promptly get a ‘pull’ for bringing in food.

There’s a bloody great ‘F’ chalk-mark on my suitcase now.

This is true.

I’ve brought along some of Haddy’s chillies to prove to the kids that we can grow hot ones in Britain too…

Which, strictly speaking, I shouldn’t have done without filling in a bloody great form that I’d probably have had to pick up from the High Commission in London, so I’d thought…

Yeah… You know what I thought, don’t you ?

And here comes another miscreant…

Apparently my wife has been ‘pulled’ for drugs…

And there’s a bloody great chalk marked ‘D’ on her suitcase !!!

‘Yes Officer… Yes, it is my wife… Honestly mate, I’m not making this up, this lady is definitely my wife…’

You couldn’t make this shit up, could you ?

The one bloody time that she didn’t bring a prescription for her diabetes pills.

I’ve got mine for my heart pills, ok it’s not been changed since last year but the pills are the same, and all my wife has is her name printed on the box label without the covering script.

The word ‘BOLLOX’ springs to mind…

Ten minutes with the ‘Official’ who gives us both a reprimand for ‘smuggling’, and we’re outside getting in the taxi and only one hundred dalasi and a couple of British chillies lighter…
So please, if you have to take any form of prescription medicine and you are traveling to The Gambia, remember to take a copy of your prescription about your person and honestly you can avoid all this.

See…

It’s not always WHO you know, is it ?

Sometimes it’s what you know…

I really do dislike that way of doing things because you never know what you could possibly be getting into, but it seems to be a fact of life here throughout most of society.

And I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it ?

We ask our driver to stop at the local supermarket at the top of the road where I can load up with a few drinks for me and the kids, cheese triangles and some biscuits and whatever Haddy wants, and then it’s a quarter of a mile down the road…

So we got there a day earlier than they were expecting us.

Hahahaha…

The look on their faces was priceless.

And then we’re covered in hugs…

Hi kids, we’re home…  

Everybody is there, even Sainabou and Adama are there, but Sibo is still at, or on her way back from school.

Apparently her new school has a system where all the Christian children get the first shift (there are two) and only the top twenty five of each year if you’re a Muslim ?

I’m not sure she’s going to like that system because she’ll never see Ida or Jalika until late and she's stuck in the house doing jobs until lunchtime when she goes to school.

Oh well, she knows what she has to do to change it, and by the end of the first term too…

That is going to be a bit of a bummer to say the least.

As is the fact that the children’s schools will not be closing for a Tobaski holiday as the President has decided to take that week of celebrations and move it to the week that he and his celebrate their coup-de-tat anniversary…

Which is definitely going to be an even bigger bummer !

Six fucking days with the little ones ?

Is that it ?

Six fucking days out of three weeks ???

Well I guess we’d better suck on it because there sure ain’t anything else on offer ?

I was right…

You couldn’t make this shit up.

Of course by the time Mariama finally gets home the word had got round and we’ve got a compound full…

It’s going to be a late night, I can feel it.

I think I’d better have a beer…

TOBASKI 2014 (THE PREAMBLE)

Three weeks later it’s my Mother’s birthday and a week after that is the date of her wedding anniversary with my late Father.

Not surprisingly she’s at her lowest ebb at this time, feeling that she has nothing to celebrate without Dad being there, and so we’re going over to see her on the wedding anniversary weekend.

She has said that she wants to go to the Garden of Remembrance and lay some flowers so we will be accompanying her.

It was, as you can imagine, one sad day and that is likely to continue as we both know it's not something that she will ever come to terms with.
All we can do is be there as much as we possibly can.
Not the easiest thing in the world when you are having to work as much as we are to feed the children and we're seventy miles away...
But we do what we can.

As soon as we get back from Mum’s, Haddy puts in for her final ‘Englishness’ test.

This is the spoken one where she has to converse and ask questions while she is being examined as to her comprehension of speech.

She has to talk non-stop on a specific subject chosen by the examiner for a period of five minutes,

the subject to be determined on the day.

It doesn’t seem too insurmountable as there are times that my wife could talk for The Gambia were it to be an Olympic event…

Check out the rules for applying... https://www.gov.uk/english-language

So we have a couple of practice sessions at home on three of the specifics from their list of ten.

Not bad…

She can do this.

And so she takes another day off to go to Euston for a ten minute examination.

As soon as she gets there, the staff warn her that the examiner she has been given only ever gives C’s to E’s which are failures…

Nice !

That’s a confidence booster…

Nobody needed to worry though, before she’d even officially started in the ‘Name, Address, Passport I.D. and How are you getting on bit’, the conversation had already started.

She’d got music as a subject in which she had to answer general questions and to keep the conversation going on for five minutes, remembering to ask the examiner at least one question whilst it is going on.

When the examiner asked her if she liked any artists in particular, she’d come back with Emmylou Harris and Dolly Parton as particular favourites, both here and in The Gambia and hopefully she’d get to see one if not both of them someday ?

That turned into working at Rhythms of the World Festival and having just come back from Cropredy

Festival (Festivals being another possible question on the list) so she didn’t do too badly, did she ?

Bearing in mind she could have got ‘Transport’ or ‘Family Occasions’.

At the end of ten minutes, the examiner calls a halt and actually said ‘Ok, you can stop talking now…’

(Told you she could talk for her country…)

And then she said that it was quite obvious that she would be perfectly alright living here, and that her speech was definitely one of the best she’d heard in months and she had absolutely no hesitation in giving her an A plus mark for her efforts.

Then, and this is the final clincher, she told her that she had absolutely made her day and it was a wonderful change to actually meet somebody who could actually converse and not just come back with stilted answers, and well done because she had passed with distinction.

And that was it.

Haddy of course, walks out of the examination room as if she’s on cloud nine and is immediately asked by the staff how she got on ?

‘A plus’ says my wife.

‘No… ‘

‘Yes, A plus…’

And then the examiner herself came out and said to all and sundry ‘I wish everybody who came here was as good as that. That really has made my day…’

I don’t particularly want to go into the politics of it, but it does make you wonder why, if they cannot converse in English, some people are trying to gain UK citizenship ?  

But at least now she can apply for hers because she’s passed all the tests.

Whilst we’ve been doing all this, the World news has not been good.

There has been an Ebola outbreak in West Africa and it's been getting worse.

Sierra-Leone, Guinea and about three other countries are affected and Senegal has just announced that they think they have a victim too ?

The Gambia is stuck in the middle of the lot of them.

It’s a killer, and people have been dying by the hundreds on a daily basis and will do so until screening and quarantining takes effect

Ok, give me a chance to do some overtime and we could be there at the end of October or maybe the beginning of November ?

Either way it’ll probably be for Tobaski again which is definitely not the time to go if you’re trying to save money…

That is, of course, if we are actually allowed into the country ?

The President has closed the borders of The Gambia and currently nobody is allowed in unless it’s through the airport at Banjul.

This has put a complete spoke in the wheels of the Gambian economy because so many traders go to Senegal and the other outlying countries to buy their merchandise for their establishments.

The kids, obviously, are as frightened as anybody else.

Haddy has told them to keep the gates to the compound shut.

Nobody who has recently been travelling is allowed through those gates regardless of whether they are family or not, and nobody who has relatives who have recently been travelling is allowed in either.

It might upset and annoy a few, but I wouldn’t give them a cat in hell’s chance of trying to influence Hassanatou on that one.

If they push their luck she’s likely to use boiling oil…

Common sense is common sense after all and she will enforce that decision down to the wire…

I have to admit that the way things are going I’m scared for them.

Ebola is one of those diseases that the area is prone to.
Caused by infected animals, most of which we would label as 'bushmeat', it is spread by flu-like symptoms, one cough and you could be the next victim.
Check out the details and symptoms here... http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs103/en/

The airlines that fly to the infected areas are all shutting down their flights and nobody can now get in, and right in the middle of the whole infected area is The Gambia, which, so far, has not yet had a case.

Haddy has put in for a holiday at work but because it is in school time and not an official holiday period, has been refused.

She works in the kitchen for Christ’s sake.

It’s not as if she can’t be covered for three weeks, is it ?

But no…

The refusal stands.

Ok, you want to play that game and not take into account any compassionate considerations then screw you.

It’s not as if we can bring them here, what with Parliament’s complete refusal to do anything other than support the members of the European Union and shit on everybody else.

So the letter goes in.

‘Bye… I’m leaving… The children are more important, so stick your job…’

The staff cannot believe it, but she is adamant and quite honestly I think she’s right.

They cannot get it through their heads that they are now the enemy…

Along with six hundred and fifty parliamentary pricks, the European Union and the Human Rights Act which does not seem to accept that Africans are human too.

My attitude is the same as it has always been.

Act reasonably and we will do the same.

Act unreasonably and you loose the whirlwind…

And when that occurs, shit happens.

To use Mariama’s expression, if it is ‘unjust’ then you fight it because if you don’t then the injustice continues.

Fuck ‘em.

At least they were a lot more understanding in her second job.

All they asked was that she take care of herself and they’d see her when she got back.

They understood.

It’s family, and you don’t fuck with it.

They can go home after work and see their children but my wife cannot.

She would be able to if she wasn’t being discriminated against by the UK government and their slavish wish to remain as part of the European Union which stops African children coming to the UK to be with their parents, but allows any and all Europeans to do so.

And that, as they say, is the problem in Black and White.

White’s in and Black’s out.

Check all the European Union’s members census results if you don’t believe me.

An apartheid system by any other name.

So, come the end of October we’re flying out so long as the Ebola thing doesn’t spread and the plane can still land ?

Which has definitely not pleased my Mother.

But at least the Senegalese victim is now thought to have been suffering from influenza and not Ebola and so the Gambian border has now been opened again.

Oh well, it’s a start…

And the truth of the matter is, I miss the kids terribly so God knows what it must be like for her ?

It’s the end of October and we’re ready to go.

I don’t really know how we managed it, but we’ve got a Monday flight out in the late morning ?

This is all well and good but it’s a pain in the arse getting to Gatwick through the traffic at that time of day.

Not only is the M25 busy but so is the motorway to Gatwick and to make matters worse I managed to miss the turn-off for the long term parking.

They’ve sent instructions as usual as to how to get there but unfortunately there seem to be one too many roundabouts on the instructions…

Eventually, after doing the turn off instructions twice I give up following them and guess it ?

Nearly made it…

I just shot past the turn-off but at least we’re off the motorway, so turn around yet again and drive back to the last roundabout and have another go…

And finally we’re parked up and getting their courtesy bus to the airport.

Jesus, I could have done without that.

But at least we’re there now.

Sitting in the departure lounge after going through all their security checks which, to be quite honest, are an absolute pain.

I know of no other country where you have to remove your belt and boots, and now the laptop has to be packed separately…

Security is a fine thing, but I can’t help thinking somebody in the government who makes these things up has never actually had to do it ?

Oh well, it is apparently for our own safety so I’ll go along with it, but when they open one of the cases I wear over my shoulder I begin to wonder if it’s not just a bad dream ?

'It’s a minidisk recorder... That’s the microphone and that’s a stand to rest it in and those are minidisks,

the headphones are in my hand luggage, ok ?'

God help us !!!

I can’t possibly be the only passenger who’s ever carried one to listen to something worthwhile on the flight, can I ?

Who knows ?

But finally, after the usual half-mile walk to the aircraft, we are ready to board...

We started off this morning at about four-thirty and now all I want is a sleep.