The roller-coaster ride of an African child

From Gambia to Italy

Lamine Darboe

• Publisher: Harmattan Italia
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9782336857046
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Emigration & Immigration
• Index: Social Sciences

Ce récit autobiographique en langue anglaise constitue le témoignage poignant d'un jeune gambien parti de Banjul pour rejoindre l'Europe en empruntant les voies clandestines. Lamin décrit son enfance au village, ses études, son travail comme enseignant et explique ce qui l'a forcé à quitter son pays pour débarquer, après une véritable odyssée, dans le sud de l'Italie.

1. MY CHILDHOOD LIFE IN THE VILLAGE
OF KIANG KARANTABA

THE VILLAGE

In the estimable village of Kiang Karantaba, 48 kilometres from the Trans-Gambia Highway, there I was born and raised in an extended family in the early 80s. Karantaba is situated in the heart of Kiang West, Lower River Region of the Gambia. It is a landscape of farms and thick bushes. The countryside surrounding the village boasts of the presence of trees, long grasses and wild animals. The local people have even given names to two nearby bushes – “Kilong” and “Bonto Prai” – both of which are rich in fauna and flora. Streams and rivers lie on the way to the rice fields some distance away from the village. The women as well as the local fishermen use the same route to the rice fields and the streams. The early life of the village started under an African cola tree that stood just on the outskirts of the village. Under that tree, an Islamic scholar by the name Kasaraba lived and taught his students. Though the village is a rural settlement, yet Karantaba has always enjoyed some basic amenities.

There is a primary school in the village that was built in the colonial era in 1963. That early learning centre started as a palm leaf enclosure in its maiden days – in which its first pupils received instruction from their teachers. The people still fondly remember the unforgettable days of Mr. John Gomez, the first headmaster of the school. He roamed in the village at night to make sure his pupils were always at home reading their books and he punished those pupils that failed to comb their hair or bathe before coming to school. Members of the opposite sex would be assigned to bathe the defaulters in front of the rest of the school in order to humiliate them and improve their attitude. His tenure in the village was remembered as a time when discipline and decency were imposed on the children alongside their education. The only things that stood between that school and the village’s health centre were the football field and the school garden. The health centre was built in 1982. The villagers as well as patients from the surrounding villages received treatment there. There was once a great doctor – Dr. Newlands – who would always give 10 bututs to each of us children. He usually found us between the mosque and the two big mango trees in front of our compound as he was on his way home from Friday prayers every week. How fascinated I was as a little boy, standing and watching workmen installing taps in the streets of the village in 1986 and one of those taps is under the two famous large mango trees where my twin grandfathers and many other elders used to sit just in front of our compound. When I stood under those mango trees I could see directly across to the agricultural extension centre that was in line with our compound.

The living quarters, as well as the offices of that centre, are beautifully surrounded on all sides by tall and shady gmelina trees. Under these trees and around the homes, we usually played or sat to enjoy the fresh air that the tall green trees gave out. At the other end, around the broad African cola tree by their farms, there were stores where the fertilisers, pesticides and other chemicals were stored. When we walked close to that place, we could smell a strong scent of these chemicals in the air. Other stores were filled with farming equipment and hay and straw that they had brought from their farms. We often played and hid in the open houses around there. At the agricultural centre, farmers from the village and the surrounding villages received seeds, farming equipment and other aids on a credit basis every year.

The many inhabitants of the village are still the farmers who work on their groundnut, millet and sorghum farms, and on their rice fields all through the summer in the nearby and faraway plots of land. In the dry season, the women spend almost all their time watering and taking care of their crops in the village’s vegetable garden that lies a few hundred metres away from home. We often went to that garden to help our mothers watering their beds or bringing home their harvested vegetables like onions, tomatoes, bitter tomatoes, sweet peppers etc. By the wells in the garden, a huge round of buckets and pans stood full of water waiting for the evening watering. In the hot afternoon, people often turned over their plots of land and threw away the weeds, or at times slept or sat and chatted under the cashew, mango and other big trees in the garden. I enjoyed being at the garden and so did many other children too. Looking from my mother’s beds, I could look across the green growing vegetables until my eyes couldn’t see any further. Everywhere was green and beautiful and the few big trees here and there above the vegetables shaded the place and added colour to the natural scene.

In the village centre it is very sandy and at night, under the bright moonlight, we often sat and talked or took part in various games. Big trucks and other vehicles that wanted to pass through the village would often get stuck as their tyres sank into the sand. That always came as a delight for us as we would crouch down on the ground and sing our songs in praise of the village sand as the drivers tried to dig away the sand to escape its clutches. In one of the corners of that village centre, there is a huge African cola tree right beside the farmers’ crop store. Under the tree stands the palm leaf roof of the blacksmith’s where the locals’ farm tools were made. Behind it is found another tap. All over the village different varieties of mango and orange trees grow. The elderly people who are not fit enough to work on the farms take their seats on the wide “bentengo” – raised log platforms under the shades of these trees. These can be found at all homes and the centre of big compounds. At the centre of Marong Kunda, a ward in the village, there was an enormous seat that was covered by a roof and palm leaves to provide shade. In the hot days of the dry season as well as the rainy days of the summer, young children often took our places there and rejoiced in the drops of the rain.

EARLY CHILDHOOD AND MY DESIRE TO START
GOING TO SCHOOL

Life in the provinces was less-free and promising than in the urban centres. In the rainy season, every day there was farm work. And when the harvest was done, bringing home the rice from the fields, groundnuts and other products from the farm with ox or donkey carts were duties we did with pleasure. Sitting on top of the produce on the cart is always enjoyable, especially when the animal is running at top speed. At the height of the harvesting period, seeing the pelicans, ducks and ducklings, thin and long legged white flamingos flying here and there around the stream gave us such exhilarating feelings as we passed by on our carts on the road to the rice fields. It was a great temptation to get down and approach them as they appeared to walk so sluggishly, however if we ever attempted to go near, they would fly away, but they would not settle in trees. We often said that this was because they had made a vow with the bush pigeons that the ground belonged to one and tree-tops belonged to the other. The bush pigeon never set their feet on the ground while the flamingos had nothing to do with the treetops. They could fly far and low, but would never rest on even the broadest branches of any tree. That was our take on the situation, but it ever remained like an unresolved puzzle to us.

Children in the village hardly had a chance to take a break from work, even when the transportation of the produce from the farms and rice fields at the end of the rainy season was over. We had one thing or another to do ; bringing bundles of hay back home, finding firewood, cutting and bringing reeds and logs home to make compound walls or helping our female relations in their gardens. When the oranges were ripe, we would often take them on carts to Kemoto where some buyers would cross the river to the North Bank of the country. The goings up and down on the donkey or ox carts on the red gravel road was always exciting. We never shied away from the tasks. As it involved most of the children living in the provinces, it was no different for me, a boy born and bred in a small village in a red-route neighbourhood, a dusty half an hour’s drive to the tarmac road. Like many of the children born in the villages, I grew up in a family of subsistence farmers. In our village, being a typical farming community then, the few people who weren’t farmers were those people sent to the village by the government to work in the health centre, the primary school, community development or the agricultural extension centre.

Therefore every day, work on the farm during the rainy season was something we could not avoid. One day, in the rainy season I went to greet my Grandpa in his house as usual. He prayed for me with his long and almost endless prayers as he always did, then, just as usual, I went out to greet all the elders at home and some others who lived nearby. When I returned, I sat by Grandpa who was sitting on his steel framed rocking chair, to warm myself at the fire he invariably lit in a broad old bowl in his parlour. He put the local tea tree leaves into his dark kettle and put it on the fire to boil. When we had drunk the tea, he then asked us to prepare to go to the farm. Though, I knew that would inevitably follow the drinking of the tea, I wasn’t inclined to go to the farm. As I left to prepare myself for the work, I came out of the house in rather a bad mood, knowing I had no desire to go to the farm that day. The brisk movement of the clouds in the sky plainly told me that it was not a day to go to the farm, but Grandpa could not understand this and I wasn’t the one to tell him. As I set out for the farm with Brother Buba and Grandpa, the clouds were still moving fast but there was no sign of the rain yet. Very quickly the whole sky became clear again like a chameleon changes its colour within the blink of an eye, so we kept going. By the time we reached the farther edge of the agricultural centre’s farm, which lay just a little distance away from home, the whirlwind began to blow and the clouds became darker again. We could see the big “Dutakubo” – a bush mango tree that stood a little distance from the edges of the Agricultural Extension Centre’s farm and the school farm – and other trees in the area dancing in the wind ahead of us, so Grandpa then decided that we had to return home. It was not safe to walk under the huge trees on the way to the farm. Such heavy storms always brought down branches from even the strongest trees.

Now that our going to the farm was cancelled by the forces of nature, he asked us to go into the little backyard garden and mend the fallen palm fence to prevent the animals from encroaching and grazing on the new sprouts of the maize that he was growing there. To my delight we went into the garden and fixed all the fallen palm logs. Then the little children that frequently chased the hens away from the growing crops had their peace and could continue uninterrupted with their play in and around the compound.

The next day was a school day and my brother Buba was preparing to go to school that morning. I was the only kid left to do the chopping of the green growing trees in the farm with Grandpa. I was so much aggrieved that I had to come to the farm everyday to work. The only days that I didn’t go to the farm were stormy days and death days when everyone remained in the village to mourn. As we started the work, I became even more dejected. Again and again I would question myself as to why I wasn’t going to school. But that question wasn’t mine to answer. “Why am I being treated this way?” I asked myself. “Brother Buba and other school going children are treated like princes. If I had the chance to go to school, then this would not be happening to me. As it is, I will have to continue working on the farm on a daily basis”, I said to myself sadly. Thoughts like this were often on my mind, but I didn’t often voice them as I was scared to confront Grandpa about it because he was such an irritable old man and easily roused to anger.

The only days we had Brother Buba to work with us there were the days that the schools were off. And I had to go to the farm with Grandpa every day, even if I didn’t do the most laborious works at such tender age. There was no ease all through the summer, but these hardships that the people endured were soon forgotten during the good days after the long hard summer. We enjoyed life after those toiling and moiling days of the summer with stores filled with newly harvest crops. Eating cooked new rice with stew made of groundnut butter was something very palatable. In the village, foods in December and those few months after it were as palatable as if they were heaven sent.

I always wanted to go to school, so I took on a frown every school day whenever Brother Buba and his friends were setting off for class. Early one morning, when I went to greet Grandpa in his house, I sat on one of the sheepskin mats near the blazing fire. Grandpa’s kettle was on the fire to prepare his usual tea. I called out to him in anguish, “Grandpa, why have I been barred from going school when some of my playmates are attending school?” I had the feeling that children who were receiving an education were admired, enjoyed life more and did little work at home. If you were not going to school, other children thought less of you and often laughed at you as a foolish person. Those people who put on the black and white uniform of the school felt themselves better and more important than us. It was hard to bear, so every day I yearned to go to school, especially the days when the school children returned home with gifts received from international pen-friends. Those were the days I felt most deprived of my desire to start going to school”.

Grandpa paused for a while, knowing that I was right. But what else could he do when pleas to poor parents about taking their children to school often fell on deaf ears? Often in the provinces, despite our desire to go to school, poor farmers still did not listen ; they believed that we would be of more use to them on the farm than sitting in the classroom. Certainly, they were aware of the fact that educated persons enjoyed a better life and offered their families and society a lot of good in return, but they valued the usefulness of a single child on the farm more than all of that. Nothing equalled that privilege, they thought.

I bowed my head and said nothing, but all I could do was allow Grandpa to think about it. I continued going to the farm as usual and had no chance of starting school. At the end of the year, Brother Buba did his common entrance exams and left the village that May for the secondary school and left me all alone to work on the farm with Grandpa. However, sometime later, Grandpa felt my growing frustration and was now ready to register me into school. One day he eventually revealed his decision to me. “I have decided that I will send you to school now. This farm work has never taken anyone anywhere. You can go to school and if, at the end, you can take care of no-one else, at least you will be able to take care of your own life”, said Grandpa. I was so relieved to hear that my dreams of going to school had finally come true. I then counted myself a lucky person as there were many other children who were also hoping for the same chance but had still not had it. Those ones would now envy me, just like we had all envied the other pupils before.

THE CHANCE OF SCHOOLING
HAS FINALLY TAKEN SHAPE

In September, 1990 at the age of 10, I was registered in school. In the headmaster, Mr. Bamba Wilson’s office, I joyfully listened to the conversation between him and Grandpa. He then told us that I would have two new pairs of uniforms when the C.C.F. clothing supply came, and they gave me strong covered exercise books and pencils at no cost, which was an extreme delight for me, as a newly registered schoolboy. I was very happy that my name had eventually found itself in the school headmaster’s book. When we returned home, I could not hide my delight and told Grandma, “I feel changed as if I am not the same boy I used to be; my whole life seems rearranged”. This delighted Grandpa and he beamed with joy at my cheerful enthusiasm. He warned, “If you are serious with the schooling it is for your own good -the bird knows which one between its legs and wings are more useful to it”. Grandpa meant that the ball was in my own court now as he had done his part by sending me to school. I acknowledged this by nodding my head and I promised to work hard. As determined as I was, I also knew I was only going to do good and put a smile on their faces someday.

After waiting so long for the day to come, I was in a dazzling mood of expectation ahead of the school opening day that was looming ever nearer. My sudden happiness came from the joy of achieving my long held desire for an education. When classes recommenced in late September, I started going to school looking and feeling different in every way. That first day of the new academic year was like no other day in my life so far. Though I was used to playing in that open school ground with other children, yet the way of life at school was still something new to me. It wasn’t just any ordinary day. In the eyes of the other school children, I was a newcomer. We hung around the school compound and waited for instructions from the teachers. When the bell rang, we gathered in front of the headmaster’s office for what was my first assembly at school. It wasn’t a very long assembly as many things needed to be sorted out that day. As soon as the assembly ended, we were led to the classroom near the beautiful red flowering locust bean tree and the big mango tree by the headmaster’s quarters.

In the classroom, benches and tables were brown and new and well designed, with K.K.P.S., Kiang Karantaba Primary School, painted on them in black block capitals so if anyone removed this furniture to elsewhere in the village, the school could always retrieve them and bring them back to their rightful place. The blackboard in our classroom had been painted and looked as good as new. Everything within the classrooms was perfectly arranged too. The school premises had been weeded and the grasses and other debris had been thrown into the pits behind the block wall and corrugated fenced toilet. We remained in our classrooms and so happy was I in that sparkling environment. At around 11:00 we heard a shout – someone was calling Primary 1 – then our class mistress asked us to stand up and quickly go and take our breakfast. She lined us up and we walked straight to the kitchen and took our milk in cups and drank it. As soon as we were done, we returned to the class and continued with our tales while the mistress did other work on her own. Soon the break bell was rung and everyone tumbled out of the classroom. As I was moving about within the school during break with my friends, I felt amazed at the things I saw. The teachers were playing table tennis under the shade of a huge tree at the centre of the school. In days gone by, I had often found them sitting playing draughts under that tree after school when we were going to the football field. Some other teachers were playing volleyball with the older pupils and the rest of the pupils were playing football, skipping with ropes, running euphorically after each other, or sitting under the baobab and mango trees all over the school ground. Everywhere around was coloured with the black and white uniform of the boys and the blue overalls of the girls. Everything about the school seemed strange in my eyes and I was yet to understand anything except that it was my first day at school. I was very content, yet the unfamiliarity of it all was running through my mind.

The bell was rung again and no-one had to tell us to stop our play and return to our classes. That signalled the end of break, so we went back to our classroom. The teachers were feared by every one of us, so the new pupils knew how to behave. I was shy and nervous in the classroom, but I was helped by some friends I knew previously from the village and who were now my classmates in school. Most of the boys had already done a year in the nursery class, so they were better acquainted with the system of the school than I was. Each of us had a story to tell the class and the teacher, though she was busy doing something else, sometimes took pleasure in our stories. Later in the afternoon, we had our lunch too.

As the closing bell rang, all the new pupils ran out of our classes to meet our brothers, sisters or friends to walk home together. We were all eager to recount the experience of our first school day. Gleefully going home, I was in the midst of my friends. “I didn’t find school life as challenging as I earlier thought, I felt very relaxed and seemed completely at home. That first day of the school year wasn’t as hard as I had expected. There wasn’t much to do; I only had my name called by the mistress and my only exercise so far was to answer to my name to confirm my presence in class”, I explained to my friends on our way home. “We sat the whole morning without doing much but telling stories and excitedly discussing things like our first school breakfast and the mid-day school lunch. We enjoyed everything that happened today”.

When I returned home, I could not begin to tell them how great my happiness was now that I was a school boy and not just a farm worker or playmate in the village. The whole day left me completely satisfied.

The next day also passed as joyfully as the first one. The pupils were assembled in front of our respective classrooms facing the primary six classrooms just adjacent to the headmaster’s office. One of the senior teachers called the classes one after the other and the pupils queued to enter our allotted classroom to be measured and to be given uniforms that suited us. The school was supplied with the uniforms by C.C.F. and Action Aid. When we were called into the building, the teacher said: “Take and measure the uniforms and ...

Table of contents

• Couverture
• 4e de couverture
• Métissage
• Titre
• Copyright
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• FOREWORD
• INTRODUCTION
• 1. MY CHILDHOOD LIFE IN THE VILLAGE OF KIANG KARANTABA
• 2. MY PURSUIT OF EDUCATION IN THE TOWN OF BRIKAMA
• 3. MY LIFE AS A TEACHER
• 4. THE JOURNEY OF DARKNESS
• 5. THE BITTERSWEET LIFE OF A MIGRANT
• CONCLUSIONS
• ANTHROPOLOGICAL NOTES
• DATA ON REPUBLIC OF GAMBIA