The weather here is still perfect, cool 25oC nights and lovely 32oC clear blue sky days. The mangos are ripe and delicious. Everyone is eating them, including the big fruit bats. This year’s grapefruit are sweet and juicy and hanging abundantly on the trees. The only downside is that our two years as volunteers in The Gambia are almost over. We will be returning to the UK in mid May and will probably live in the Aylesbury area. So this will be our last e-mail from Africa.

We thought we would reflect on what we have done here. Almost two years ago Margaret entered the GOVI compound and saw a bright crimson bird perched on a stalk of corn, amidst a sea of post rain weeds. She was welcomed with many smiles and requests and was installed in a dark dusty office complete with resident frogs, mice and cockroaches. There was an air of “We need help” about the place. Now as she leaves GOVI, clutching her prized certificate of honorary membership awarded by the long awaited general conference, she looks back at a neater compound. There are banana plants growing, brightly painted play equipment for the children and a new office nestling in the corner. Has she done all this? No but she has helped. She caught the frogs and set the mice free in the compound. The old office now houses an adult literacy class and the Braille technician has moved out of the restructured library into his own space. The new office boasts an improved filing system and a confident accounts clerk.

The executive director is working at the computer responding to e-mails from partners and friends and, hopefully, dumping all the junk ones offering services best left to the imagination. In the hall, with its new stage and fresh blue curtains, one of many events is taking place bringing in much needed income. The new treasurer sits with the outgoing one, gathering information and advice, while the teacher in charge prepares to head out on his motor bike to visit children in integrated schools. Margaret leaves behind the fundraising officer working together with the new board, liaising with fundraising advisers from the Institutional Development Programme. The immediate financial needs of the organisation have been identified and budgets prepared. There are the beginnings of strategic plans for the future and work is in hand to find ways of funding these.

The youth wing members are making music, the women are busy with their soap making project and there is a new confidence in the organisation. It is good to see the positive progress made in the two years and all Margaret can do now is hope that it will continue. How much of this is down to Margaret? Given that she spent two years trying not to do anything, just to give advice she’s not sure. She taught the accounts clerk to improve his spreadsheet skills and advised him about the way he should work with his director and treasurer. She has advised on the importance of transparent and accountable reporting. Together the director, secretary and she devised a new filing system. Teachers have been trained in the use of computers, partly by Margaret and partly by her identifying a free course for them. She has supported the director in communicating with partners, in improving his administrative skills and taught him to use e-mail and internet. He can now type his own letters if necessary. At her suggestion a hall committee was set up to administer hall bookings and she has worked with the youth and women’s wings to develop their work plans. The fundraising officer and Margaret ran a workshop to enable the organisation to develop future plans to enable fundraising bids to be written. Along the way she has demonstrated the benefits of regular communications both between departments and with external partners.

Report writing has been improved. Generous donations from friends and family have helped with improvements to the garden, new musical instruments and equipment for the school. She advised the committee who were developing an updated constitution which was adopted at the first AGM for many years. She also helped with the planning and fundraising for the General Conference which elected the new board, which has a much better gender balance. The new energetic board has breathed new life into the organisation and will move GOVI forward over the next few years.

The hospital was where Allan worked was pretty big, with 1200 staff and 550 beds. It was built by the British in 1953 and progressively refurbished since then. There were three fundamental problems. Firstly the hospital needed about 100 million dalasis (£2 million) to function anywhere like properly and the government provided only D30 million (£600,000). Secondly there were no written procedures. Arrangements were made by word of mouth, people made up the rules as they went along and there was terrific wastage of time, effort and materials. It other words little or no recognisable organisation. Thirdly there was and is endemic theft and fraud. The people here are extremely poor with 56% of the children being malnourished. So goods, equipment and medicines flowed freely out of the hospital. This characteristic was not unique to the hospital the other businesses and hotels in The Gambia also struggled to retain their resources. The management in the hospital were very capable and enthusiastic medical people and some career civil servants who had little or no management training. So they tended to fire fight, jumping from crisis to crisis, achieving small successes each day. When Allan joined this team he asked them what they wanted him to do. They wanted more money, a strategy to allow long term forward planning and a way to make the hospital run more efficiently. So he started by asking all of the staff where they thought the hospital should be going and how they thought they could get there. This was done by a short questionnaire and discussion groups in local languages. There were of course more complex discussions within the Hospital Board, the Senior Management Team and with the chief executives of other, smaller hospitals in The Gambia. The upshot was a ten year Strategy Plan, focussed on the next two years. This covered all of the hospital’s departments and services, including the structure and organisation of the hospital management. The Strategy Plan called for negotiation with the Government for better funding and the introduction of commercial medicine. This would allow the hospital to set up a commercial clinic where well off Gambians, ex-pats, and visitors could be treated. The income would then flow back into the hospital and the public health service to supplement the Government grant. No profits would go to individuals or shareholders.

Next Allan suggested that the Senior Management Team needed to be re-organised and expanded, with the addition of an Estates Manager to oversee hospital maintenance. The existing Management Team had no middle management to delegate duties to. That is why they were always solving immediate problems rather that planning and taking action to avert them. So the hospital promoted and trained promising young people and recruited some in. For instance senior nurses were promoted to be departmental matrons, each running a couple of wards. It was not really rocket science.

To further improve the management of the hospital Allan suggested that they establish a Quality Management System. This included a description of the management structure and who was responsible for what. It was interesting that there were some sections of the hospital which did not appear to be under any senior management control. Next the staff started writing down all the informal procedures and work practices. Allan trained 24 Quality Representatives to talk to their colleagues and capture in writing what people believed the procedures were for doing their job. These were then discussed with heads of departments and then formalised as Standard Hospital Procedures. The hospital now has organisational charts for every department, job descriptions for the first time and over 250 Standard Hospital Procedures. During the course of this work some alarming facts were discovered.

The Chief Medical Director was a dental surgeon and one of her dreams was to reach out to the community offering dental education, treatment and care. Allan found a dental van which had been donated some years previously. So he negotiated with some of the local tourist hotels and found one which liked the idea of sponsoring a mobile dental clinic. The Kombo Beach Hotel agreed to pay for a dentist, two nurses and a driver and all the drugs, stores, fuel and maintenance for the vehicle. Since October 2005 the clinic has toured the country and treated over 2500 patients.

The hospital also had a steady stream of tourists wanting to see the hospital. These people usually brought some small donations but it took up a lot of time of the hospital Public Relations Officer to look after them. Allan suggested setting up a Hospital Tours Group to look after visitors in a more organised way. He trained 12 hospital staff to be part time tour guides. He also established a visitor’s centre. Now there are regular tours which bring in useful additional income to the hospital. He also set up the Friends of the Hospital scheme so that interested British people can donate a small amount regularly in the UK. We have really enjoyed living and working in The Gambia. We appreciate all the wonderful support we have received from our friends and relatives that made our time here so worthwhile. In the past two years we have learned an enormous amount about Africa, her geography, people culture and politics. It has been a breathtaking experience.

More pictures.

Looking back over their shoulders the panic struck Tellem people could see the rising cloud of dust from the distant but advancing invaders. They had, over the succeeding decades moved steadily north, away from violent incursions until they reached the huge towering cliffs of the escarpment. Here they had established their current rock and mud brick settlement. Sensing impending doom and fearing the worst they scaled the vertical cliff face carrying their children. As the invaders rampaged through their village below they looked down in silent horror as those defending the village were massacred. From that day on, eleven centuries ago, the Tellem people built their houses and granaries high up in huge natural crevices and caves in the cliff face. Here at last they would be safe for two centuries. That cliff is in modern Mali, in the Dogon Country, and the remains of the Tellem villages are still there. It was one of the sights we wanted to see in our tour of the neighbouring countries of West Africa.

Having lived and worked in The Gambia for eighteen months we wanted to explore the neighbouring countries to see what life was like there. Our tour was to pass through Senegal and take in the capital cities of Mali, Burkina Faso and Ghana. We also wanted to see the famous mud brick mosque in Djenné in Mali and discover the mysteries of Timbuktu. Being used to travelling in battered old bush vans we decided to travel by public transport. This of course is a very slow and unpredictable way to get about, but also incredibly interesting.

Our trip lasted from 30 November 2005 until 3 January 2006. You can read the detailed dairy notes and see the pictures by clicking here.

Early on Monday morning, while the stars were still peaking through the palm trees, we packed our rucksacks with the bare essentials for this type of trip and set off for the first Banjul ferry of the day. We knew this journey well so arrived in perfect time and boarded the ferry as foot passengers. As the loaded vehicle ferry stirred into the estuary of the River Gambia the outline of the dock buildings could just be seen against the pale sky. The air was still and cool and the water still and calm. Ahead was 3000 km of the adventure, excitement and discovery. At Barra, on the north bank, we climbed onto a bush van and set off with our fellow passengers toward the border with Senegal. There is one mile between the Gambian immigration office and the Gare Routière in Senegal where the ongoing transport awaits. This mile can be covered on foot, on a donkey or horse cart or in a car. Previously we have used the four legged transport but decided this time to use a car. The rucksacks were secured in the boot to stop them falling through on to the road, plainly visible through the big holes in the floor. The doors were tied shut and the happy driver peered through the cracked windscreen whilst his associates gave us a push to bump start the car. Soon our car was struggling and coughing up the mile strip of tarmac toward the Gare Routière.

Like most people we were going to Dakar, the capital of Senegal. After several helpful and friendly discussions in broken English, French and Wolof we bought places in a seven seat Peugeot 504 car, called a sept place to Dakar. This is a very common form of public transport in Senegal and one which we have used often. The trip to Dakar was pretty straightforward, we drove off the road on to a dried up river bed at some points to avoid potholes and the driver had to bribe a policeman at a check point with 3kg of sugar.

In Dakar we spent a few days getting visas and even managed a night on the lovely island of Goree. Then we went north to see St Louis and spend a few days relaxing there. Soon we were heading back south all the way down to Kaolack, right across Senegal. Our car from Kaolack was pretty bad though. The clutch broke down after 50km and we spent four hours in a small village watching the engine being completely removed and the clutch plate replaced from another wreck. Then we were on our way again. Only when night fell did we realise that the car had no lights and the driver was peering hopefully into the dense black African night. To prevent being rammed by other, faster vehicles we shone our torch out the back window. When we arrived the hotel people heated up a pot of Ragout, which was delicious, and went out to get us a bottle of beer each.

Our progress through the rest of Senegal and across into Mali was delightful as we chatted to our fellow travellers and negotiated the border formalities with them. In Mali we transferred into another seven seat car, only this time there were nine passengers squeezed in, cosy. The roads were pretty good by Gambian standards, generally surfaced and in good condition. We enjoyed staying in a variety of small hotels on our progress through Mali and as we headed east the transport got better. The buses had more comfortable seats and fewer breakdowns, which were resolved more quickly. Bamako, the capital city of Mali was a big vibrant city on the banks of the River Niger. The excitement of staying within sight of this great river was added to by the comfort of staying in a French run international hotel where the top class Mali musicians played.

We maintained our relentless journey east following the River Niger. There was a wonderful evening, near Segou, gliding down the river at sunset watching the huge yellow orb of the sun transform into deep orange as it slid lower in the indigo sky silhouetting tall palm trees on a distant bank. We were returning from a village where the women make and fire clay pots. The pot is placed on a platform and the women walk around smoothing it, rather than having the pot spinning. They only fire the pots once a week and luckily we arrived when the pots were placed in open fires of wood and straw. As we left in the evening to was like a scene from Dante’s inferno.

At Sevaré we stayed in a wonderful place called Mac’s Refuge, owned by Mac, a former American missionary. He was born in Mali, the son of missionary parents and so knew most of the local languages and apparently most of the local people. He was a really nice person who helped to organise our trips and gave us good advice. It was from here we went to Djenné an ancient town built entirely of mud brick and banco, a mixture of straw and clay which creates a smooth protective layer on the building. This produces a surface as hard as rock on the three storey, flat roof buildings. The houses have sealed towers which are the toilets, reminiscent of medieval castles. They are used until the tower is full and then the waste is removed by breaking open a hole at the bottom. The manure is then spread on the fields outside the town as fertilizer. The big attraction in Djenné is the huge 600 year old Mosque with the capacity for a couple of thousand worshipers. It really is a sight to see.

Our trip to Timbuktu was also launched from Mac’s in a hired four wheel drive truck to cross the desert. Here the road was marked by boulders in the sand as we passed massive red stone mountainous outcrops rising precipitously from the desert floor. On the way we passed a Tuareg donkey train of 200 donkeys and four men bringing slabs of rock salt from the Sahara Desert to Mopti. While we stopped to photograph this marvellous sight one of the Tuareg men, called Abu, walked over to us to say that he felt ill with a headache, aching limbs and a cough. So we gave him a course of penicillin, hoping that would help. Timbuktu, as many have said before is not as mysterious as it once was. It has been in decline for four centuries since the gold route from Ghana through Timbuktu and north across the Sahara closed in favour of trading with Europe from the west coast. Even so, the dusty town, with its three impressive mosques is sill prominent in the imagination of us westerners. We were also impressed to see that the town has a good water supply, 24 hours electricity and they were putting in an underground sewage system whilst we were there.

On our way back across the desert we gave a lift to a soldier who was in a signals unit in the Mali army and a medical technician from Mopti hospital who was returning from a stint in Timbuktu Health Centre. We stopped at a shelter for a drink and a lad on camel rode in out of the desert and joined us.

From Timbuktu we turned south to Dogon country. The road left the dusty plain dotted with scraggy scrub bushes and the occasional baobab tree and climbed up into the mountains. As the air cleared the road deteriorated and we bounced along mountain roads. We were heading for the mission at Sanga, in the heart of the Dogon Country on the high plateau overlooking Burkina Faso to the south. There are three distinct areas there. The plateau, the towering cliff faces of the escarpment and the plains below. We stayed three nights in the old Christian mission house, lit by the candles we brought and using water fetched by boys from the village well.

The mission caretaker shared his family’s food with us, as a gesture of hospitality, asking nothing in return other than we would enjoy being in his village. Several members of the Christian community popped in to see us for a chat. We learned that the Dogon people were animists, believing in the spirits of the stones and the rocks. They made fetishes of carved wood, stones, leather and feathers which they kept prominently displaced on stone shelves built into the external wall of their stone houses. The Imam told us that there had been both Muslim and Christian missions to the Dogon people for the last seventy or eighty years but neither group had made much progress.

It was fascinating to walk with local people through the villages built high on the plateau and through markets in huge caves which opened onto the cliffs. We walked through one long dark cave which opened onto a brilliantly bright Xanadu type scene of rich green terraced onion fields fed by bright blue streams of water. A French development worker, a hundred years before, had introduced onions and showed the Dogon people how to terrace and irrigate them. These were now the main cash crop for the people. 

We saw the breathtaking sight of whole stone villages built hundreds of feet up into crevices of the sheer cliff face. The rising sun flooded the 2000 foot vertical escarpment with rich orange light highlighting the remains of human habitation. In large crevices there were twenty or thirty stone and mud brick buildings. In smaller cracks the opening had been bricked up leaving windows and doors of a single dwelling. These were dotted at random over the cliff. These improbable structures were built by the Tellem people a millennium ago to survive attacks from the south. They reached their houses by climbing up and down knotted ropes and pulled up produce and water the same way. These settlements are abandoned now and the Tellem people were displaced by the Dogon. It was an unforgettable sight and experience.

Our journey continued south from the Mali plains into Burkina Faso. During a hot day sitting in the sun in a dusty border town we ate lamb roasted over an open fire and chatted to fellow travellers waiting for the one bus to Ouahigouya (pronounced Weegooya). The Burkina border officials at the small border post were friendly, courteous, and efficient and welcomed us into their country and wished us a pleasant stay. We were very impressed by this welcome. Our bus had no windows and the road was dusty. So around midnight two dusty red spectres with rucksacks drifted up the main street of Ouahigouya past cooking fires and dimly lit stalls, looking for the hotel. Again we encountered most friendly and hospitable people who walked with us to the hotel, asking for nothing but to help. The hotel receptionist took one look at us and said he would bring extra soap and towels.

Refreshed by a good shower and breakfast we continued next day to Ouagadougou, (wagadougoo) the capital of Burkina Faso. Although a poor country the roads were good and the capital boasted street lighting, 24 hours electricity, clean streets and some multi-storey office blocks. We stayed in a rather nice hotel with strong French influences. The food was really good and whilst we were grateful for the generosity of the Dogon people it was a nice change to have green vegetables well cooked with garlic and other dressings. The influence of Ghana stretched up into Ouagadougou or Ouaga (Waga), as we locals call it.

The Ghanaian State Transport Company STC operated a small bus garage in Ouaga and from there bus ran right across the border into Ghana, a very convenient arrangement for us. The buses were getting better all the time. Now we had a luxury coach with comfortable seats. The goats travelled in the side luggage holds rather than on the roof, so it was better for them too. A straight and good road south quickly took us to Tamale in northern Ghana. We were back into dusty scrub country. At the border we were asked for the first time ever for our yellow fever certificates. We knew they were necessary to cross borders in West Africa but no one had ever bothered before, so it was nice to use them. Again really nice friendly people, always ready to chat, ready to help and advise. Here we met Ros, and her parents. She was a British VSO working in a school in Ghana near the border with Burkina. Her parents had come out to Africa to be with her over Christmas. In Tamale we changed our Euros to Ghanaian Cidis. Since there are 16,000 Cidis to the pound the bank gives you a carrier bag to take away the bricks of money you get.

 “Let’s pray”, said a man at the front of a packed bush van from Tamale to Kumasi in Ghana as we were stopped at a police checkpoint. There followed a long prayer to protect us and the driver and other road users etc etc. Even the Muslims on battered old bus prayed. We took this local transport as all the seats on the better STC buses were booked, it was Christmas Eve. We were heading for Lake Bosomtwe for Christmas.

Kumasi is the second largest city in Ghana with 1.6 million citizens. It is a busy, bustling city full of industry and enterprise. On Christmas eve it teamed with life and crawled with slowly moving traffic. We where happy to extricate ourselves from the overcrowded bush van we had just spent eight hours on and head to the lake. Far in the distance in front of us we saw a faint line of green mountains across the ochre plain of scrub. With every minute the mountains grew higher until we could make out a wall of tropical greenery rising from the flat plain. The transition from the flat to the rise into the mountains was fairly pronounced and we started to climb. At one corner at the top we gasped at the sight of the gigantic blue circular lake surrounded by a ring of mountains clothed in dense tropical vegetation. Lake Bosomtwe was formed by a meteorite strike millions of years ago leaving an impact crater of an 8km diameter bowl surrounded by a ring of steep mountains. The road followed hair pin bends through thick stands of tall swaying feathery bamboo and huge trees rising out of shiny broad leaf bushes. Our hotel was on the shore of this peaceful placid lake which was sacred to the people of the Ashanti nation which was centred on Kumasi. So on Christmas day we relaxed in the sun by this beautiful lake and ate Ghanaian chocolate. The hotel even made us a traditional British Christmas dinner. Over that period walked around the lake and visited Kumasi.

Then it was south again to Accra and the coast. The coast is dotted with the castles of the European nations who traded with the local kings for gold, timber, ivory and slaves in exchange of iron, armaments, manufactured goods and alcohol. We learned that the Ghanaian kings of the interior sold people as slaves whilst the kings of the coast charged rent for the castles and rent for every slave who stayed in them overnight awaiting transportation to the Americas. It seemed that everybody in Africa, America and Europe benefited from the slave trade at the expense of the poor individuals who were captured in African conflicts. These castles are now in colourful picturesque bustling fishing villages where brilliantly painted local wooden fishing boats do a roaring trade selling their fish on the sandy beaches. We met up again with Ros and her mum and dad in one of the coastal fishing villages and had lunch together. They were touring Ghana with much the same itinerary as us. So we compared notes on sights and attractions and talked of VSO.

We made a short trip to a nature reserve where they had built a rope bridge type aerial walkway 100ft up in the canopy of the rainforest. It took a lot of nerve to inch along the planks of wood secured by ropes so high off the forest floor. We also we to see the big hydro electric dam built by Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah. That was on the way to a 120ft waterfall in the rainforest near the border with Togo. Our final stop was Accra. It was by far the best developed and most sophisticated city we had seen in West Africa. There were museums, concert halls, modern high rise office blocks and international hotels. It was clean, well serviced and very friendly with no hassle from hawkers or street traders. Our final day in Ghana was a trip from Accra along the south coast to the border with Togo. This idyllic coastline is long stretches on deserted sand fringed with palm trees and dotted with picturesque fishing villages of little palm thatched round houses. We chatted with the locals as everyone in the village pulled in huge fishing nets. Men and women, boys and girls all pulled the net in. It contained a huge variety of fish and crabs and other sea life, all of which would be sold or eaten. Being there was like being transplanted to another world, Shangrila, Bounty Land or a Tropical Paradise. Whatever you call it the effect was breathtaking and magical. It was a marvellous and fitting end to our wonderful tour of West Africa.