Home/Testimonies/MY GAMBIAN EXPERIENCE – BY SOPHIA BRIGGS

MY GAMBIAN EXPERIENCE – BY SOPHIA BRIGGS

You would have thought that the whole experience began at 4am on the 4th of November 2011 with Fiona waking me up by knocking on the window of my ground floor flat. She was gently tapping away, expecting me to be ready and waiting for the start of our journey but alas, I had overridden my alarm and was still asleep! However the beginning of our journey actually started a few weeks prior to this at Fiona’s flat when she invited me over to list and catalogue the hundreds of books that needed to be ready for shipping to Africa’s smiling coast.

I was amazed when I entered her living room and was faced with the large boxes full of children’s text and reading books; the obvious generosity of the donators towards Tebbs Second Chances’ first Gambian project was touching. Fiona, Denise and I got to work and continued well into the evening, checking and logging each book, whilst also fitting in a few handfuls of popcorn and general chatter.

Even though I overslept and we left my flat later than scheduled, we made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare and I watched as God made our paths straight and provided all the help we needed. Each person donated in their own way, such as Lyton who dropped us off and picked us up from Gatwick and the check-in ladies who waived our bags, overweight with additional erasers, rulers and exercise books, without any extra charge.

With no change in the time zone, we were in our element, ready and raring to go and set off to explore the Senegambia Beach Hotel. Once our curiosity was satisfied, Fiona contacted the gentlemen at Pneuma Ministries who were charged with our care. We met Pastor Andrew that evening and met Pastor Francis and Brother Lawrence later on in the week. Again highlighting the theme of God providing and making our paths straight, these gentlemen couldn’t have been any more helpful and accommodating. It was like meeting and working with family members rather than new acquaintances.

The morning of Monday 7th November 2011 was set aside to arrange the stationery items into bags to be distributed to the children. About 10 of us fell into a work line to efficiently get the task completed. The packs for the older children consisted of 1 large exercise book, 1 small exercise book, 2 pencils, 1 pen, 1 ruler, 1 eraser and 1 sharpener. As one of us put down a large book, another would follow with the small exercise book on top, and yet another with the pencils and so on. Even though we did all this inside the house, it was tough to do all that physical work in the Gambian heat!

It was originally planned to go to the schools on the next day, Tuesday, however the “Tobaski” holiday was in full swing and schools were closed. On Wednesday morning, Fiona, Pastor Francis and I got into the pick-up truck, collected the stationery bags for the children and the hundreds of text and reading books for the school library and headed to the New Life Children’s Centre. There was a pleasant surprise on the faces of the staff members who saw us drive into the playground.

The School Director was overjoyed and instructed that a handful of school children be brought into the playground to receive their stationery bags. The look on the faces of the children said it all and we all posed for photographs to capture the moment. There was a particular little boy who reminded me very much of my little cousin back on the UK. It was then I thought of the disparateness of my cousin’s schooling experience in the UK in comparison with this little boy in the Gambia, and although a bag with some stationery items may have seemed fairly trivial to me, to this little Gambian boy, this would be an important stepping-stone to completing his education.

This was the first day back to school after the Tobaski holiday but yet still some of the children were still missing due to the holidays. The teacher pointed out to the children that they were favoured this day to receive this gift, especially since they had made the effort to be at school on the first day. The left over stationery bags went to the children at Buckingham Pneuma Academy hence two schools greatly benefited from this trip.

The next day, since all our work was done, I decided to join the “Roots” tour to the village of Juffureh. In the village I was struck by two saddening things;

The offer made to the tourist by the tour guides to buy packets of exercise books and pencils for the children. I never saw these actually get handed to the children, since the tourists were instructed to place them in a “school box” which, we were told, would be distributed to the children at some later time.

The children were all standing in line along the path to welcome tourists by dancing and playing drums. Considering this was at 12 noon on a Thursday, I was saddened to know that they were not in school.

The tour to Juffureh highlighted the importance of the work being done by Tebbs Second Chances and I was honoured to be involved.

Published On: Wednesday, November 23, 2011 @ 8:20pm