The Gambia Blog

Jason Florio, Helen Jones and Abdouli Janneh. {link:http://www.floriophoto.com/}Photo courtesy of Jason Florio{/link}

Now then, here’s a project for you: to circumnavigate the entirety of The Gambia on foot – all 700 miles of it – carrying your own gear, and capturing audio footage and images of people’s lives as pass through, creating a living account of a unique culture. As you go you’ll pass on knowledge gleaned from the Eden Project hive-mind on how to produce and sustain crop and vegetable growing gardens which will provide food for generations. Oh, and you’ll also need to maintain a multi-media website and blog on the move, both of which will be left behind as a legacy for the people of The Gambia to celebrate their history and their bright future. Any takers?

Jason Florio is a world renowned photographer, chronicler of far-flung places, and member of the Royal Geographical Society. To date he has worked across the globe from Surinam to Afghanistan and had run-ins (and tea) with both the Taliban and the mujahadeen. He fell in love with The Gambia 13 years ago on a visit to Makasutu and has been back every year chronicling the changing lives of the country and its people. His stunning photographs, collected over the last 13 years (some of which we are proud to be able to feature in the interview below) were collected in a book simply called Makasutu, published this year.

Helen Jones has been visiting The Gambia for about 14 years, and has equal passion and reverence for the country and its people. As massage therapist and nutrition adviser by day, Helen has made various trips to the country studying and working with the local people. She has also worked on various photography assignments across the globe and worked with Jason on the Makasutu project wherein this admirable (and mildly unhinged) project was dreamed up.

Jason and Helen will be undertaking the trip with two Gambian locals – Abdouli Janneh and Mohammed Nije – both of whom are experts on the the country’s history and culture and are fluent in various tribal languages the team will encounter, including Jola, Mandinka and Wolof. Janneh and Nije will act as guides and translators and will also assist with the audio recordings and the upkeep of the websites.

So there we are: a 700 mile walk around The Gambia. Sounds easy doesn’t it… To keep up with the preparations for the trip, and all importantly to donate towards the project, you can visit the team’s blog: A Short Walk in the Gambian Bush, or go to to the Gardens for Life section of the Eden Project website.

We were lucky enough to be able to speak with Jason and Helen as they prepared for their odyssey.

The Gambia Blog (hereafter TGB): How did you guys first get involved and interested in The Gambia?

Helen Jones (hereafter HJ): I first visited there in 1996 on a package holiday with two friends who had been there before (and subsequently moved there to produce an album of West African music) and I’ve been every year since! It’s like my second home. I have great friends there and as soon as that plane hits the tarmac at Yundum (Banjul) airport, the stresses of living in a big city seem to disappear.

Jason Florio (hereafter JF): For me it started with a phone call from my old friend Lawrence Williams in 1996. He told me that he was working on creating an overlanders’ camp with his business partner James English in The Gambia and I should come and check it out. I went later that year and started making photographic portraits of the people that lived and worked in and around the holy forest of Makasutu where the ‘camp’ would be built – I was hooked from the first day.

TGB: How have you seen the country change over the years?

HJ: Yes, for sure. Mobile phones are such a common sight now, especially in the villages. I remember a friend tried to start up a business way back in ’97, importing mobile phones but it failed miserably because no one could really afford that luxury. As Florio will no doubt testify, its kind of odd to be in the middle of the balong (river), in the most idyllic, tranquil surroundings and suddenly, you’ll hear Abba’s ‘Dancing Queen’, which is the boatman’s ring tone!!
I also remember that first drive from the airport to Senegambia, where the main bulk of hotels are, and it took about and hour and a half because the bus kept having to dodge round the potholes in the road! It now takes half that time, as the roads are much better.

JF: As with so many other rural places the obvious changes have been in the rapid growth in modern communication – mobile phones abound. In the ‘early’ days I would have to get on a motorbike, drive through the bush to Brikama and send faxes or wait in line for ages to use the payphone. Now if I want to get hold of my old fisherman friend Abdou Ndong I don’t have to send notes with people going back to his village. I just give him a call on his mobile.

Moussa, shepherd. {link:http://www.floriophoto.com/}Photo courtesy of Jason Florio{/link}

TGB: What is it about the country that draws you back year after year?

HJ: The Gambian people and my friends. I just love the peace and quiet of being in the bush at Makasutu Culture Forest for example or on a deserted beach further up the coast. Nothing quite like the Atlantic Ocean to wash out all the city-life cobwebs! There is something so special about the country and a lot of that is to do with the energy of the Gambians for sure. I guess it’s to do with the simplicity of life there. Even after all these years, I still want to cling onto the nearest Baobab tree because I don’t want to leave! There is just so much explore down there and its different every time I go.

JF: for me one word sums it up – Makasutu. That one word encompasses the great friendships I have formed in The Gambia and my desire to learn more about the people and the country through my photography.

TGB: What’s behind your decision to walk the perimeter of the country? Could you tell us a bit about who is walking and the local guides you will be taking with you.

HJ & JF: We both made a decision earlier in the year to base ourselves for a few months away from London and New York (where Jason has been living for 14 years and Helen living part-time). A friend at a dinner party in Brooklyn told us how he had walked 500 miles across Europe the previous year, and that’s when Helen said how about walking around the Gambia? Jason had already been looking into a kayak expedition of the River Gambia and walking seemed like a great alternative as a way to explore more deeply the country and culture.

The two guides / co-travelers we are walking with us both work at Makasutu Culture Forest. Janneh is a serene human being who has a Buddha-like calm. Before working at Makasutu he had been in the military and worked as a teacher of English – when we were working on my ‘Makasutu – Mecca in the forest’ book last year he was a great help in teaching us Mandinka – he will be our chief translator for the oral histories and interviews we will be recording along the route. Mohammed is a straight up no-nonsense guy who will be on hand to help explain and navigate our way through the culture and country and fend off charging hippos and wrestle man-eating baboons.

TGB: How did you come to get involved with the Eden Project? Can you tell us a bit about the Gardens for Life project?

JF: Most roads in this story lead back to Makasutu – I was at Makasutu in 2007 when Don Murray from Eden brought a group of Friends of Eden over to The Gambia. I spent a lot of time with them and documented part of their visit – which included presenting the Gardens for Life project to local schools which are in the Balabu Conservation area (which surrounds Makasutu). After that I made a couple of trips to Eden with Lawrence and James from Makasutu to help set up The Gambia exhibit in the tropical biome.
When the idea of the walk was formulated Helen said we need to use it as a tool to raise funds for a charity, and the first thing that came to mind was GFL and the Makasutu Wildlife Trust. We dropped a line to Don Murray at Eden about it and in his inimitable style got the gears in motion and before we knew it we were sat around a table with Eden’s top players, TGE’s Chris Rowles and Karen Durham.

GFL – in short – is a way to promote sustainable development and global citizenship through local and international school garden partnerships. At the moment there are 5 schools in the project in The Gambia … who all need desperate help with basic tools, fencing and seeds.

TGB: Practically speaking, are you currently in training for your expedition? Will you be carrying all your own gear with you? Are you going to be camping each night and making all your own food etc?

HJ: Yes, we are. We’ve been doing 17-odd mile walks along the Wey Navigation footpath in Surrey each week, as we hope to walk an average of 12-15 miles per day in The Gambia. We are both pretty healthy and active. I’m a massage therapist so I have to train regularly to maintain my fitness levels and Florio is always carting heavy camera equipment and running up Mayan pyramids, hillsides and the like to get the best vantage point for his photo’s!! We both also cycle everywhere when we are in New York.

We’ve decided to take two donkeys with us to carry all the gear. We initially thought about taking a camel but decided that a spitting moody creature might not be entirely pertinent (sorry to all you camel lovers but that’s my experience of them!). We’ll both be working on route – i.e. Florio taking photos and me assisting with recording so we need to be ready to capture what we see along the way and carrying big backpacks too will be a hindrance. Janneh and Mohammed will both be assisting and we will all be recording our own journey, through photo’s and journals.

We will be camping every night. We have both tents and mosquito net options. There is nothing quite like sleeping under African skies! To treat ourselves, there are one or two lodges along the way that have very kindly donated rooms for us but on the whole, it’s camping. As for food, we will buy what we need, rice, fish, vegetables etc daily and cook it ourselves on the fire or pay one of the local women in whichever village we stay in on any particular night to cook for us. Gambians are very hospital and love to cook for you

Ismaila Badji and his horse. {link:http://www.floriophoto.com/}Photo courtesy of Jason Florio{/link}

TGB: You’ve said that you’re going to be making audio recordings and taking photographs en route? Will you be travelling with your Deardorff camera?!

JF: I had thought very seriously about taking the Deardorff Camera, but the cost of the extra donkey to carry it maybe pushing the budget a bit …it weighs a ton! I will still be taking a medium-format film camera as well as a digital camera package – we hope to be blogging with images as much as possible en route, so the digital will be essential.

TGB: I’m intrigued by your concentration on the individual in the Gambia photographs, and your use of the black sheet. Does that Disfarmer style – removing the subject from their environment – not somehow work against the notion of wanting to preserve a kind of anthropological document?

JF: For this body of work I wanted to find a way that would from the beginning keep it consistent year after year. And so for me concentrating on the person was paramount, and thus using the sheet was a way to avoid the distraction of the landscape behind them. It is entirely a focus on the individual – I am more interested in preserving the person rather than just creating a cold body of evidence for anthropological study.

TGB: Given that you’ve experienced the full spectrum of Islam across the globe, what do you make of the nature of Islam in The Gambia? How does it differ from what you’ve experienced elsewhere?

JF: Islam came to The Gambia though North and East African Muslim traders and holy men and was absorbed into society first by the cultural aspects of Muslim society then spiritually – and the school of Islamic thought that gained most acceptance in The Gambia was that of emphasising spirituality and mysticism with a focus on personal purity – a jihad of the heart if you will, rather than a more militant stance. With this as a backbone of Islamic thought in The Gambia one finds Gambian Muslims to be very warm and accepting of non-believers. The Gambia being known as ‘The Smiling Coast’ attests very much to this.

In general my travels through the Muslim world, have been excellent experiences – other than a couple of run-ins with the Taliban, I always have enjoyed great hospitality – just as I receive when I am in The Gambia.

TGB: What has been your favourite Gambian moment and/or photograph?

HJ: Can I have ‘moments’? It has to be all the times when I’m on the Mandina balong in a dugout canoe– especially when you row it yourself. It never ceases to make me awestruck with the beauty and tranquillity that surrounds you.

Abdou Ndong, fisherman and salt merchant. {link:http://www.floriophoto.com/}Photo courtesy of Jason Florio{/link}

JF: That’s a tricky one. If I can site one moment. It was my first time in The Gambia and a local fisherman, Abdou Ndong had taken me out with him to observe him fishing – we had just got in from the overnight trip in his leaky dugout canoe, the catch was frighteningly meagre and he gathered up half of it and gave it to me. I naturally pulled money from my pocket and handed it to him … he said ‘No, no .. this is for you ..It’s not about money’ and he paddled off home. We have been great friends ever since. He is also one of my favourite subjects to keep re-photographing!

TGB: You have said that you want to create an interactive website after your trip. Could you explain some more about what that might look like?

JF and HJ: Through audio and visual means I want to create a document of the journey that can be shown in galleries and online – but also to use the images and recordings as a framework for a ‘legacy’ website for The Gambia. A place where Gambian people can up-load their personal stories about themselves, their villages, and their oral histories – preserving them for educational and historical purposes. The website will be based on a map of the country… When one clicks on a village that content has been collected for, one will be able to read personal stories, histories etc about that village.

TGB: Is there anything you’ll be taking with you that you just can’t live without? And what will you miss most about home?

HJ: Books and iPod! I love reading so I always travel with at least 3 books – one novel (for falling asleep to!), one factual and my journal. We will all be keeping a journal on route, especially to update the blog. And, then any other books I can pick up along the way. I love music too…as do the Gambians. My iPod spends half its time hooked up to a Gambians ears!

The only thing I really miss when I’m out there (I previously spent 4 months in The Gambia) is my dog, Poet! However, that is somewhat alleviated by the amount of stray dogs that follow you around everywhere. Oh, and maybe the odd Sunday roast. Ironically I hardly eat them when at home but there is something about when it’s not available……….

JF: I will be taking fresh coffee. When I am on a journey I don’t tend to miss home too much…. But this will be the first time being on the road and on foot solidly for over two months… I’ll let you know in the blog!

HJ: and I might be nicking some of that fresh coffee!!

TGB: And the all-important bit: where can we donate?!

HJ: we will be setting up a ‘Justgiving’ page so that donations can be made directly to Eden Projects Gardens for Life programme in The Gambia. All the details can be found on our blog A Short Walk in the Gambian Bush.

Once again, many thanks to Jason and Helen for taking the time to ask our questions and seriously, we wish them all the luck in the world with this. I only wish I could go! Well, a bit, anyway.