A very merry Christmas from all at The Gambia Experience, and from the children of Jeddah Lower Basic School, Jeddah, Brikama. Stay safe and warm!
Merry Christmas!
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Category Archives: The Gambia Experience
Your experience
We’re always looking to feature more content from our loyal readers and travellers – there’s a whole wealth of knowledge out there waiting to be tapped! So to that end we’re encouraging you to send us your experiences of The Gambia. We’re looking for guest writers for this blog, the main Gambia site, and also for our thrice-yearly Your Experiences magazine.
Perhaps you have worked with a charity in The Gambia; or you are one of the many people who have been travelling to The Gambia for years and have a particular affinity with a hotel, or a certain place, or you’ve been on an excursion and want to share what you did and saw? Whatever your experience, however recent or long ago it was, if you fancy yourself as a bit of a travel writer please send your articles (of either 350 or 700 words) to :
Your Experience, Serenity Holidays, Atlantic House, 3600 Parkway, Solent Business Park, Fareham, Hampshire PO15 7AN. Or you can email it to us at experience@serenityholidays.co.uk. We’d also love to feature great photographs and videos, so please send these also, either via the email address or by sending us a link.
The best of these will feature in the Your Experiences magazine – any article chosen for this will receive a £100 holiday voucher valid against any holiday with Serenity Holidays.
Get scribing!
School Development Fund donates over £6,000 to Gambian Schools
On 29th of March, The Gambia Experience’s resort team and the Gambian Ministry of Education held a presentation on behalf of the company’s School Development Fund, giving donations to local schools.
Held in the Senegambia hotel, the presentation was a great success and was reported in most Gambian newspapers. Fatou Mass Jobe-Njie, the minister of Tourism and Culture spoke at the awards thanking The Gambia Experience and their clients for their support and urging them to keep up the good work.
Two of our UK staff also attended the presentation.
“It was nice to see how The Gambia Experience is showing it cares for the community and not just bringing tourists to the country.
As a company we are giving many more children the opportunity to progress to a successful future.
I look forward to seeing the completed projects and to getting involved with any other projects that schools bring to our attention.” Andy Murphy (IT Assistant)
above: Some of the resort team, UK staff and the Minister of Tourism and Culture with the headmasters from five Gambian schools
Funds were given to five Gambian schools for the following projects.
1. Baati N’darr Lower Basic School, Central River Region – D24,240
The school has received money for wire and other fencing materials to protect their school garden. Leaves from palm trees are currently being used. These are often damaged by animals resulting in the locals stripping the trees in the area to repair it. As the Gambia Experience are committed to carbon offset schemes and making a difference with tree planting, it was felt that this was a worthwhile project for us to support.
2. Niani Senior Secondary School, Central River Region – D52,100
The school has received assistance in order to build 60 tables and benches for the children following the schools expansion to cover children’s education up to grade 12.
3. Kabafita Upper Basic School, Western Region – D29,850
The School Development Team were recently made aware that the school has no kitchen and that food preparation currently takes place under a tree outside the school building, which is unhygienic. Funds have therefore been donated to buy materials such as roofing timber, gravel and cement in order to build a kitchen next to the domestic science classroom. On returning from a recent visit to the school, Kathy from our School Development Fund Team said “The project is already under way. It will be a very useful addition to the domestic science facilities of the school.”
above: Kabifita Upper Basic School – over 1,000 pupils aged between 13 and 16 will benefit from the new kitchen
4. Pakalinding Lower Basic School, Jarra West District – D50,925
Based between two communities with over 510 pupils, the school has been given funding towards materials to renovate staff quarters enabling some staff to live onsite.
5. Kanuma Basic Cycle, Western Region – D85,000
Funds have been provided to erect a perimeter wall for the upper division of the school. Its garden is currently fenced with temporary sticks however a sturdier structure will prevent stray animals from entering the premises, which in turn will create a more conducive teaching and learning environment.
We are currently looking into new projects to support so keep your eyes open, we will be announcing them soon as well as launching a new School Development Fund website.
The School Development Fund team
The Taunton Thespians in The Gambia…
The Taunton Thespians
We have a guest post for you today – from Rene Kilner from the Taunton Thespians. They are putting on a play ‘Daisy Pulls It Off’ for the people of Somerset, but are also going to take the play on the road – to The Gambia! We wish them all the luck in the world. Read on for more on this intriguing project…
When we (Taunton Thespians) planned our autumn production Denise Deegans comedy ‘Daisy Pulls It Off’ we could not have foretold our run would include Alliance Francaise in The Gambia! Yet, having completed her run at The Tacchi-Morris Arts Centre in Taunton, Daisy and her friends will be packing their bags, boarding a Gambia Experience flight and taking to the stage as part of the inaugural Festival of Arts & Theatre in The Gambia!
Award winning comedy ‘Daisy Pulls It Off’ takes us back to those halcyon days when the world was a more innocent place. This is the time of Biggles and Bulldog Drummond. At the exclusive Grangewood School for Young Ladies, however, times are a changing and Grangewood takes in a scholarship girl from an elementary school! Shocking! Daisy Meredith is that girl and we must wait to see how she fits in.
As a Taunton based amateur theatre group we have been performing for delight of Somerset audiences since 1927. A thriving society we seek to innovate and develop the arts in our area. In 2000 for example, someone came up with the idea of taking a production to different outdoor venues in the county and, stoical in the face of British weather, our Summer Tour is now a feature of the Somerset’s summer calendar.
With a Summer Tour that sees us take a full length play around 10 venues in 2 weeks, it was felt that if we can pop up all over Somerset then The Gambia would be well within our scope! We are so very proud to have been chosen to perform for audiences a little further afield than our usual Somerset venues.
The festival is the brain child of a West Country businessman who first visited The Gambia on holiday. This ambitious plan aims to give the people of The Gambia access to the joy and inspiration of Theatre and the Arts that we in the West take so much for granted. What band of performers could resist such a challenge? A challenge that has been met thanks to the enthusiasm and dedication of everyone involved in the production. Thanks to UK sponsors of the event, The Gambia Experience, our production of ‘Daisy’ will literally ‘take off!’.
The Gambia vs Pompey…
The victorious Gambia U17 team. (Photo by David Walker)
Just a short post to congratulate the Gambia U17s who gave the Pompey academy side a bit of a lesson at a rain soaked Collingwood ground last Wednesday. Although the Baby Scorpions only won 2-0, they dominated the game and adapted well to some less-than-friendly conditions… Here’s hoping the Scorpions go on and win the U17 World Cup! Below is a match report and some brief footage of the game – no goals but you can see just how dominant the Gambians were. Thanks to David Walker for the braving the rain to capture the footage and write the report.
Match Report
Being played under floodlight the game kicked off at 7pm. The rain greased up the surface of the pitch – which I’m sure the Gambians are not used to! But this didn’t get to the baby scorpions. They knocked the ball round like a professional outfit dominating the game from early on.
Portsmouth struggled to handle the pace of the Gambians who with a want to win were first to every ball. Deservedly so Gambia took the lead half way through the first half: after a scuffle in the box the ball was finally tapped in. The Gambian team delighted to see support on the touchline from few of The Gambia Experience Staff who’d braved the rain to watch the match. 1-0
Goal!
The remainder of the half was all one way with Gambia going close from a great through ball and shortly after calling the Portsmouth goal keeper into action to make an unbelievable save, pushing the Gambian’s shot over the cross bar. The half ended 1-0.
Second half the Gambians come out strong and sneaked an early second. The Gambians scored from a great strike leaving the Portsmouth goalkeeper with no chance. Portsmouth then had a 15 minute spell where they pushed forward creating a few chances, but they never really troubled the young African Keeper. For the last stretch of the game the Gambians showed why they could prove an upset at the U17 World Cup – winning every ball and pinning the Portsmouth side back deep in to their own half.
Full credit to Portsmouth though who played a brilliant, typical English game: solidly defensive throughout but lacking the same creativity that The Gambians played with. From the display I saw if I was a betting man a cheeky outside bet on the baby scorpions to win the Under 17 World Cup now doesn’t seem so silly!
