James and Tosh. Image by Jason Florio.
We recently received the very sad news that James English, magus of the extraordinary projects at Mandina and Makasutu had passed away. There is something profound and shocking in any passing, but there was something so powerfully real and life-affirming about James, that it seems strange to think he’s no longer around. But then you think: such was his presence, that every inch of ground around Makaustu and Mandina will be charged with his vital energy; and of course he’ll be hugely, heroically alive in so many people’s memories it’ll be like he’s just out of your field of vision, just out of earshot, beer in hand, unspooling his weave of stories…
The river lodges at Mandina
In many ways the story of The Gambia Experience is entwined with James and Lawrence’s project at Makasutu and Mandina. The facts of it are fairly simple – James and Lawrence came to the Makasutu area on Christmas Eve 1992 on the last day of a search for some land to set up a project in West Africa. They were captivated, and arranged a land purchase and decided to come back. They returned within six months to find a huge chunk of the land, like much of that around it, brutally cleared of trees. They decided then that conservation must come first, and any accommodation second. They lived in the open, dodging mosquitoes and living on a diet of bananas and Julbrew, planting trees, sinking wells – and they watched the land come back to life around them. When they did begin to build, the lodges came almost organically, constructed from materials from the reforested land and built using local labour.
It was a slow process, but the results, as anyone who has visited will tell you, were stunning. If anything the structures, both the floating and the jungle lodges, enhance the environment, give rise to a real sense of appreciation of it; and because there is still only eight dwellings the overall project doesn’t dwarf the land in any way. Instead the whole feel of Mandina has a quiet, humming magic; and at the heart of it were these two quixotic, roaring, cyclonic figures who lit the place up with their energy.
Since hearing about James’s death and speaking to various people about him, it seems he had an effect on everyone he met. His (that word again) energy, his lust for life, the way he communicated all the extraordinary things he’d seen and done – it was as if he’d lived enough life for an army of men, and absorbed everything like he was a huge canvas waiting to be painted. (And as anyone who saw him in any state of undress will tell you, this was becoming literally true, too!). Something in James seemed to answer the biggest of all questions: how do we best live our lives?, and his passing is like losing a library, or a museum. But what a life, and what an inspiration to us all.
From everyone at The Gambia Experience, safe journey, James.
James English memorial
