#SOS Children's Village Gambia

[medicalweightloss100]

Best Unforgettable Travelling Adventures Wait in The Gambia

Regarding travel destinations that promise vibrant culture, breathtaking landscapes, and unique wildlife encounters, The Gambia stands out as a hidden gem. Known as the 'Smiling Coast of Africa,' this tiny West African nation packs a punch for unforgettable travel adventures. Whether you're an avid birdwatcher, a history enthusiast, or someone looking to unwind on pristine beaches, The Gambia offers something for every traveler. In this guide, we'll explore some of the best adventures waiting for you in The Gambia.

Explore Gambian Excursions – A Gateway to Adventure

Gambian excursions provide visitors with immersive experiences, giving them a chance to connect with local culture, wildlife, and history. From guided wildlife tours to cultural heritage visits, there's no shortage of activities to keep them engaged. Expert guides are available to ensure they don't miss any hidden treasures of this vibrant country.

Birdwatching Paradise in The Gambia

The Gambia is a haven for bird enthusiasts, with over 560 species recorded in the region. Birdwatching tours are one of the highlights of any trip here, with hotspots such as Lamin Lodge and Abuko Nature Reserve offering perfect vantage points. Keep your eyes peeled for colorful kingfishers, herons, and majestic eagles soaring overhead.

Convenient Tourist Taxi Service

Navigating The Gambia is made easy with Tourist Taxi Services. These services are reliable, affordable, and operated by experienced local drivers who know the region intimately. Whether you're heading to the beaches, nature reserves, or cultural spots, tourist taxis ensure a smooth and safe journey.

SOS Children's Village – A Visit with a Purpose

Visiting the SOS Children's Village is a meaningful experience for travelers interested in giving back to the community. This organization provides education, healthcare, and support to vulnerable children in The Gambia. Visitors can learn about their efforts and even participate in community activities.

School for Disabled Children – Spreading Hope

Another impactful visit is to the School for Disabled Children in The Gambia. Here, children with disabilities can access education and opportunities to build better futures. Supporting or visiting these institutions can leave a lasting impression on your journey.

Paradise Beach Sanyang Gambia – A Slice of Heaven

Paradise Beach in Sanyang is one of The Gambia's most picturesque spots. Its golden sand, turquoise waters, and relaxed vibe make it ideal for sunbathing, swimming, or simply enjoying fresh seafood from beachfront shacks. Sunset at Paradise Beach is an experience you won't want to miss.

Gambia Sightseeing – Discover the Hidden Treasures

From bustling markets to serene landscapes, Gambia sightseeing is a blend of culture and natural beauty. Explore traditional villages, historical monuments, and lively local markets where artisans display handcrafted goods. Each sightseeing adventure reveals a new side of The Gambia.

Cape Point Beach Gambia – A Tranquil Escape

Cape Point Beach offers tranquility away from the crowded tourist spots. Known for its calm waters and clean shores, it's perfect for families and couples seeking a peaceful retreat. You can also indulge in water sports or unwind with a refreshing cocktail by the sea.

Lamin Lodge the Gambia – A Rustic Riverside Experience

Nestled in the mangroves along the Gambia River, Lamin Lodge is a unique wooden structure offering breathtaking views and incredible food. It's a favorite spot for birdwatching enthusiasts and those looking for a peaceful riverside escape.

Kartong Snake Farm – A Unique Wildlife Encounter

The Kartong Snake Farm is a must-visit if you are passionate about reptiles. The farm provides an educational experience about the various snake species found in The Gambia. It's a thrilling yet safe environment to get up close with these fascinating creatures.

Kunta Kinteh Island Tour – Step into History

The Kunta Kinteh Island Tour is an emotional and enlightening experience for history buffs. This UNESCO World Heritage Site tells the harrowing yet powerful story of the transatlantic slave trade. Walking through the ruins and learning about the island's significance is a profoundly moving experience.

Kachikally Museum and Crocodile Pool – Up Close with Nature

The Kachikally Museum and Crocodile Pool in Bakau offers an extraordinary experience. Visitors can observe and even touch the sacred crocodiles that inhabit the pool. The adjoining museum provides insight into Gambian culture and traditions.

Lazy Day River Trip – Relaxation at its Finest

The Lazy Day River Trip is perfect for those seeking a laid-back adventure. This relaxing boat journey down the Gambia River lets you soak in the serene surroundings, spot wildlife, and enjoy delicious food.

Conclusion: The Gambia Awaits Your Adventure

The Gambia is more than just a travel destination; it's an experience that stays with you long after your visit. From the golden shores of Paradise Beach Sanyang Gambia to the historical depths of Kunta Kinteh Island, every moment in The Gambia is filled with wonder. Whether exploring the wild at Kartong Snake Farm or unwinding on a Lazy Day River Trip, the memories you'll create here will be unforgettable. Pack your bags, embrace the locals' warmth, and prepare for the adventure of a lifetime in The Gambia!

[ethereyel]

Hey friends! 💗 Please help me to raise money for my beautiful friend Samba and his family living in Gambia 🙏🏻

Meeting Samba and speaking to him about his life in Gambia has opened my eyes to the reality of living in an impoverished area; the lifestyle requires more work than we do during our usual work life here in the west, and the work they must put in just to have enough to support their family is hard work, and never ending.

Samba lives with his 3 brothers, John, James and Peter. He also helps to support some of the orphaned children in his village; Musa, Lamin, Mariama, David, Samwel and Patrick. They are his family.

We all deserve the right to have access to sufficient food, clean water and shelter, but unfortunately not everyone has easy access to these things like we are so blessed to have.

Please take some time to consider what you can spare for Samba and his gorgeous family, even a small donation will make a world of difference 🙏🏻♥️

[learningnewways]

Church Visit

This week there was another public holiday... Two in one week?! Yep, it’s a bit crazy... It feels like we just start building momentum with joining the team and then there’s another day off or it’s the weekend... It’s frustrating but there’s not much we can do about it. Over the weekend, I tried to join in with as much as I could, so on Saturday I went to a university Bible study that one of the Destiny Rescue team volunteers for, and on Sunday we did a tour of the children’s ministry and community campus at ICF.

I felt honoured to join the Bible study, which is run by International Fellowship of Evangelical Christians (IFEC), which in New Zealand is called Tertiary Students Christian Fellowship (TSCF). This particular study was for a group of student leaders who lead their own small groups around campus. It was nice to be together, particularly with other young women, to worship and learn new ways of sharing the gospel. They asked me lots of questions and I was able to be an encouragement to them, which was awesome. I felt very welcomed and like I was part of the team. It’s really surprised me how open, friendly and welcoming the locals are here in Cambodia. I’ve found it so much easier to connect than in The Gambia, that’s for sure.

On Sunday morning we got up bright and early, and headed to ICF (International Christian Fellowship). They are the church we visited last Sunday, who started the Wake Park next door. We were joining their tour, which meant we got to see all parts of what they do on a Sunday morning, walk through all the facilities, join in some activities, and learn more about their work throughout the week. It was incredible! (A word you’ll see me use many times in this blog post...) The campus is absolutely stunning and it’s hard to believe they have accomplished so much in only ten years. It was a morning full of awe and inspiration.

The focus of the tour was on children’s ministry, which happens on Sunday mornings. We started our tour by jumping on their church trucks, which drive around nearby villages, picking kids up and bringing them to the church. I couldn’t believe it... They sent out around ten trucks, all in different directions, and most came back full of children. I was partnered with one of the church’s many social workers, and we stopped at about ten stops, picking up kids as young as toddlers through to intermediate age. As we approached the stop, kids would be waiting for us, some of them literally jumping up and down in anticipation! It brought tears to my eyes seeing the kids so excited for church. Others would sprint towards the truck as it tooted on arrival. Children chatted away and laughed on the trucks as we drove back to the church, where they were unloaded and signed in.

Around 350 children come to ICF on Sunday mornings, either making their own way to church or being picked up by the village trucks. That’s a lot of kids! Bigger than a lot of schools! The whole morning was so well organised and ran so smoothly, it was amazing, I’ve never seen anything quite like it. Once the kids arrived, they were given a light snack of bread, fruit and a drink, then they got to have an hour of free time. All around the campus they set up numerous activities from rock climbing to football, hair washing and first aid, to musical chairs and art. So many activities for the kids to choose from and wander between. There was such a good mix of practical things like hair washing and cutting, as well as fun games and crafts.

After their hour free time, the bell rings and the kids go into the main room where they have big moveable stadium seating. The kids do worship and listen to a sermon, maybe watch a live drama or video, and have a game up front. Once the talk is over, they go out into their small groups where they chat about what they learnt in the talk and pray together. Then they all get feed lunch, which is quite the operation! It was so well organised and all went surprisingly quickly and smoothly. Incredible! After lunch the kids go inside for a bit of a wrap up, before heading home on the trucks.

While kids church is on, across the road at the Wake Park is the adults service, which is in Khmer, the local language. There is a Khmer and English service that runs at night, which we went to last week, as well as a youth service on Saturday nights. The whole operation is mainly run by volunteers, over a hundred of them! These volunteers are mainly youth aged and local. They also have all the ICF staff there, including social workers, outreach team, campus staff, educators and maintenance staff, and there’s around a hundred of them too. There is a lot of staff and volunteers, but their community reach is staggering.

While there, we got to walk around the entire campus and learn more about what they do during the week, which was again, incredible! We talked to the head of their social team, who explained the life changing work they do. If families in nearby villages meet certain conditions, such as lack of income, education, basic needs, illness, vulnerability...etc, they can become part of ICF’s program. The team of around 50 social workers, all locals, have about 25 families each that they work with in this program, which makes up 1,250 families, or between 7,000-10,000 people in total. That’s crazy! These social workers spend every day visiting families in their homes, providing support for physical, mental and spiritual needs, hosting small groups, running after school programs... All at no cost for the families. It’s mind blowing.

During the week, the church puts on a free after school program that any child can attend, but they do have to find their own way to the campus. Around 120 kids come every day. The after school program has educators that specialise in Khmer, English, Maths, Music, Art and Bible Studies, and children get to choose two classes to attend each day, which run for around an hour. I believe the children also get fed, but I’m not 100% sure on that. The facilities were epic, so well thought through, planned and executed.

It fascinated and astounded me just how many kids came every Sunday and throughout the week, it absolutely astounded me! In a country that’s over 90% Buddhist, it’s interesting that families here are so open. They are well aware that their children are going to a Christian program and that the social workers helping them are Christians. There is no pressure for the families to themselves become Christians, although of course many do over time. In all the work I’ve seen with Destiny Rescue and ICF, the local people seem overwhelming fine with Christians sharing the Gospel with their Buddhist children. I’m not sure the same could be said for the Muslim dominated Gambia... I think the success is in the way ICF provides such holistic support and is in the community so frequently. They have become a trustworthy and safe place in the community for so many years.

With staff numbers of around 120 and a community reach of close to 10,000 people, I can’t express enough how incredible and inspiring the work of ICF is. And ICF Cambodia has only been around for ten years, with the social team starting seven years ago. Yes, they are bank rolled, with mainly European donors and partner churches funding the 1.5 million NZD per year it takes to keep it running... But our churches in New Zealand spend around half a million a year, hiring only roughly ten staff and reaching maybe 1,000 people? Sure, wages and living costs are much cheaper over here, but man, their local community sure is the focus! And although I’m seeing them now in all their glory, they didn’t start out that way. They were just a normal church plant with missionaries who saw a need and filled it.For things to function so smoothly on a large scale, their systems and processes must be top notch and scalable. You can’t reach that many people effectively without good organisation and communication! They have details on every child that comes to them, files on how many social visits they’ve had, food parcels received, medical checks done...etc. They build such strong and genuine relationships that if a kid is missing for even a few days, someone notices and can quickly check in on them. I’m super organised and admin strong, and it made me say “wow” many times over!

The church has around 20 non-local staff, so foreigners who mainly raise their own funds to be there voluntarily, like most missionaries. We had a lovely American girl Amber showing us around, who’d been there for about three years. We talked about the work of Destiny Rescue and how inspired we were by ICF. Amber is also passionate about human trafficking and hopes to move into that work more specifically over time, but since being with ICF she has realised that their work in the community IS preventing human trafficking. They are so well connected with families, that they catch children who are vulnerable and at risk before they are in danger. They also run seminars that help to educate and prevent exploitation, as well as their sponsorship and after school program which supports education... It really is wrap around support.

ICF Cambodia do so much, is actually a bit overwhelming and unfathomable. I’ve travelled around the world, seen many ministries across New Zealand, and I’ve never seen anything quite like it. Honestly! They cover almost everything you could think of, and if they don’t, they’re working on it! They are extreme visionaries and problem solvers, who get stuff done! I hope and pray they plant more churches with the same community focus in countries that really need it. The Gambia perhaps?

It’s hard not to think of ideas for The Gambia constantly... But also my brain isn’t sure how realistic many things are, particularly when there’s minimal Christians to help run things, zero funding, and a strong Muslim culture who at best kicks children out of families for converting to Christianity... Some ideas are transferable and others aren’t. I wonder what my place is in all of this... As I approach my final week in Cambodia, I can’t help but think about my future. Am I the link between Destiny Rescue and The Gambia? Or even ICF and The Gambia? Am I to support an already existing ministry, or to start my own? Am I even supposed to go back to The Gambia, or stay in New Zealand, bringing new energy and fresh ideas? I don’t know... But I know all my experiences, learnings, challenges and passions can’t be for nothing. Nothing is wasted in God’s Kingdom.

[bojangsofbakau]

Get ready for The Gambia’s biggest cultural and music festival MARCH 2023 LUvAfriKa is 2 days of exploration into musical culture and arts with 2 main music arenas; the Main Stage and Roots Tent. Wellbeing Tent and other areas to discover. LUvAfriKa is a family event, so visit the Children’s activities area; you’ll find African drummers, acoustic artists, street dancers, and children’s entertainers, plus a Children’s area full of everything fun to keep the children happy. LUvAfriKa market will sell an array of clothing, jewellery and crafts. Stallholders will sell a variety of goods and products. There is also an artist and festival merchandise for those wanting memorabilia from the festival. Not only will you experience great music, but LUvAfriKa offers delicious Gambian and world food in the Food Village and Ital Garden. As well as snacks and drinks in our Cocktail Bar and Rum Shack. There will be live performances from 20 artists from Gambia and across the world of reggae, roots, jungle and afro beats. Sound systems from Gambia, Spain, Germany, Jamaica and UK. World-renowned DJs will play alongside live performances from new Gambian and UK artists. LUvAfriKa 2023, join us for a weekend of unforgettable performances. MORE INFO COMING SOON Sponsoned by King FM My Magazine, The Gambia Footsteps Eco Lodge POCO LOCO New Baileys beach bar Bojang River Lodge Mo2 Gambia Ariwa (at Batakunku) https://www.instagram.com/p/CkRlb55N_tH/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[princessanneftw]

Princess Anne’s organisations ➔ Save the Children Fund

Princess Anne began her work with the Save the Children Fund on 15 August 1970 - her 20th birthday - when she accepted their offer to become their new President. She immediately wanted to see the kind of work the Fund were doing on the ground, and so embarked on her first overseas trip with the Fund to their Centre in Nairobi, which was filmed by the BBC’s Blue Peter team. This was the first in a long line of trips which would see her travel to some of the most remote, poverty-stricken, and dangerous places around the world, and which saw a colossal growth for the charity. 

While the majority of her engagements for the Fund are in the UK, it is on foreign tours that she gets involved with the Fund’s most important work and witnesses at first hand how the money she helps raise is used. These extensive tours for which she became famous for, beginning in the 1980s, were when people really began to sit up and take notice.

Visiting Nepal in 1981, the Princess spent ten days visiting the SCF’s four projects in the foothills and valleys of the Himalayas, which provide basic health care for mothers and children and are run by the locals, having been educated in modern health practices by the Fund workers. Around 300 children attended the clinics daily, trekking long distances to do so. To visit one clinic, Anne had a strenuous four-hour walk through the mountains, proving her stamina. 

In 1982, Anne undertook her most extensive tour with the Fund yet, which was to be a major turning point for the Fund. It took her to Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Kenya, Somalia, Djibouti, North Yemen and Beirut. Covering 14,000 miles in three weeks by air, road and boat, she was met with poverty, starvation and disease. She visited immunization centres in places where typhoid and polio were rife, camps with tens of thousands of starving refugees, and children who were on the brink of death.

She was advised to abandon the tour halfway through when continuing hostilities between Ethiopia and Somalia had begun to reach breaking point, and the Foreign Office deemed it too dangerous. “Damn them, I’m going on” was her response. If that wasn’t enough, she rejected further warnings that she should cancel her visit to Beirut when, the day before her arrival, 62 people had been killed by a bomb close to the point where she would be travelling. It only gave her further determination. The duration of her visit to the capital, where civil war had killed hundreds, was extended by several hours which she spent touring refugee camps, medical centres and some of the worst hit areas. 

Throughout the tour, the press - who had only tagged along to try and get a scoop because Mark Phillips hadn’t gone with her - were admittedly shocked and impressed by where she went, what she saw and what she did. It was a first for a member of the Royal family. Startling, shocking pictures of human suffering, highlighted by her visit, were sent around the world, alerting a previously unaware public to the plight of the impoverished, disease-ridden conditions under which vast numbers of Africans were living - and dying, thus pointing the way to a massive relief effort. The Fund organisers were delighted with the impact of the tour, and it also gave great hope to those working for the children on the ground. 

In 1984, she embarked on a ten-day tour of Morocco, Gambia and Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso), which she described herself as the most harrowing trip she’s ever made. When asked if she would ever consider a full-time career with the Fund, she said: “I have actually thought about it, but I think really I would only last about a year. What I saw, for instance, in Upper Volta made me realise I would not have the stamina to do it for much longer than that.”

What she saw was thousands of children who faced death within weeks. Life was in the hands of the weather: if the rains don’t come, the people starve. At the hospital in Gorom Gorom, she saw children with spindly legs and pot bellies through lack of food. Those too weak to move lay on rush mats, covered with flies. She brushed the swarming insects from one child’s face, but it was a futile task. “You have to stay remote,” she said, “or you’d just crack.”

There were no frills attached to these tours. Anne stayed in the refugee camps with the Fund workers. When asked about things like washing, her lady-in-waiting, the Hon. Shân Legge-Bourke, who often accompanied her, said: “We just stand under the shower with our clothes on - if there is a shower. But a bucket will do.” Anne neither expected nor received any special treatment for her Royal status. She slept in the same huts, was bitten by the same bed bugs - “little ‘friends’ who shared my sleeping bag” as she called them - and ate the same food.

Mark Bowden, who coordinated the African campaign, said: “There is a communal kitchen where the local staff prepare food that is either tinned, dried or heavily dominated by the only meat available - goat. There is goat stew, goat spaghetti bolonaise, goat everything you can think of... [Anne] is the most marvellous person who makes the most difficult conditions fun. Her presence gives everyone an enormous boost.” 

Her position gave her immediate access to presidents and other government heads who might never have been persuaded to discuss their country’s problems. Here, she demonstrated a knowledge acquired from her experience: the need for village food banks, water schemes, locally trained health workers.

On a trip to India, Fund workers had been trying to negotiate the building of a new nutritional centre for which they were being asked to pay £200,000 for. The day after Anne arrived, it was reduced to £40,000. A donation of £750,000 from the Townswomen’s Guild, of which she is patron, was used to build other health centres. She managed to secure a further £70,000 which was used to finance long-term relief projects in Bangladesh.

In Uganda, the Fund had been trying without success for months to obtain permission to go to a certain area. When Anne visited the country, she spoke to the President personally and within days, permission was given. “That is the sort of help she can give to us which no one else can do,” said Nicholas Hinton, the Director General of the Fund at the time.

When she wasn’t on a tour, she utilized her engagements in Britain to further the cause wherever she could. When she addressed a conference of freight hauliers in Brighton, she obtained donations of services from a worldwide courier company who promised to deliver medicines to any SCF project anywhere in the world free of charge. She extracted a sizeable donation from the delegates she addressed at a meeting of the Inland Revenue Staff Federstion. When Michael Parkinson invited her on to his chat show in Australia, she only agreed after a donation of £6000 was sent to the Fund.

She has since made further visits to Tanzania, Mozambique, Zambia, Sudan, Uganda and Somalia. Her extensive work with the Fund has been recognised worldwide, so much so that in 1990, she was nominated by President Kaunda of Zambia for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Most recently, Anne has travelled to Bangladesh, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Mozambique, Ethiopia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. In addition to her trips overseas, she regularly meets fundraisers and volunteers, and visits SCF shops around the UK. She also attends and speaks at many of their special events every year. 

In 2016, after serving as their president for 46 years, Anne became Patron of Save the Children, taking on the role from the Queen. Accepting her new role, she said:

"I am proud of my long association with Save the Children, and I am honoured to succeed Her Majesty as its Patron. It is an organisation that embodies a spirit of compassion, openness and excellence. Its values are an inspiration; its achievements, a source of hope for millions of children. From significantly reducing malnutrition in some of the poorest parts of Bangladesh to sheltering, feeding and vaccinating the young people affected by the devastating winds and rain of typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines and ensuring children in the UK leave primary school reading competently and able to fulfil their potential, their efforts to ensure that every child survives to live a happy, healthy life are outstanding.”

[ayittey1]

Gambia 2019 Draft Constitution Needs A Rewrite

 Gambia unceremoniously unveiled its 2019 Draft Constitution. It will be presented to the people for approval in a referendum in 2020. The Constitutional Review Commission (CRC) must be commended for crafting a Constitution within such a short time after the former president, Yahya Jammeh, was ousted in January 2017. But the draft Constitution Is 185 pages long – way too long. Rhetorically, it careens from one extreme to another. If Gambia with a population of 2.35 million people needs a 185-page Constitution how long should be the Constitution of Nigeria with a population of over 200 million?

 The chapter outline of the draft Constitution specifying freedoms, rights, responsibilities of public officers alone take up 12 pages. Then it goes into mind-numbing detail on the following topics:

·       Leadership and integrity,”

·       Responsibilities of leadership

·       Restrictions on the activities of public officers;

·       Restrictions on persons dealing with public officers in the service of this date

·       Legislation on leadership

·       The national assembly

·       The judiciary

·       Human rights commission

·       Anticorruption commission

·       State owned enterprises

·       National Council for civic education

 Are you still awake?

 Well, one must give the CRC some credit for being original. At least, they did not try to copy and blend the America and the French constitutions together as Ghana did in 1992. A: Constitution reflects the political history experience and aspirations of the people and, therefore, has a cultural imprint. For example, if a people have labored under a despotic monarch for a long time, they may want to craft a Constitution that avoids another form of despotism. One simply cannot copy such a Constitution if one has never had such an experience, let alone blend two dissimilar experiences together.

 Should Ghana copy the Japanese Constitution whose head of state has historically been an Emperor? So why copy and blend the American and the French? Rather interestingly, the American and the French constitutions approach the issue of liberty from two diametrically opposed angles. The American people see the date as a necessarily evil monster that will gobble up all trample on the rights of the people. They have alienable rights which must never be breached by the state. These are Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness which are enshrined in the Constitution. In the American political scheme of things, the Constitution serves as a shield against a marauding state. The more power that state has, the less free its people.

 By contrast, the French Constitution sees the state as a guarantor or protector of the rights of the people .The French Revolution of 1789 overthrew the despotic monarchy of Louis XIV, who famously declared that, “L’etat cest moi” (the state is mine). When the people rose up in the 1789 Revolution, they wanted to make it clear to the ruler that the state belonged to the people and they have the rights that must be protected and guaranteed by the state. It is difficult to see how the two views of the state can be reconciled or blended.

 Now how do Gambians see their state? Obviously, the answer must reflect their postcolonial experience with government, which is not different from other Africans ’experiences. In postcolonial Africa, government ceased to exist and failed to provide basic levels of security, freedom, human rights and social services for its people. In many countries, including Gambia, the government was at war with its own people, repressing and brutalizing them. Worse, the government was hijacked by a phalanx of bandits, crooks and vagabonds who used the machinery of the state to enrich themselves, cronies and tribesmen, excluding everybody else. Jammeh plundered the state treasury of nearly $1 billion. Obviously in a new constitution, this monstrosity should not begin more powers. Instead, every effort must be made to clip its wings so that it does not abuse its powers in the future. The draft Constitution gives the state too much power.

 It is understandable why the CRC produced a voluminous Constitution that .long because they wanted to nail everything down. You see, the former president -, ahem, a military coconut - insisted on being addressed as His Excellency President Professor Dr. Al-Haji Yahya Abdul-Azziz Jemus Junkung Jammeh. He governed on the fly – from the seat of his pants, making up rules as he went along. He vowed to rule for 40 years and claimed to have discovered the cure for HIV/AIDS. He also claimed he had mystic powers and would turn Gambia into an oil-producing nation. He threatened to behead gays. But despite his bluster, he was terrified of witches and evil sorcerers. He was booted out of office by ECOWAS troops in January 217. He is being sheltered in Equatorial Guinea by another scrofulous dictator. He must be expelled and sent to the ICC for crimes against humanity.

 Not wanting to take any chances, the CRC tried to put everything down. It would have said this to Jammeh, “Hey, it says here that you cannot rule for 40 years; only two terms in office.” But then, in so doing, the CRC went overboard and it is not alone. You see, in Africa, the art of Constitution making is not well understood.

 A Constitution is a social contract between the people (the governed) and the rulers, regarding how they shall be ruled. It should not be a document codifying how the president would like to rule the country – as was the case in Ghana in 1992 when Ft./Lte. Jerry Rawlings created a very powerful executive. Nor should it be a phantom document favoring one political candidate – as was the case in Nigeria in 1999. Under pressure to return the country to civilian rule, Nigeria’s military brass produced two constitutions in 1999 hidden from sight and held closely to its chest. Which one to release to the public depended upon who won the March 1999 elections. So Nigerians went to vote without seeing their Constitution, nor knowing their contents. Imagine.

 More than half of Gambia’s draft Constitution is unnecessary or somewhere else and can be cut. For example, a Constitution should never attempt to define leadership qualifications for the president as one can to draw up more than 100 traits of leadership – from bravery and diligence to honesty and trustworthiness. Even then, should the lack of a redeeming trait disqualify one from becoming president? Nor should the Constitution wade into normative subject areas such as integrity. How does one determine if a person has integrity or not if they have not been tested as president?

 A Constitution should not be the place to specify duties and restrictions on the activities of public officers. These are best placed in the Civil Service Code. The Constitution may specify broadly the functions of the National Assembly and the Judiciary but should stay away from detailed exposition of how they should be run. For example, the Constitution may say that they shall be a Speaker, chosen from the party that wins the most seats in the National Assembly. How they select the Speaker or what their function should be ought to be left out of the Constitution.

 The duties of the president should also be left out of the Constitution. For example, the Constitution may say that the president should act in cases of national emergency to protect the people and safeguard the security of the nation. It should not specify what is a national emergency, nor what actions the president should take. Naturally, what constitutes an emergency may change over time. The U.S. Constitution was promulgated in 1789 and what was an emergency back then is no longer today because of technological advancements in dealing with hurricanes, fires and flooding. The Constitution may also assign foreign policy to the president but should not go into specifics how foreign policy should be conducted as circumstances would change over time depending upon the nature of the foreign government.

 On rights, the draft Constitution goes into incredible detail about the rights of women, minorities, the youth, the elderly, the disabled, children, etc. it should as well have included the rights of cockroaches! All that was needed to say was to enshrine the dignity and rights of persons. For example, the Constitution may recognize a person’s right to a dwelling or home. It should not attempt to define a home as what constitutes a dwelling will change over time.

 A Constitution for an African country should not exceed 20 pages. One thing we should understand in Africa is that the more power the state has, the less free its people. Our ancestors in some ethnic groups very well understood this axiom and abolished the state altogether. They are called stateless societies – such as the Igbo, Somali and Gikuyu. By contrast, we write Constitutions in modern Africa by assuming that head of state is a Messiah, bestowing powers upon powers on dictators such as General Samuel Doe of Liberia, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, etc. Then when they started abusing those powers, we found to our chagrin that we had no countervailing powers to check them.

 A good Constitution should start from this premise: No offence is intended and your academic credentials notwithstanding, we regard you – the president – as a potential bandit and tyrant. Then the Constitution proceeds to put in place measures and safeguards to prevent him from becoming a tyrant and a bandit. For example, you cannot dictate or take decisions alone by yourself. You must take decisions by consensus with your Council of Elders or Village Assembly. Fantasy? This is exactly how or illiterate peasants govern themselves in the traditional system.

 In line with indigenous African philosophy, the state should be regarded as necessarily tyrannous that should be chastened, not over-empowered. This is akin to the American ethos. This does not mean the state must necessarily be abolished but rather finding ways of reining in a state which is out of control. In many African countries The American way of dealing with an out of control state is to create three equal branches of government – the executive, the legislature and the judiciary, with each checking the others. Africa may devise a different system. For example, Africa may establish a Supreme Council of Elders, given the reverence Africans confer on the elderly. Such a Council, given their collective wisdom, may veto legislation, cause the removal of the president or judges.

 Another innovative feature for on Africa Constitution is to exempt the president from the appointment of the heads of those institutions designed to check him. The president should Not be allowed to appoint the Atty. Gen., Supreme Court Justices, electoral commissioner, Speaker of Parliament, Governor of the Central Bank, etc. A conflict of interest situation is involved. It is difficult to have free and fair elections when electoral commissioner is appointed by the president.

 It must be noted that the inviolability of the Constitution is not assured by inserting into the Constitution a clause saying that “military coups are illegal” – as Nigeria did with its 1979 Constitution. In 1983, Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (the current president) tpssed the Constitution aside after seizing power in a military coup. Clearly, that constitutional clause did not stop him. A better deterrent must be devised.

 Gambia’s National Assembly may lodge a copy of the Constitution with the African Union or the United Nations with the express instructions that the international community shall recognize only the civilian government that upholds this Constitution. It Cannot be a tended, abridged or abrogated without the approval of supra=majority (at least 66%) of the National Assembly/this is to prevent a situation where some military coconut, waving a bazooka, seizes power, suspends the Constitution, plays martial music and declares himself president. To succeed, he must also suspend the Constitution lodged with the African Union or the United Nations.

 Even more important, , if Africa needs a Constitution, it should go back to its roots and hold a constitutional convention on the Manden Charter, promulgated at Kurukan Fuga. According to UNESCO, the Charter is one of the world's oldest constitutions, predating the U.S. Constitution. Proclaimed in 1236, following a major military victory, by the founder of the Mandingo Empire and the assembly of his wise men, the Manden Charter, was named after the territory situated above the upper Niger River basin, between present-day Guinea and Mali. The Charter, though mainly in oral form, contains a preamble of seven chapters advocating,

 “”Social peace in diversity, the inviolability of the human being, education, the integrity of the motherland, food security, the abolition of slavery by razzia (or raid), and freedom of expression and trade.

 The Empire disintegrated when Mahmud Keita IV died around 1610. According to oral tradition, he had three sons who never agreed about succession and this sibling rivalry contributed to the end of the Mali Empire. But he words of the Charter and the rituals associated with it are still transmitted orally by griots from father to son in a codified way within the Malinke clans.

 To keep the tradition alive, commemorative annual ceremonies of the historic assembly are organized in the village of Kangaba (adjacent to the vast clearing of Kurukan Fuga, which now lies in Mali, (close to the Guinean border). The ceremonies are backed by the local and national authorities of Mali and, in particular, the traditional authorities, who see it as a source of law and as promoting a message of love, peace and fraternity, which has survived through the ages. The Manden Charter continues to underlie the basis of the values and identity of the populations concerned.

The Charter was transcribed, translated and republished. It divided the empire into ruling clans (lineages) that were represented at a great assembly called the Gbara. There were 16 clans known as the Djon-Tan-Nor-Woro (quiver carriers) responsible for leading and defending the empire. There were also 4 clans known as the Mori-Kanda-Lolou (guardians of the faith) who guided the ruling clans in matters of Islamic law. There were 4 nyamakala clans (people of caste) who had the monopoly on certain trades, which included but was not limited to smelting, woodworking, and tanners. Lastly, there were 4 clans of djeli (masters of speech) who recorded the history of the empire through song and story-telling.

 Apparently, there was clan specialization or division of labor – just as we saw about sexual division of labor. Certain tasks such as defending the Empire and recording its history were reserved for certain clans. The Constitution contained 44 edicts, divided into four sections relating to Social Organization (edicts 1-30), Property Rights (edicts 31-36), Environmental Protection (edicts 37-39) and Personal Responsibilities (edicts 40-44). The constitution also required women to be represented at all levels of government (edict 16) [The Kingdom of Benin and the Swazi Kingdom also required government ministers to be balanced with female counterparts or advisers].

The Charter also guaranteed and upheld, among others, the following edicts,

 Edict 5. Everybody has a right to life and to the preservation of its physical integrity

Accordingly, any attempt to deprive one’s fellow being of life is punished with death

Edict 9. The children’s education behooves the entire society .The paternal authority in consequence falls to everyone.

Edict 14.Do never offend women, our mothers.

Edict 16: Women, apart from their everyday occupations, should be associated with all

our managements.

Edict 20: Do not ill-treat the slaves. We are the master of the slave but not the bag he

         carries.

Edict 23: Never betray one another. Respect your word of honor.

Edict 24: In Manden, do not maltreat the foreigners.[Tell that to black South Africans.]

Edict 31: We should help those who are in need.

Edict 32: There are five ways to acquire property: buying, donation, exchange, work and

inheriting. Any other form without convincing testimony is doubtful. [Tell that to those who preach communal ownership.]

Edict 40: Respect kinship, marriage and the neighborhood.

Edict 41: You can kill the enemy, but not humiliate him.

Edict 44: All those who will transgress these rules will be punished. Everyone is bound to make effective their implementation.

(It is noteworthy that the Charter affirmed the equality of women, freedom of expression, freedom of trade and frowned upon laziness and idleness. From Edict 9 may be traced the African saying, "it takes a village to raise a child." The laws were binding on all, including the ruler (the rule of law). In those earlier times, the most common type of political configuration was the Confederation of clans, which could constitute a state. The Ga Kingdom in Ghana, for example, is a Confederation of six extended families or clans.

It may be noted that the Charter forbade wronging foreigners. Africa has always been hospitable to foreigners. Africa's traditional system of governance has always been open and inclusive, which helped achieve stability. The Mali/Madinke Empire was a confederacy – like all other ancient African empires – and lasted for 400 years. (The Ghana Empire also lasted for 800 years).

 Stability, to a large extent, owed its origin primarily to the design and operation of the indigenous political system in which anybody -- even including slaves -- could participate in the decision-making process, the essence of which was achieving consensus. Note that dictatorship and consensus building are never compatible.

 There was representation of slaves, the freeborn and the nobility at the royal court in most African states. There was even foreign representation. The kings and chiefs of Angola and Asante, for example, allowed European merchants to send their representatives to their courts. No one was "locked out" of the decision-making process, to use modern phraseology. "The Dutch dispatched an embassy to the Asantehene's court as early as 1701" (Boahen, 1986; p.58). In Angola, King Alfonso allowed the Portuguese merchants to send their spokesman, Dom Rodrigo, to his court. Europeans could even be selected chiefs. For example, in 1873, Zulu king Cetshwayo made an English hunter/trader, John Dunn, chief of an isifunda, or district. "Dunn, not content to hover on the periphery of Zulu society, became fully integrated into the social system. He married 48 Zulu women, accumulated a large following of clients, and even rose to the rank of isikhulu" (Ballard, 1988; p.55). Also, the case of Englishman Jimmy Maxen may be cited,  who in 1968 became the odikro of Anyaisi at Aburi in Ghana, shown below. in fact, foreigners can be Chiefs and there are white chiefs in Ghana and Nigeria.

 Africans should be proud of and celebrate this constitutional heritage. First, the Framers of that Constitution may have been backward and illiterate but displayed astonishing sophistication in regards to the rights of women, environmental protection and even compassion. Evidently, African women were liberated centuries before their Western counterparts.

 The political entity – structured on the Confederacy principle in decision-making by consensus – lasted for 400 years. By contrast, modern African leaders and elites, who sport a string of Ph.D.s, including Agricometriiology (the application of nuclear technology to the cultivation of cassava or manioc) could not write a Constitution that would last even 40 years after independence. Why did the primitive Empire built on the Confederacy principle lasted for centuries whereas the modern state built on the unitary state system barely lasted for 50 years after independence? Did our ancestors know something about governance that modern African leaders and elites do not know? It would take a great deal of humility on the part of Africa's ruling elites to answer those questions.

 The peasants could afford to make a white man chief – not so much because they were in awe of white people – but because in their system, real power lay with the people and they could remove bad Chiefs at any time   – not after any specified number of years, such as four years.

 This author has always decried the foolish aping foreign systems and paraphernalia to impose upon the African people after independence in the 1960s. There is s nothing wrong with Africa's own indigenous economic system. All the leadership had to do is to go back and build upon the native traditions of free markets, free enterprise and free trade. But they never did this on the economic front; nor on the political and constitutional front. This was why things went so awry in postcolonial Africa.

In Mali, this betrayal was most perfidious. Instead of decentralized governance – as in a Confederacy – the ruling elites established a highly centralized one in Bamako, the capital. The one-party state system was adopted as well as collectivist agriculture under the banner of socialism. And get this: The one who supervised the destruction and desecration of Mali's heritage was the country's first president, Modibo Keita, who was honored by a number of local griots (a semi-endogamous group of professional bards) in celebratory songs in which the political leader was depicted as the direct descendent of Sunjata Keita, the founder of the Mali empire. The Keita government progressively lost its popularity among various strata of the population. An alliance between the dissatisfied segments of the Malian population—the peasants, the merchants, and the army —led to the success of the military coup d'état of 1968 that ousted Keita. But then the next "rat" -- Moussa Traore -- came to do the same thing: reintroduced the socialist one-party state system, collectivist agriculture, among others,/

 On March 18, 1991, angry Malians took to the streets to demand democratic freedom from the despotic rule of Moussa Traore. He unleashed his security forces on them, killing scores, including women and children. But pro-democracy forces were not deterred and kept up the pressure. Asked to resign on March 25, he retorted: "I will not resign, my government will not resign, because I was elected not by the opposition but by all the people of Mali!!!! But two days later when he tried to flee the country, he was grabbed by his own security agents and sent to jail. From there, he lamented: "My fate is now in God's hands."

 The lesson in all this can be gleaned from this African  proverb: "He who does not know where he came from does not know where he is going." Africa is lost because its ruling elites do not know where they came from. China has Confucius; so they have built 54 Confucius Institutes. Go figure.

Let’s hope the Gambian Constitution Review Commissioners know where they came from.

-------------------------------------------

 The writer, a native of Ghana, and President of the Free Africa Foundation, both in Washington, DC. He is the author of the forthcoming book, The African Take-Off

[kreuzaderny]

Scientists Release Controversial Genetically Modified Mosquitoes In High-Security Lab

To prevent any unforeseen effects on the environment, scientists have always tried to keep genetically engineered organisms from spreading their mutations.

But in this case, researchers want the modification to spread. So they engineered mosquitoes with a "gene drive."

A gene drive is like a "selfish gene," Mueller says, because it doesn't follow the normal rules of genetics. Normally, traits are passed to only half of all offspring. With the gene drive, nearly all the progeny inherit the modification.

"All the offspring. All the children — the mosquito children — have this modification," Mueller says.

Researchers created the mosquitoes by using the powerful new gene-editing technique known as CRISPR, which Mueller likens to a "molecular scissor which can cut at a specific site in the DNA."The cut altered a gene known as "doublesex," which is involved in the sexual development of the mosquitoes.

"The females become a bit more male," Mueller says. "A kind of hermaphrodite."While genetically female, the transformed insects have mouths that resemble male mosquito mouths. That means they can't bite and so can't spread the malaria parasite. In addition, the insects' reproductive organs are deformed, which means they can't lay eggs.As more and more female mosquitoes inherit two copies of the modification, more and more become sterile.The idea is that if these modified mosquitoes are eventually shown to be safe and effective, they might someday be released in African villages plagued by malaria. The hope is that they would spread their mutation and eventually sterilize all the females. That would crash — or drastically reduce — local populations of the main species of mosquito that spreads malaria, known as Anopheles gambiae.

[texanpeanut]

home

During my first few months of service, I thought about home a lot. No, not the Dreamworks movie with Rihanna, but everything familiar and comfortable I had left behind in the US. I remember lying in my twin-sized bed after lunch with my host family, sweating my ass off, on the verge of tears, thinking about my dogs, my bike, pavement, listening to music in my car, air conditioning, getting dressed up, hotel lobbies, Disney World, carpet, hardwood floors, backpacking, sleeping in tents, smoothies... oh, and I guess all my friends and family members I was away from.

Once I moved to my permanent village I would come up with endless ways to count down the time until I could go home (just 4 months until vacation, then 6 months after that I'll go on another vacation, then 4 months, vacation, then 6 months and I'm done! OR It's January 2018 now, so 2018 is basically over, then it'll be 2019, and I go home that year, so I'm basically done already). I guess this sounds concerning to someone who isn't a volunteer, but it's not really. I just was having a hard time feeling at ease while trying to adjust mentally and physically to everything new around me.

Now I've lived here for 15 months and have about 10 months left. I still think about home a lot, but in different ways. There's the US as home - the place I'll go when I COS, where I can blend in again, where I can backpack the AT, where I'll probably go to grad school, where I'll look for eventual jobs. There's my parents' house where I'll spend the holidays at the end of the year, where I'll avoid high school acquaintances at the grocery store, where I'll snuggle my dogs until we both fall asleep or one throws up on the pillow, where I'll spend at least one day shamelessly watching South Park for hours on the couch. But there's also a kind of home here I've found. In the beginning I associated home with physical comforts. Daydreaming about my big soft bed definitely helped distract me from the real mental discomfort I was experiencing, but now I think of home a little bit differently.

I think home can be a moment where you feel completely free to be yourself, a person who makes you feel light as air, or a place where you can take both your phyical and metaphorical pants off. Home is cooking a meal together and drinking shitty wine and staying up until midnight watching Vine compilations on YouTube. Home is letting the sun warm your face as you drive over the Gambia River at sunset. Home is the feeling of pride and awe as your garden plants/children germinate and explode out of the ground. Home is a warm greeting from a neighbor who you haven't seen in a while. Home is the dumb joke your host dad tells every day but that still puts a smile on your face. Home is not caring what we do as long as it's together. Home is ugly-crying at the airport without embarrassment. Home is staying up late with your sister on Christmas whispering in bed so no one else knows you're awake, talking about everything and nothing. Home is getting wine-drunk with your family to distract yourself from the fact that it's 45 degrees outside. Home is playing the bean game. Home is talking about sex with your best friend on a hotel rooftop. Home is not needing your earbuds on a 5-hour drive because there's just so much to talk about.

Home isn't just a place that exists in my memories anymore, but it's something I find everywhere, everyday. In these next ten months I'm sure I'll think about the US a lot, what it'll be like to go back, what my next steps will be, etc. I'm sure I'll have days where all I want will be a hot shower and my bed, or nothing more than to go on a long bike ride on a nice, paved road. But for now I feel comfortable enough here, thanks to my amazing host family, my amazing real family back in the states, my supportive friends who let me bother them on WhatsApp early in the morning, and my volunteer community here in Senegal.

I've been thinking about this since November, but have had a hard time sitting down to write it. It was difficult to write after Lyra died but I'm trying to get back into it. I've also been busy with work, travel, and vacation but now I'm getting ready to start 2019 with a somewhat less hectic schedule, so hopefully that means I can crank out some more of these. I'm hoping to do a little review of 2018, talk about some of the books I've read so far here, and hopefully do a little work update. More to come y'all - I haven't abandoned this yet.

Thanks for reading my mushy musings and please accept my cyberhugs,

Maggie

[humansofhds]

Nougoutna Norbert Litoing, PhD candidate

"The value of a person is inherent by virtue of the fact that the person is created in God’s image and likeness ... whether or not we are considered “productive” by society."

Norbert is a Jesuit priest and a third-year PhD student in the Committee on the Study of Religion. His research involves the comparative study of Muslim and Catholic pilgrimage traditions in West Africa and the relationship between pilgrimage, memory, and identity.

At Home in the World

I am from Cameroon, which is geographically along the Western coast of Africa and politically a part of Central Africa. Cameroon shares a border with Nigeria, Chad, the Central African Republic, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, and the Republic of Congo. I am specifically from North East Cameroon along the border with Chad. My parents are from two different ethnic groups, my father is from a group called Masa (different from the well-known Maasai of East Africa), and my mother is from an ethnic group called Tupuri. My father’s village is about seven kilometers from my mother’s, so they didn’t have to travel a long distance to meet each other. I grew up mostly in the south of the country. My father was a soldier, so we moved around where his work took him. For about 14 years I lived on different military bases around the country. We had to adapt to each new place. As one of the consequences of this constant movement, I have very few childhood friends from when I was young. I have, however, learned to be at home wherever I find myself.

When I was 10 years old I expressed the desire to become a Catholic priest to my parents. I asked to join a minor seminary, which is basically a middle and high school for young boys who are thinking of joining the priesthood. I got my A-levels in S1 (math, physics, and chemistry) at the minor seminary, which is the certificate that qualifies you to go to university. Even though I still desired to be a priest, I felt the need to take some time for further reflection before making a firm commitment. I consequently decided to go to university and began to study mathematics. In the meantime, I was in touch with the Jesuits who I had discovered by reading and through a friend from the minor seminary who was already in touch with them.

The Language of Love

During my freshman year, I journeyed with the Jesuits and eventually entered the Jesuit novitiate at the end of the year. Even though there is a Jesuit novitiate in Cameroon, I was sent to the one in Rwanda, in the Great Lakes region of Africa. The novitiate is the first stage of formation for Jesuits. It lasts two years. It is a time of initiation into the Jesuit order. A center-piece of this initiation consists of undertaking the spiritual exercises, a 30-day retreat during which you have the opportunity to read your own life story as a sacred journey, being able to find the traces of God’s presence in your own life and the ways in which God might be calling you to serve people out there.

Apart from the retreat, another memorable experience of my novitiate formation was an internship that I was asked to do in Burundi. I spent six weeks there in a center for mentally and physically handicapped children. It was one of the most important experiences in my life up to now. At the beginning, it was very frustrating. I had a language barrier. I couldn’t speak with the kids. My Kirundi was next to nothing and my Kiswahili was very basic. I was asked to teach them French, and after three weeks I was still trying to teach them the alphabet.

What helped me to overcome my frustration was the realization that I was being called to speak with them using another language: the language of love. Just being there with them, they simply enjoyed being around you. By the end of my stay there it felt like home. As my parting gift, the kids gave me a big piece of paper on which they had drawn a heart. They had colored it and written their names. I kept it because it reminded me of my experience there, which taught me that the value of a human being does not reside in what a person is capable of eventually producing. The value of a person is inherent by virtue of the fact that the person is created in God’s image and likeness. I learned that we have an intrinsic value independent of what we are capable of doing or producing, whether or not we are considered “productive” by society. I remember one kid in particular, her dad was a prominent university professor in Burundi. Sometimes he was frustrated when he realized that he had this prominent brain and all that it produces, but his own child could not even make a full sentence. It was frustrating for him. But to have a child like that was an invitation precisely for him to realize that there is another way of assessing the value of a person. That’s what those children did for me.

Service and Studies

After those two years in Rwanda, I was sent to Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where I studied philosophy in what has now become Loyola University Congo. I spent three years there, earning a BA in philosophy. After that I was sent to Senegal for regency, which is a time of pastoral ministry. I lived and worked in a city called Tambacounda, not far from the border between Senegal and Mali. There, I was in charge of Religious Education in our Jesuit parish and Catholic junior high school.

In Tambacounda, we equally run a socio-cultural center that serves children from poor families. I mentored a number of these kids. My first year in Tambacounda was difficult because I was adjusting, but the second year was wonderful, so much so that I actually asked if I could stay there beyond the required two years of regency. I was, however, not allowed to stay, as my Jesuit superior sent me to Hekima College, a Jesuit University in Nairobi, Kenya, to study. I did a master of divinity degree there and was ordained a deacon in February 2012. That same year I was sent to England to do a master in Islamic studies at the University of Birmingham. I was ordained a priest in the Roman/Latin rite of the Catholic Church in June 2013. In December of the same year, I was sent to Senegal to help open a new Jesuit community in Gandigal, a village located approximately 45 miles from Dakar, the capital city of Senegal. Together with another Jesuit, we were tasked with exploring the possibilities of opening a center for interfaith relations there. I spent a year and a half in Gandigal, serving religious communities in Senegal and Gambia. 

I was then sent to Boston College School of Theology and Ministry for a Master’s in Theology (ThM), a one-year program. I then joined the PhD program in the Study of Religion here at Harvard in the fall of 2016 under the subfields of comparative studies and African religions. I hope to work on Muslim and Catholic pilgrimage traditions in West Africa in a comparative perspective, exploring the relationship between pilgrimage, memory, and identity. I am now in the third year of the program. I serve as TF for two classes while I prepare for the general exams, which I intend to take in the spring.

As a Jesuit, when in studies, my pastoral ministry is very limited. A cornerstone of our Jesuit spirituality consists in “finding God in all things.” My studies currently constitute the site of my encounter with God. From time to time, I celebrate Mass and listen to confessions in some of the local parishes as a visiting priest, but my studies constitute my main mission right now.

The Tortoise

I wouldn’t trade the experience of living in many places for anything in the world. It has done something to me; it really gives you a unique perspective on people and life. It forces you out of your comfort zone. And if you go to these places with an open heart, you usually learn a lot from the people you encounter and through the experiences you have.

I tell people that everywhere is home for me. If somebody asks me “have you gone home?” I say, “I am always home.” The symbol of my mother’s ethnic group, and it has become a symbol of my own spiritual life, is the tortoise. It moves around with its home on its back. I tend to be at home wherever I find myself. It is true some places can be more home than others in terms of the experiences you make. But I believe that other people do not have the power to determine whether I am happy or not; I don’t give that power to people. You should have it in your own hands. Don’t give them the power to determine what becomes of your life.

The poem “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley is my favorite. It says, among other things, “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.” It’s the meaning of my name as well—my last name Litoing means “self-made.”

Interview and photos by Anaïs Garvanian

[elizabethworld2018]

PORT THIRTY-FIVE: BANJUL, GAMBIA

If you’re having trouble finding Gambia on the map don’t worry, so did I. The country is completely surrounded by Senegal except for the Atlantic coast and is kind of easy to miss if you’re looking at Africa on a grander scale. Since we knew next to nothing before arriving in Banjual, we decided to take a ship tour “Off the Beaten Track.” Unlike many of the other tours we’ve taken, this wasn’t to seeing the sights or animals but instead was to interact more with people.

Our first stop of the day was at a family compound. Walking around someone else’s home is weird. It felt weird the whole time and looking at it objectively it’s still a little strange. But that was tempered by the warm welcome we received. A huge group of children spotted us as we entered the village and were quick to make sure they met us when we got off our open-air truck. They were sweet and excited and just seemed genuinely happy to have unannounced visitors (a sentiment I can’t usually relate to). They asked to have their picture taken and were so enthralled with talking to Jimmy. They waved us all goodbye as we had to move on.

From the family compound we stopped at the local village’s lower primary school. Banyaka Lower Basic School was funded by Dutch philanthropists in the 90s for around 90 schoolchildren. Now they have almost 1,000 students but only 1 desk for every 5 children. They’ve also struggled with the death of the man who donated lunches for students and the lack of funding to provide a replacement. Yet, the staff still seems proud of their school and excited about the education they can provide. It made me very grateful for the education I received growing up in the public school system. We met some children here too. I learned that the real universal language is football (soccer). No matter where you are in the world, people know it and love it.

We then drove to another family compound where they showed us how they harvest the national drink, palm wine. Different tribes are known to be wine tappers and is obvious in the skill with which they climb a tree and attach a bottle to the palm frond. I was not expecting to like the Gambian “jungle juice” but I was pleasantly wrong. It was a little nutty which actually made it more tasty. They also provided the opportunity to try some other locally harvested spirits.

Lunch was served on a lovely beach that had incredible views of the anchored boats. The sand was nice and fine but the water was a bit rough and didn’t look all that clean. To Mom’s delight, the beer was cheap and we even found a glass Coca Cola bottle to add to her international collection. It was a nice intermission before our final stop at a local, outdoor museum. The museum featured basket weaving, goats (who Jimmy relished in baa-ing back at), and live music. I wish I hadn’t been as worn out at that point and could have enjoyed it a bit more.

The day was long but it was enlightening. To talk with people, see their homes and their schools, is so different from hearing about it or watching it on TV. As much as I really hate people (a sentiment my friends and family hear often, even on board), it was impossible to hate these people who were doing everything to make the most out of what they have. It was just hard work and resilience everywhere and I found that really admirable. They are traits I hope and I can keep with me as we come closer to the end of our trip and return home.

(April 16, 2018)

[rhsgambia]

Day 1 Project Gambia 2018

After a long journey and a deep sleep, we all woke up refreshed and ready for what the day had to offer. First of all, before anything else... breakfast. We were greeted with a buffet of fruit, cereal and tea with a lovely woman making omelettes.

Once full to the brim with food we met with Karramo who gave us the itinerary for the day: first stop sports day with the Half-Dye children. We gathered onto the trucks and travelled through the sandy streets. Unfortunately, the weather was overcast as there is a sandstorm from the Sahara dessert, so it was very arid. During our journey we were greeted with waves, smiles and shouts which made the incessant beeps from the horns of cars bearable. The scenery around us was unlike anything we have ever seen; along the streets people gathered to sell fruits, clothes, fridges, bikes, tyres, and anything else that can be displayed on the side of a road. The Gambians also have quite a taste for very loud sofas and bed frames!

As we turned towards Half-Dye the road became very bumpy, to the point where we were bouncing in our seats like a child’s basketball. When we got to the school, we were greeted with smiles and hands to hold. We were dragged off (quite literally) to the sports field to watch the children compete in their sports.

Four of us were volunteered to judge; we sat down and watched the proceedings. Wave after wave of children gathered around our seating area, all screaming where they were placed. The end came, and the children spent the last two rounds eating bread and playing musical chairs. The blue team prevailed.

We danced in celebration and watched the children celebrate. Unfortunately, every celebration must come an end.

We gathered back on the truck following many hugs, kisses and goodbyes. The trip back was short and sweet; we had all worked up an appetite and couldn’t wait to go back for a second round.

We have settled into a routine: back on the truck, back down the streets full of people and back down the bumpy road.

We went into the actual school this time and walked into music, dance and food. Children who we had met earlier in the day ran up to us and hugged us, welcoming a friendly face. We looked around their classrooms, analysing the similarities and differences to home and here. They had chairs, tables and paintings on the wall, depicting rainbows and dogs. A very typical primary school just in the middle of a sandy village. We were instructed to gather face paints and nail varnish to treat the children. The leaders of our group lined up all the children and sent them to our stations. Two hundred children later and we have an array of rainbows, snakes, flowers and stars, all with multicoloured nails. Now these personalities danced and sang for us, dragged us onto the floor to dance with them and celebrate.

It made the experience much more sad when it was time to leave; the departure was once again full of hugs and kisses which were full of love between us and the children.

And there we were again back on the truck, back down the bumpy roads and back through the fascinating streets. I could bore you with the details of us relaxing in the pool but I don’t want you to feel too much sympathy for us...

Kara Year 13 Stourbridge College, First Project Gambia experience.

[techcrunchappcom]

New Post has been published on https://techcrunchapp.com/migrants-trying-to-reach-europe-pushed-to-deadly-atlantic-world-news/

Migrants trying to reach Europe pushed to deadly Atlantic | World News

CANARY ISLANDS, Spain (AP) — CANARY ISLANDS, SPAIN— The only person who wasn’t crying on the boat was 2-year-old Noura.

Noura’s mother, Hawa Diabaté, was fleeing her native Ivory Coast to what she believed was continental Europe. Unlike the 60 adults on board, only Noura was oblivious to the risks of crossing the open waters of the Atlantic Ocean in an overcrowded rubber dinghy.

As the waves quickly got bigger and people more nervous, Noura told her mother, “Be quiet, mama! Boza, mama! Boza!”, Diabaté recalled. The expression is used by sub-Saharan migrants to celebrate a successful crossing.

After several hours in the ocean, it was finally “Boza.” Spain’s Maritime Rescue Service brought them to safety on one of the Canary Islands.

Migrants and asylum-seekers are increasingly crossing a treacherous part of the Atlantic Ocean to reach the Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago near West Africa, in what has become one of the most dangerous routes to European territory. Noura and her mother are among about 4,000 people to have survived the perilous journey this year.

But many never make it. More than 250 people are known to have died or gone missing so far this year according to the International Organization for Migration. That’s already more than the number of people who perished trying to cross the Western Mediterranean in all of last year. In the week that The Associated Press spent in the Canary Islands to report this story, at least 20 bodies were recovered.

————

This story was funded in part by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

—————

The increase in traffic to the Canaries comes after the European Union funded Morocco in 2019 to stop migrants from reaching southern Spain via the Mediterranean Sea. While arrivals to mainland Spain decreased by 50% compared to the same period last year, landings in the Canary Islands have increased by 550%. In August alone there were more than 850 arrivals by sea to the Canaries, according to an AP tally of numbers released by Spain’s Interior Ministry and reports by local media and NGOs.

Arrivals this year are still low compared to the 30,000 migrants who reached the islands in 2006. But they are at their highest in over a decade since Spain stemmed the flow of sea arrivals to just a few hundred a year through deals with West African countries.

The striking shift in migration back to the Canaries has raised alarms at the highest levels of the Spanish government. Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s first trip abroad following the pandemic lockdown was to Mauritania, one of the main departure points. Most recently, the interior ministry announced a donation of 1.5 million euros in border surveillance equipment to six West African countries.

But human rights organizations say those arriving to Spanish shores are only a fraction of those departing.

“We are only seeing the tip of the iceberg,” said Sophie Muller, the United Nations High Commissioners for Refugees’ representative in Spain, who recently visited the archipelago. “They are taking impossible routes.”

It can take one to 10 days to reach the Spanish islands, with the closest departure point being in Tarfaya, Morocco (100 km, 62 miles) and the furthest recorded this year in Barra, in The Gambia (more than 1,600km, 1,000 miles). It is common for migrants to run out of food, water and fuel after only a few days.

On August 19, 15 lifeless Malians were spotted inside a wooden boat by a Spanish plane 148km, 92 miles from the island of Gran Canaria and towed back to port. At nightfall, workers pulled the bloated corpses, one by one, out of the boat with a crane. The next day, police collected what was left behind as evidence: a wallet, a dozen cell phones, windbreakers and waterproof boots.

Less than 24 hours later, another migrant boat was rescued and brought to the island with 12 people and four dead, as the AP watched. The survivors had witnessed their comrades die along the way.

“They almost didn’t speak,” said Jose Antonio Rodríguez, who heads the regional Red Cross immediate response teams. “They were in a state of shock.”

One of the 12 rescued died before he could reach a hospital.

Human rights organizations aren’t just concerned with the high number of deaths.

“There’s been a change in profile,” said Muller, the UNHCR representative in Spain. “We see more arrivals from the Sahel, from the Ivory Coast, more women, more children, more profiles that would be in need of international protection.”

The Interior Ministry of Spain denied requests by the Associated Press to share nationalities of recent arrivals to the Canary Islands, claiming the information could impact international relations with the countries of origin. But UNHCR estimates that around 35% of those arriving by boat come from Mali – the nation at war with Islamic extremists where a coup d’état recently toppled president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita. Around 20% of arrivals are women and 12% under 18, Muller said.

Kassim Diallo fled Mali after his father was killed in an extremist attack targeting an army base near his village in Sokolo in late January.

On Feb. 29, the 21-year-old got aboard a rubber boat in Laayoune in the Western Sahara with 35 other men, women and children. After nearly 20 hours in the water, his group was rescued and brought to the island of Fuerteventura.

“It is not normal. A human being shouldn’t do this. But how else can we do it?” said Diallo.

Like most of those who crossed by boat to the archipelago this year, Diallo has been stuck on the islands for months. Although forced return flights to Mauritania have been halted by the pandemic, the Spanish government has also forbidden newly arrived migrants from going to the mainland, even after travel restrictions were lifted for nationals and tourists. Only a few groups, mainly women and children, have been transferred on an ad-hoc basis via the Red Cross.

“Blocking people from leaving the Canaries has turned the islands into an open-air prison,” said Txema Santana, who represents the local office of the Spanish Commission to Help Refugees.

Until Diallo is granted asylum, which he has yet to apply for, he cannot work. He would love to learn Spanish, but there aren’t classes available to him.

The Canary Islands were meant to be just a stepping-stone to reach “The Big Spain” or continue to France where he can at least understand the language. But for now, he remains closer to Africa than to continental Europe.

“On a European level, it should be like managing a land border,” said Ángel Manuel Hernández, an evangelical pastor whose church is the main shelter for rescued migrants on Fuerteventura. “Borders are meant to be areas of transit, not areas to stay.”

Hernández’s church, the Modern Christian Mission, went from hosting 30 migrants two years ago to 300 this summer.

“We don’t have the resources or the capacity to care for all these people with the dignity and the respect that these human beings deserve,” he said.

As shelters fill up, recently arrived migrants sometimes have nowhere to sleep. More than 100 people, including women and children are currently sleeping on the floor in makeshift tents on the docks of Arguineguin, on the island of Gran Canaria, following disembarkation. The coronavirus only adds another layer of difficulty as passengers on migrant boats must be tested and quarantined as a group if any of them are found to be positive.

In response to questions emailed by the AP, Spain’s government delegate in the Canary Islands Anselmo Pestana wrote: “Our effort has to focus not so much on thinking “how we distribute” immigrants, but on working at origin, so that we can prevent anyone from risking their life.”

Spain’s government has yet to reveal where it will place hundreds of migrants now housed in local schools when classes resume in September.

Ironically, half of the islands’ hotels and resorts are closed due to the effects of the pandemic. Across the island, tourists sunbathe in the largely empty resorts as exhausted Spanish maritime rescuers continue their every-day search in the Atlantic for migrant boats in distress, hoping to reach survivors before it’s too late.

Diabaté, the Ivorian mother, hopes one of them will be her eight-year-old son Moussa. They got separated back in Morocco as smugglers rushed them to the beach and onto the rubber boat that would take them to the Canary Islands.

Moussa stayed behind.

“I’ve been crying every day from the moment I got on that boat,” she said.

[iedrajotte]

Assignment example

Slug: CASAMANCE Story Summary: *2 Day Rates* Casamance area of Senegal :  villages, river, etc. Desk: TRA

When: Friday 01/23/2015 08:01 AM    Can time be changed? No

Where: various, see below Casamance, Casamance, Senegal

Contact: Contact phone: Contact e-mail:

Instructions: PLEASE FILE IMAGES BY JANUARY 27TH!!!!!!!!

*CAPTIONS: Please make sure to write detailed, AP Style captions: http://themediajungle.wordpress.com/2014/01/16/ap-style-tips-on-photo-captions/ *

PHOTOS: - Casamance River + motorboats + dolphins + mangroves - Ptit Cassa Diola -  Yves's phone number is 77 545 12 14.  Ptit Cassa but clearly goes by other names. http://www.casamance-tourisme.sn/?Gite-Eringa-a-Haere - Villagers + daily life + sacred drums + religious shrines - Club Med in Cap Skerring - Vines in the ruins of a French depot in Karabane. - Empty beaches in the region such as: Djembering, but any will do - FOOD - Interesting details you see along the way. +++ As always, a variety of scale is needed for stories like this.  Wide landscapes, intimate moments with locals/visitors/businesses.

** SOCIAL MEDIA PHOTOS! Would be great if you can take a few just for Instagram, so please think square format on a small screen. File these (hi-res) with the rest of your edit and let me know your Instagram handle so you can be credited in the caption. DO NOT post these on your own account before the story runs**

Caption Information: ____________________________________________________________ Photographer Assigned: Rajotte,James

Reporter: TBA Will be there? No

Requested by: Blatt,Lindsay email: lindsay.blatt@nytimes.com  

Editor: Blatt,Lindsay email: lindsay.blatt@nytimes.com   Deadline Date: ________________________________________________________________ Directions: As the low-slung motorboat hummed along the tiny Casamance River in remote Senegal, the promise of a tropical paradise that lay ahead was evident in the dolphins that accompanied us on our journey. I had first spotted them on the overnight ferry from Dakar to Ziguinchor. But here they were within reach, companions who swam alongside the boat, nudging their noses toward an eager crowd of passengers who touched them.

This wasn’t SeaWorld, but my 8-year-old son, my friend Catherine and her 5- and 7-year-olds, and I were all whooping with delight. And we weren’t even close to our final destination, a ramshackle place called Ptit Cassa in Casamance, where Violet Turacos, bright blue plantain-eating birds, could be easily spotted, according to a birder I knew.

Casamance is literally and metaphorically a country away from busy, worldly Dakar. The north is dry; the south is lush. The north is a major African hub; the south is rural African backwater. In between them lies The Gambia. We fell asleep in a big modern city fighting off the encroachments of the desert and woke up in a mangrove-lined river so rich with life that fish flopped out of the boat’s wake as if in some Biblical parable. The dolphins had followed them.

Casamance was at the forefront of the ecotourism movement from the beginning — French tourists paid to help out in villages there from the early 1970s right up until a separatist movement began in 1982. There were luxurious accommodations — travel resorts in Cap Skerring on the coast, and quality hotels in Zinguinchor.

The spectacular richness of Casamance has come at a price. Senegal is a beacon in West Africa—a model of peace and prosperity since its independence—but the civil conflict in Casamance, though slowburning, has taken between three and five thousand lives in the past 30 years. The Diola, who live along the river, are famous resisters, first of Islam, then of the slave trade, then of the French colonists. The Diola Queen Aline Sitoe Diatta who refused to accept the French rice tax was exiled to Mali in the 1940s; they could ship off her body but her spirit remained. Schools, ferries, hospitals, stadiums—all bear her name. The separatist movement is little more than a continuation of a history that has been ongoing for a millennium, the history of the Diola saying no to the power of outside forces.

Traveling through the area today is a full of grim reminders of an earlier golden age that the movement disrupted. Glamorous hotels, now abandoned, have grown over with vines beside tiny villages along stretches of mangroves. Abandoned airstrips now field barbets and red-cheeked cordon-bleus. It was the sort of setting that would change the minds of idealists who bemoan tourism and the development it brings. Locals stopped us regularly, saying “Tell everybody it’s safe to come.”

Some have bought that message. There has been a small resurgence in recent years, people drawn by miles of spectacular, empty beaches on the southern coast. The Club Med in Cap Skerring reopened in 2010. Still, whole hotel complexes held single groups of French sportsfishermen, who would happily share their enormous and hugely varied catches with us for dinner. They couldn’t eat it all.

The actual business of travel — getting from one place to the next and finding food and lodging there—is a bit of a gamble, especially with children. Still, from Le Perroquet, our hotel in Ziguinchor, Cath and I could organize whatever boats we needed to move us around the river. Bad infrastructure can make for interesting travel. The ruins of a French depot in Karabane had overgrown with vines: the perfect jungle gym. In the marketplace at Elinkine, we rented a sept-place vehicle, so called because it has seven places to sit. One of the women in the market did the math: two adults plus three kids plus one driver equals one vacant spot. She asked if we would mind if she rode with us to the next village. Sure, why not? Only then did she bring out the four large baskets of fish she was carrying with her. Strapped to the roof—I would later see a live pig strapped to the roof of a sept-place—the fish did well enough until we hit a bumpy stretch of road, when they started tumbling off, fish juices dribbling through the window. The kids found this hilarious. We all trundled down the road singing “It’s raining fish” to the tune of “it’s raining men.”

For all the natural riches that the region was once known for, its biggest asset is likely the villages themselves. The Casamance region is almost entirely animist. Each village has a set of sacred drums with which they communicate with the other villages. The religious shrines are collections of objects which nobody will explain, no matter how you ask, because their power is bound up with their secrecy.

The kids found ways of amusing themselves, too. Boys and girls coming back from school provided instant community. The Canadian and the Senegalese children were both in French immersion—for different historical reasons—so they chatted about what children chat about: television and who can run fastest. The girls skipped rope. The boys wrestled in the dirt. The adults moved through a landscape of differences, the children through a landscape of similarities.

Nowhere was that dichotomy more obvious than when we reached Ptit Cassa. After the boat took us North for an hour, we arrived at a tiny village tucked deep in the mangroves, and headed off into the jungle. Almost immediately, we stumbled into a clearing, where 10 men sat around preparing and imbibing palm wine—the soft delicious liquor used in several sacred rites. It’s fair to say they hadn’t expected a bunch of white children and their parents to disturb them. Nonetheless, they were extremely generous to us. We all tasted the wine, which they had just harvested. They offered my son one of their many dogs. They offered Cath’s daughter a baby Senegal Parrot just taken from a nest. It took a lot of effort on our part to explain why the kids couldn’t keep them.

At the end of our hike around Ptit Cassa, what we found was, in some ways, more unexpected than the villagers: a kind of restaurant run by a self-described “hippie” names Yves Lanneau. He had moved to Casamance 10 years earlier, and married a local woman, Josephine. He prepared for us the best salad I have ever consumed—French mustard with a local basil-like herb that was intoxicatingly savoury.

And then all of us sat there chatting, for the whole day, about politics, about what makes a really good vinaigrette, about how life zigs and zags. One of the reasons I had brought my son to Senegal was to show him that life isn’t one big air-conditioned Toys’r’us. I ended up showing him the commonness rather than the difference. The children played with the parrot—our compromise had been that they could have the bird as a pet until we left.

I never did see the Violet Turaco.

As we left Djembering the next day, we were stopped by soldiers. They didn’t look much like soldiers, but that’s probably because they were swimming naked in the river. The guide manning our pirogue hastily tossed us the regulation lifejackets and told us to find our passports, as the two young men stopped their frolicking and swam over to inspect us. They quickly decided that we were probably not separatist rebels, and waved us past.

Cath and I started laughing: it was the strangest military checkpoint either of us had ever passed. The children overheard the word “military” and joined in: “That was the army?” The children had found the presence of the military mostly hilarious, although the jeeps on patrols with their huge 50-caliber machine guns were impressive enough.

We were all laughing but the guide was not. He relaxed only when we had passed out of the swimmers’ view.

[learningnewways]

Second Day

After a busy first day meeting the team, we had a much shorter day today, visiting a local church and a family from that church who live in a slum.

There are 11 people living in their tiny house, which is essentially a shack. The house would probably be around 15m2, all one open room with bedding, clothing and cooking equipment altogether. Children sleep on the floorboards or under the house on hammocks, as the house is built on poles since it floods in the rainy season. They share a toilet with many other families, so around 50-70 people. People “shower” with no privacy, it really is communal living. It was humbling to be invited into their home and to see how they live. It felt like I was in the movie Slumdog Millionare, but Cambodian version, sitting in their tiny shack with a tin roof and a communal toilet.

It’s interesting to be back in a third world country, walking through slums and meeting locals. It’s hard to see how they live, knowing there’s not going to be change anytime soon. Children sleeping altogether on mouldy floorboards next to rubbish and mud, very vulnerable to sickness and exploitation. It’s also hard to know what to do to help, to provide support that is actually helpful and going to change lives positively. Giving handouts is seldom a good thing and given that we’re here so short term, quality relational work is also a bit difficult. Luckily, Q used to be a builder, so he is proving to be very helpful over here. The team knew Q’s skill set, and knew this family’s home, or shack as we would call it, needs some work, so we’ve organised for him to help out.

While we were visiting with them, looking at what needed to be done and hearing about their family, they asked us to pray for them. I honestly didn’t know what to say, and just looked over at Q giving him the, “this ones all yours” look! The family are Christians too and when you see the way they live, their circumstances and how despite all of that, they are faithful to God, it makes you feel pretty stink about your own faith or lack there of. When they asked us to pray for them, you could tell they were so excited to have white people praying for them. Even though they spoke no English so couldn’t understand our prayers. It felt weird to be seen as somehow more spiritual or qualified to pray for them than others, as we are no better than them. Perhaps it was simply that people saw them as people worth caring about that made them happy? They said they had been praying for help with their house and that we were an answer to prayer. Wow. That was incredible.

The temperature over here is around 35-40 most days, so their little house was very hot, even with the fan on. Only around 20% of homes in the villages have aircon or refrigeration of any sort, and power itself is super expensive. In both homes we visited, they turned on the fan only once we arrived. Most houses we’ve seen have connection to power or solar panels for charging phones and operating fans. It’s so interesting that everyone has cellphones and dresses so nicely, yet live in such hard conditions. It was the same in The Gambia. You’d never know their living conditions based on their appearance. When they’re in the slums and villages it does look like it, but when they go out, they put on their best clothes and look just like everyone else. I was even surprised by S’s standard of living, because when we first met he had such a nice backpack and what looked to be a brand new shirt, it was so clean and tidy.

After our visit to the family, we went to a hardware store to source building materials so Q can fix their flooring, as it is rotting and uneven. Q is very happy to have a practical way of helping out here. Not sure how helpful I’ll be with the project... I guess I can measure things... I’m surprised by the lack of English spoken here too, with only around 20% of the population speaking English. In The Gambia, almost everyone knows English, especially the younger generation. But over here you have to pay more to go to an English speaking school. To find such a highly tourism reliant city where the next generation don’t speak great English is fascinating.

It was a short day but still an important one. I always really appreciate visiting locals and seeing how they live. It reminds me of the excess I have and how much further our money goes over here. I know that going into locals homes is rare, that most Westerners and tourists don’t get that opportunity to see the reality of life. We are looking forward to getting stuck into this project, although the heat will be a big challenge!

[professorsaz]

Game of Thrones: Season 8 Storyline: by a fan.

This starts much before Night King (NK) breaks all hell loose on The Wall.

Bran sends ravens to every nook and corner of Westeros warning them about NK and his army for immediate evacuation of the North. The plan shared is for everybody to fall back south and gather at King’s landing, as Bran saw them all. NK is for over a thousand years so he’s got to have a big ass army. Bran heard their screams as he saw them running at top speed towards them. The dead never sleeps, remember? An army of a million dead and growing. Not less than a hundred giants, bears, wolves, rabbits, ravens, horses, children of forest bloody any life that is dead is a +1, alongside those thick, cold, dead eyed white walkers with a million of dead foot soldiers & of course the Night King himself alongside the dragon. Picture this army running towards you in full speed lynching everything they touch along the way. Crazy blue eyed giants smashing trees making way, and the dragon. You know nothin Jon Snow of the magnitude of a vigorous untiring almost immortal dragon. In this storyline Bran, our new “Three Eyed Raven” is very responsible as he should be. He hacks in dreams and minds of all life in the world creating a soul circle using that white tree, broadcasts them LIVE TV on the horror that’s coming and it’s faster and more effective than sending ravens, and yes including Cersei and other crazies, everyone. Now our heroes and citizens of the west are running there ass off making haste especially the northerners and the people in the east are freaked out. Not to forget the neuron freezing cold, pitch black darkness with fear of the unknown. There are women, old, children and the weak and sick. They need to carry food, war provisions, their cattle, and pets. You get the gist. Interesting fact, if they leave there animals behind, you know what! Anyhow on receiving Bran’s visions in dream, Tormund and Ben clear the wall and nearby lands are evacuated. This evacuation process was not overnight. It was an ongoing process for many months as Bran informed everyone well prior, as he is keeping a close eye on NK’s movements and he is responsible. The plan is to sail for Essos through narrow sea to Dragons bay (Slavers bay, east) with the entire westeros population. According to Bran’s calculations even all of westeros gathered together cannot stop them.

Job Allocation: Iron islands assigned to build ships, Kings landing for building amours, weapons, scorpions basically war stuff. High Gardens, River Run and other fertile places food and water. People and army of Drone have already sailed for Bravos. All these preparations go on for months. While all this is happening, Tyrion, Missandei, Varys, Davos, Sam and other diplomats alongside the ones who cannot fight sail beforehand uses existing ships. The diplomats alongside Daario Naharis will gather army, aid and council to the leaders of the east in planning for the Great War if it comes to that.

Now NK and his army have arrived at the wall and shattered by the dragon. Overall 90% of westeros has evacuated towards south. The rest 10% consists of (couldn’t evacuate, got caught, bad luck, and so on), you know what they are now. The NK army is moving so fast, untiring. Same cannot be said about the living. More and more bodies are added to NK army as they move forward. Although Bran did his very best in evacuating every life, especially wildlife (controlled by him), tribe people and nomads in forests, but some got left behind. Keeping eye on NK is getting more and trickier as he is freezing Bran’s ravens to death adding to his army. Folks, winter have come and the night is darkest and full of terrors, for real this time. This is his hour as he reigns supreme (NK).

Note 1: In S7, Dany asks Snow to ride the dragon, whereas in here she asks Tyrion. The logic is simple; animals never forget those who rescue them at time of crisis. Hence Rhaegal, the green one has grown fond of the dwarf & Dany acknowledges that. Moreover, Jon is better on the field + he doesn’t have any history or connection with the dragons. A dwarf riding a dragon is a sight to see, poetically speaking, would make a perfect song.

Note 2: Direwolfs are mystical creatures, out of the ordinary like the dragons. As we know Ghost use to roams around freely beyond the wall. Animals are intelligent creatures and understand danger. He has fought the dead many times to know what’s out there. He has gathered all the direwolves from beyond the wall and the north to save them from certain death and more fuel for the dead army. Ghost is way too tiny in the show. In our storyline he is Hugeish++ as a Direwolf should be. And yes he found Nymeria. We want to make all of them happy who cried in S1 when she ran away to save her life and Arya. She works hard for her age. She deserves it.

Note 3: Show runners have rushed the long night and made it short night. Fans waited so long, in here it lasts long. None of that traveling from Winterfell to Dragonstone in one day bullshit!

Note 4: Horses have saddles but hard ass dragons don’t. That’s so stupid. Both dragons are saddled. We will continue this in the pages to come.

Note 5: The spirits of the past three eyed ravens guide Bran in his visions and council him. They also help in creating that human spirit chain, remember LIVE TV.

Now back to the present.

As the dead approach closer and closer south, panic grows alongside fear. Only a handful of people have seen the dead in real and fought. Rest has no clue. Psychology says it’s the unknown that’s scarier. Kings landing is packed and overflowing with population. The climate is getting colder and darker by the day like never before. Evacuation process is on the rise as more and more ships sail towards Essos. Bran is having issues keeping a live track on the dead as NK is freezing his ravens in blizzards. Our heroes have arranged for a defense army in case of emergency. As the last of the ships sail out of landing the dead arrive destroying what’s left reducing the population from 90% to 85%. For the first time our heroes saw the true face of horror with their own eyes as the dead line up on the shores of Kings landing screaming in madness as the NK gets down from his dragon, takes a slow walk to the shores as he looks hard at the sailing ships with his cold blue eyes & that grim facial expression. Yes it will be dark. Winter has come folks! Both literally and f.

Our heroes have sailed half way across the Narrow Sea with a shy of relief, that the dead cannot cross the water. Then something happens, small drops of snow dropping all around the sea water. “Winter is coming” is for Westeros only. The East is hot as fuck. Now for the first time ever snow falls on the narrow sea. Right in that very moment, when everyone looking at each other saying WTF??

Bran calls for an emergency meeting in the middle on the sea. After becoming Three Eyed Raven, nothing is surprise anymore. Then something happened that blew his balls off. He says this in the meeting, “This is the long night & NK is stronger than ever”. “He is freezing the narrow sea”. Bran saw this before he calls everyone, “the Night King got on one knee, slowly moved his hand towards the sea and put his finger nail on the water. The water started freezing and freezing”. We are not safe anymore, anywhere, Bran says. He adds “Now it meant only one thing, war and death unlike any”.

Spoilers: NK froze the entire sea in a couple of months.

The battle of the west will be fought in east. How dramatic. The “Great War” will take place in the famous Essos that we keep hearing. According to this storyline the war will take place Far East, as east as east can go. The edge of the world, the end of the known world just like it is far beyond the wall. The logic is, the living got pushed back and back till to the very edge where there is no where left to run or hide and then it begins…

The east has never seen cold weather. And now it snows like the Arctic. The NK freezes the entire sea in just a couple of months, solid ice as our heroes prepare their final stand.

Note 6: Advantage of having the Great War in Essos. Yes it will be dark but not as dark as Westeros. So our viewers can see the action.

The Great War armies:

On the side of Living:

Jon & the north men. Tormund & the wildlings. Bronn and the south men. Brienne, Jamie, Sandor, Gendry, Beric leading the rest of Westerosi and Dornish armies. Dany & Tyrion on dragons. Qyburn & co with his huge scorpions & wildfire flame throwers. Grew worm & the Unsullied. Daario and second sons. Jorah & the Dothraki. Arya, Jaqen and the faceless men. All the Red Priestesses from around the world. All other sorcerers and magic users. Iron bank and the Braavosi army. Armies from Astapol, Meereen, Qarth, Yunkai, Pentos, Myr, Volantis and all other cities, villages, tribes in the dragon’s bay. Ghost, Nymeria & the dire wolves. The Greyjoys & the iron fleet. The Golden Company and other mercenaries & finally Bran with an army of ravens. Every one joins as it’s going to be epic.

Behind them inside the walls, deep in the ancient cribs, are the women, children, old and the sick who cannot fight, yet they are there as there is nowhere left to hide. If the above list fails they die anyway no matter where they hide. So it’s wise to stick together and die together.

Note 7: Bran keeps all the rescued animals safe in the crib as he follows Jane Goodall, David Attenborough, Dr. Micha(Gambia),Animal Aid Unlimited & PETA, so should everyone. Be kind to animals, it’s all part of positive karma.

On the side of Dead:

One hundred strong in the art of war white walkers. Not less than a 100 Giants. Blue eyed children of the forest. Countless dire wolves, bears, serpents, horses, dogs, cats, rabbits, ravens, sea creatures pretty much any animal, bird that is available in Westeros and Easteros which can be used as a weapon, along with an army of a million dead soldiers and the uber famous NK, the dragon and power of ice and frost.

The Great War: Finally!

Let’s create a location for the war. It’s Far East, at the edge of the known world. An ancient city, abandon due to reasons unknown. Somewhat looks like Meereen big much bigger with huge walls. There is an enormous open land as far as a raven’s eye can see, connected to the city which can fit easily a million more or less. In addition it has forests surrounding alongside water bodies like rivers and seas for the ships and drinking water. Water is life. Don’t waste water. Rain water harvesting, ground water recharge and water reuse filtration systems are the keys to survival in the future. Else we will all die a terrible death out of hunger, thirst and dryness. Help! Somalia from drought.

Note 8: Fun Fact:

Our heroes are low on energy because of lack of food, water, nomadic traveling, constant stress, fear and n number of things, but high on spirits.

Defense Setup:

City walls are mounted with huge scorpions with DG (dragon glass) bolts for the giants, dragon, white walkers and other beasts. Wildfire catapults mounted all over. Both dragons are mounted with dragon glass on their heads like a unicorn so are the horses and Bran’s ravens. The dragons are saddled for better flying experience with weapon holders and mounted crossbows. For dire wolves design changes, small dual horns like a female antelope on their heads for faster impact alongside special spike bodysuit made of DG. The elephants have DG spikes on their trunks, legs and tail, well saddled with weapon holders and cross bows. The path to the city and the ground positions are mounted with spike walls of Fire woods and DG placed at strategic locations. All the non fighters are inside the walls in the crib with the rescued animals and birds.

Bran’s Security: It’s tight, well thought out with plenty of booby traps and star characters as body guards like Gregor the mountain is one of many. Yes he is an ass clown and everyone is scared of him. But for the NK he is just another pussy as he knows it.

Front Lines:

Dothraki side by side with elephant army, behind them other horsemen like second sons, westerosi, golden company and so on, behind them foot soldiers, behind them the Unsullied. The Red Priestesses just outside the gates providing heat and light to the fighters by their magic in this chilling cold and face of terror. The sorcerers, witches alongside Faceless men mount the walls and gates while dragons patrolling the sky, the iron islanders the water, dire wolves alongside wildlings patrolling the forests. Wildfire catapults and scorpions are mounted at every possible location. BTW you can have any COC troop formation you like my Lord!

Note 9: Millions on dead rampaging on frozen blue narrow sea is a sight to see.

The dead; have arrived at this ancient location lynching and growing at every step on the way from beyond the walls in the west till this far east.

They stop. All of them, as the NK measure the situation. The dead outrank the living 5:1, more so they have giants, myriad blue eyed beasts, forest children and a big group of very strong white walkers with icy weapons than can easily bring down any heavy set. He takes his sweet time as the living take a gaze upon the true meaning of horror, as the men breath heavily and shiver as they gaze upon a wall of giants and sky full of ravens visible waiting at a distance.

The world goes quiet and waits while as they hear 200,000+ panting at the same time in a pin drop silence atmosphere.

The famous A1 camera right on time for Bran when he says “so it begins, now” as the NK lifts his finger & the dead march forward screaming & storming in, with an actual storm by their side.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The Great War has started as both armies about to collide. We waited 9 years for this.

Living Vs Dead. Epic* #onceinalifetime #thegreatwar #livingvsdead #gots8 #gotfan

<leaving this part for your imaginations. Rain your comments as hell rains over the realms of men ;>

The screams; the bloodshed; the turmoil; and true meaning of dread and bravery fueled with emotions at the oddest of places, the battlefield.

Note 10: Night King has gone rogue++. He is raising dead immediately. You fight; you die, fall down then back up. No wait no delays. He wants to strike fear in the hearts. The age of men is over (feat. lord of the rings).

Note 11: Dead blasting off when stabbed by VS or DG causes visual distraction during the fight, that too when fighting side by side in such hefty numbers.

The End:

At the end, of course the dead have the upper hand. The NK moves towards Bran. Fighting and breaking every trap, warrior and weapon on his way as he gets closer. I kind of like the idea of Arya stabbing the NK but the way it’s presented in the show is silly. We are going to make some changes to that. Firstly the NK is so fucking strong and cold, he is a God for Christ sake, an immortal probably more than thousand years old, how could Arya move and breathe when the NK is holding her throat as she tricks him and stab with the change of hand. Am I to believe that Arya’s reflexes are better than a God? Certainly not, that’s stupid. As NK nears Bran he would face many opponents like Gregor, Brienne, Bron & more who are good at one on one combats distract him while Arya is heat/light powered by multiple red women so she can survive NK’s frost. After all its “song of ice and fire”, and Brandon with his warg abilities strengthens her as NK can snap her neck like a mosquito. Jaqen slips her a magical potion before the war begins which increase speed and reflexes a thousand times for a fraction of time. Yes the main war is still going on and the living are getting hammered by the White Walkers.

At the end as NK nears Bran, Arya sneaks up & jumps on him, as NK grabs her dagger hand and neck, a spring loaded VS blade appears from under sleeve and she stabs him. This entire process is executed in milliseconds. As she wouldn’t last more than a second in his grasp, in spite of having many protections. Yet she suffers severe neck injury and trauma as she was touched by the NK himself. He blows up along with all the dead as Arya drops senseless on the ground. One more second and the NK have squeezed her to ashes. Bran jumps out his chair, crawls towards her to check.

Aftermath:

Peace is finally achieved.

Dany return to Meereen where she belongs with Darrio and rule the east ending slavery. Tyrion sits on the iron throne as his skills are best suited for the job. He was unanimously voted by our lead characters and Emmy awards. Lands and titles of westeros are fairly divided amongst the leads from where they belong and deserve. Jon goes back north of the wall to live along side Ghost and Tormund, visits winterfell often. Grey worm goes with Missandei to her family island. Cersei and Jamie live happily in Casterly Rock as they always wanted, being together. The nights watch is still there as an ancient order of glory and to punish the guilty. Varys serves both east and west. And Arya, the hero of the new world awakes after being in coma for a couple of years. It’s a huge celebration. Everyone has gathered at Winterfell like in the lord of the rings last scene.

Spoilers: Even Tyrion was deeply injured and lost his new best friend when they killed the blue dragon and ended its carnage.

Yes NK is gone but the winter is still on. Not as cold and dark, yet enough.

Last Scene:

The camera takes a journey from a raven’s(albino) eye, starting from the far east where the great war was fought moving all the way towards the far west, far beyond the wall. At the edge of the world, as west as west can go. A cave covered in permanent snow. As the raven moves inside the deep dark cave, there sits a woman facing her back towards us, with shiny long white hair having peculiar clothes. The camera slowly moves towards her front and sees her holding a baby on her lap. The camera slowly rises up towards her face, blue eyes. The End: Thanks for reading.

If?

If this story is made to a movie or series; expressions, emotions will play a bigger role rather than out of the world GCI which is also required. Plot understanding and perception is vital for all the characters while acting. Everyone must be on the same page as the director and story writer on how they visualize it. Many things cannot be written down on paper or explained verbally. It’s a matter of perception that needs to be visualized.

The Night King of the real world is Plastic. WHO? wants to fight the real Great War, for glory and future of our kids. Be vegan, grow empathy, love animals, plant a tree, save water & be less “greedy”.

Image source: https://pixabay.com/vectors/game-of-thrones-coat-of-arms-shield-1722710/#

Thank you.

-by Saz.

[ericfruits]

A better way to provide drinking water in rural Africa

IN THE mid-2000s Playpumps International, a charity, hit on a photogenic way of providing clean water to African villages: a pump powered by children playing on a merry-go-round. Donors and celebrities pledged more than $16m. But the system was costlier than alternatives, and needed so much “playing” that it started to look like thinly disguised child labour. It became a byword for wasteful Western aid—but far from the only example.

At any time around a third of the water infrastructure in rural sub-Saharan Africa, from hand pumps to solar-powered systems, is broken. Even after spending billions of dollars, most donors still cannot ensure the pumps they pay for are maintained (just 5% of rural Africans have access to piped water). Many of the village committees responsible for collecting the fees that should cover repairs are corrupt.

More often, though, villagers simply struggle to gather money, find a mechanic and obtain spare parts, says Johanna Koehler of Oxford University. Kerr Lien, a village in central Gambia, reverted to using a manual well for nine years after the inhabitants were unable to fix a fault in their solar-powered pump. There are “lots of white elephants everywhere”, says Alison Wedgwood, a founder of eWATER, a British startup that aims to solve many of these problems. Its solar-powered taps, 110 of which have been installed in Kerr Lien and six other Gambian villages, dispense water in response to electronic tags. The tags are topped up by shopkeepers using smartphones; 20 litres of water cost 0.50 dalasi (1 cent), and 85% of the payment is set aside to cover future repairs. The taps are connected to the mobile network, so they can transmit usage data to alert mechanics to problems. eWATER hopes to have 500 taps serving 50,000 people in Gambia and Tanzania by the end of 2017.

Since they are paying for it, the women and girls who collect the water also take more care now not to spill any, leaving fewer puddles in which mosquitos can breed. Most important, though, is to fix broken pumps quickly. In Kenya Ms Koehler found villagers were prepared to pay five times as much for water so long as their pumps were fixed within three days, compared with the previous average of 27.

Startups like these could transform rural water provision in Africa, just as they are doing with solar-powered electricity. Twelve-year-old Isatou Jallow will still wash her family’s clothes with well water every week. But there will soon be a drinking tap just outside her house. That means more time studying, instead of spending afternoons laboriously fetching water from far away. It also means loftier ambitions. “I want to be a government minister,” she says.

This article appeared in the Middle East and Africa section of the print edition under the headline "Pay as you drink"

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