Updated
April 24, 2004
Gambia Tourist Support - Reg Charity No 362/2003
Images of another Continent
My mother is a great supporter of Africa and GTS, when I visit her, she always has a little hoard of images she has saved for the website. I hope you will enjoy them.
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Probably not even Africa, but this is a very typical charity shot of a
happy mother with her child.
In the West, we have come to expect health care provided by the state and now complain if we have to wait more than a short time to be treated.
In Gambia I have sat quite literally all day with people waiting patiently outside a hospital with sick and dying children or chronic toothache jsut to be seen and often with very littel treatment at the end apart from some asprin. Where the symptoms can possibly be malaria then an injection may be given which should be followed up with 2 more.
Often the same needle is used, Often the hospital or clinic is dirty beyond belief.
In the richer tourist areas it is much better, but most Gambians cannot afford the private clinics.
But it is most unusual to here Gambians complain, either about the wait, the dirt, the treatment, or the often brusk attitude of the doctors or staff.
By the time they are ill enough to go for Toubab medicine, they are beyond caring, often this is a last resort after local medicine has been ineffective.
Hospitals and clinics are not regualar tourist stopping places, so little help and support is raised through tourism. In the West it would be considered a scandal, in Gambia it is just the way things are.
As a result many children die at birth or within the first few years of life and the average age in Gambia is below 50.
Gambia is at last becoming AIDS aware but with the trans Senegal highway straddling Gambia at the 3 crossing points of Banjul, Soma and Basse each Aids hot spots in Gambia the affects of AIDS is sure to be significant in the years to come.
Help will be needed, and I hope GTS will be there to provide it.
Comments to GTS
Out of respect for her, I present the images and where known credit the originator and provide contact means for the reader.
They are published here with no intention of GTS makingany profit from them and should any publisher object to their display, please contact me and I will remove them - however I hope it advertises their work and increases peoples awareness of them.
My stories about the women of Gambia interest my mother, having worked so hard all of her life and even now, almost blind, she is busy all the time on one project or another, so she empathises with the women who work as Gambians do. When Africans say 'sister' they mean more than 'relative' more than 'similar female' they are referring to a bond that links them in shared experiences, this is strong in Gambia, a way of life.
This card from the 'Images of Africa' series by
Tilly Willis, is called Water from the Well (1999) and produced by Star
Fire, London 0207 386 4700
Much of the water used in the Gambia is from wells, drawn in the bucket full by women & children. Some villages have big communal pumps and even stand pipes. Well water can be sweet, but there is always the danger of contamination and many Gambians die from mystery stomach complaints.
Very few families purify their water in any way other than allowing any sand or grit sink to the bottom before using it. Most have no money for the technology and if they did they would have the more pressing need of food, especially during the hungrymonths before the new harvests.
The 'Earth from Above' exhibition by Yann Arthus-Bertrand,
this image is 'Crowd in Abengourou, Cote d'Ivorie. (N 6 44' W 3 29')
The card says - Africa has 800 million inhabitants, 13% of all humanity.
This colourful crowd, enthusiastically waving to the photographer, was photographed in Abengourou, in eastern Cote d'Ivorie. These children and adolesents remid us of the country's youthfulness; as in most of the African continent. 40 percent of the population is under 15 years of age.
The country's birth rate is 5.1 children per woman, which is representative of the average for the continent (the world average is 2.8).
Modernisationand the development of cultural and socio-economic programmes sre grasdually reducing the birth rate, but it will take several decades for the African population to stabalise.
The ravages of the AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa (home to 70 percent of the total 36.1 million people infected in the world) will have a severe impact on the regions demography; every day in Africa 6,000 people die of AIDS virusand another 11,000 become infected.
Photo © Yann Arthus-Bertrand - www.yanarthusbertrand.org
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