Updated
April 4, 2004
Gambia Tourist Support - Reg Charity No 362/2003
A weekend off in UK
My mother and Peter have been consistently supportive, since I started GTS, so it was lovely to visit them and catch up with all their news. The news on my return was less good
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While I was in Shropshire I received news of Gambian soldiers raiding the Senegambia holiday area and arresting any local girls found there.
This is officially to clear the area of prostitutes - but sadly it is often executed with little respect for human rights. So reports of armed soldiers slapping and hitting unarmed ladies have been passed to me from tourists horrified at seeing the spectacle.
One European who protested to the soldiers at the treatment being handed out, was himself detained over night, beaten and racially abused before being released the following morning.
Gambia's civil
population is largely controlled by a state army and police force who
often operate way beyond the rule of law. Being beaten, kicked, slapped,
punched and verbally abused is the operational norm for the innocent and
guilty alike. In a land with so little of anything, total power over people
becomes a short term substitute for their respect.
It is
hard to believe that the President is unaware of these abuses, but eventually
it will cost him his presidency unless he puts a stop to it.
Comments to GTS
It is an enormous sadness, that after all the support my mother has given to GTS, that she will never actually see GTS in Gambia.
My mother suffered macular degeneration of her eyesight leaving her almost blind in her one eye and the effects of cataract have more or less removed the use of her other eye. Although she is now 80, she is amazingly mobile, capable and as quick with her conversations and her interests in everything that is happening as she ever used to be.
I do hope that she will meet a few more GTS staff in the UK over the next few years as GES becomes the registered UK charity of GTS.
She has always been interested in what makes the world tick and since discovering the works of Rudolf Steiner she has studied his books & lectures to develop a greater understanding of Anthroposophy, where she finds the links between Christianity and the human condition most clearly illuminated.
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Avril . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . Peter
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Francis
My own deeper interests have always been 'the meaning of life' and trying to make sense of the chaos in the world around us, locally and internationally and although I have never considered myself religious in the church going sense, I stumbled into being an RE teacher for some years and I have always found the existance of religions interesting, but I have never been a church going christian and have always had problems with some of the theology of Christianity.
But, Gambia has re-awakened my religious interests and particulary 'Gambian' Islam, which bears remarkable resemblances to the early Islam delivered by Muhammad (pbuh)
It is not difficult to understand that we do not spend much time together until religion in one form or another, becomes the centre of the conversation, followed closely by the politics of any recent news event.
Peter, her husband since I was a teenager, has always been interested and totally supportive of the projects that I have embarked on, from building a boat of the River Thames, to setting up a self sufficiency farm "Good Life" style in Shropshire - to starting & running GTS in The Gambia as well as sharing my mothers interest in the science of religion.
The news from Gambia was another incident of brutal army abuse, just ahead of the Easter tourist rush. This really isn't the way to impress tourists that Gambia is controlling the bumster and sex trade situation on the streets.
(see left hand column)
