A letter to The Gambia

GAMBIA. COLONIALISM. THEOLOGY.

I wrote a letter to The Gambia. Here it is.

You’re fast asleep I hope and getting some well-earned rest. It’s 3 o’clock in Banjul and it’s 5 o’clock here. Five o’clock is a time when I often GO to bed, instead of getting up. But I have tea, I have Italian panettone cake, both given me for my birthday two weeks ago, to celebrate the entry into a new year of life, which, God willing, I will also see out. If I don’t, then it will be His will or my stupidity. This sounds very evangelistic, but it is not - it is ecumenical. I find myself referring to God, who I discovered when only a few months old at my christening, and which you will have discovered also at around the same time in life, regardless of what confession you follow. We worship God to thank Him. Some thank Him in order to express gratitude for opportunity, and some misuse those opportunities, and some use them well. How they use them is not our concern, it is His. And the opportunities are many, and the ways we use them are many.

However, what our opportunities boil down to is the chance to be together with other people on the Earth, to sing and laugh, talk and exchange, appreciate, and above all learn. Life is a learning curve, and that applies whether you’ve been to school in Banjul or to university at Harvard. I believe that when we finally meet our God, we will look back on our learning curve in life and compare what we learned here with what we have learned upon joining with God and - if this were an “occupancy” meter on a hard drive of a computer, we would see that life’s lesson occupies 2 MB of a 1 Terabyte hard disk.

How we approach this wonder depends on where we are: all roads lead to Rome, they say. But which road you take, depends on where you start out from. You start out from Banjul; I start out from Glasgow. But we will all meet in Rome; however, our roads, yours and mine, took us to a place called LinkedIn; you might say we met over coffee at the Linked Inn, and perhaps over coffee we found that we are travellers in the same direction. I would like to accompany you, and for you to accompany me along this particular part of the road and, who knows, perhaps we will even arrive in Rome together. And maybe others will be with us as we enter the gates of Rome. 

I had no idea I would write these words to you when I started this e-mail, but written them I have.

So, Gambia, or is it the Gambia? — correct me — because people are sensitive about Ukraine and the Ukraine. Names are important for identification, however, but not for knowing that which is identified. In business, we call that substance over form. This, therefore, will be your first important lesson to me.

But, there are more to come. I wrote to my friend last night and I reproduce here what he had to say about your land:

Long time ago! I understood the meaning of bidonville, seeing houses made from oil barrels 🛢, horribly poor, horrible police, bribery at all levels … but great people! I gave all my clothes to the people we met because they have no clothes to buy!

I don’t think it changed in 30 years or so! No education, no chances, Islamic rule to maintain the crowds uneducated, no health system, I guess; the African bribery system, with no or very little way out. I could help, but how? Sending clothes, school stuff, …

So, what have I now learned from my friend?

- static poverty;

- no education;

- no chances;

- an Islamic confessional system that, he says, controls the population through a lack of education (back to the second point, and, indeed, the first one);

- perhaps little health care;

- inescapable corruption;

- great people. Maybe that can outweigh all the other negatives. Great people;

- and a feeling that we cannot help you, except with school equipment or clothing.

I tend to agree with all these points except one. The last one. But there is one more sentence that shines out of this assessment, given like that, off the cuff. “Gave all my clothes to people we met.” My buddy is generous, and I am not sure whether that will earn him a place in Heaven, because places in Heaven are not mine to confer.

But it tells me one thing: there are two people at least in my country, in Belgium, that know about your situation, that care, and want to help you.

Fred thinks that Gambia can be helped with aid, and aid is a common word in Africa. I am sure, without even checking, that Gambia has received aid from wealthy countries in the past, and yet Fred says that, 30 years on, “it didn’t change.” Why was that? Well, maybe the aid didn’t get to where it was needed. And maybe the aid has now been spent on where it was needed and you need some more.

I dream of the day when the United Kingdom and Belgium and other European countries receive aid from Gambia. Not because I want our money back, because my dream is not one of revenge — how ludicrous that would be. It is a hope, a distant, scarcely conceivable hope, that Gambia will one day be able to look at itself in a glorious gilded mirror and say with self-assurance, “We are who we are; and, by ourselves and despite all adversity, we have achieved our potential to improve our own lot, yes, despite the colonial masters; and we will listen to their cries for help, and bestow aid upon them, because, now, it is they who are poor and down at heel, and we have achieved wealth, and justice, and dignity and we know who we are. And when they came here, we are unsure as to whether they even knew who they were, though we know who they thought they were.” The aid that you give to Europe in that day may not even be of monetary form, but will be a lesson in assurance, dignity, humanity and worth of soul. And you have started that lesson by contacting me. A small start, but a start.

Recently, the Pope visited Canada and apologised for the outrageous manner in which, for 180 years, the church had treated Canada’s original people — we call them now First Nations — and I am an honorary member of one of those nations: Ojibway. The “Indians” offered the Pope a magnificent headdress, the traditional ceremonial head decoration of that part of the world, and some asked, “Why give him who comes to apologise such a munificent gift?” I answered to them: “Because we know who we are, and we are not soured by ill treatment heaped upon us. We bestow gifts upon the sinner, because they extend an apology to us, and gifts do not enrich the recipient, they enrich the giver. What they do to the recipient is to shame him.”

Every penny of aid that goes to Gambia shames you, and doubly shames those who take it for themselves and fail to apply it where it is needed. And the givers heap that shame upon you and upon them, and enrich themselves with vainglorious pride. But, Gambia, The Gambia: you can have your revenge for the shame that is heaped upon you. By one day bestowing aid back on Europe, your erstwhile colonial masters.

However, if we may know the road to Rome, how do we find the way to the Treaty of Rome?

My friend has plenty of money, and plenty of responsibilities. He has three boys in college, and that’s expensive. But he will send this e-mail to them and they will read it and it will make of them great men, and they will realise that the success of their futures lies not in the comfort of their lives, but in their contribution to society, to the world and to Gambia; who knows? And if they don’t do that, those they imbue with their humanity will do that.

And so will you.

How?

Tell me what you can do. Not your qualifications, they are unimportant. But, go into yourself and tell me all the things you can do. In my 61 years, I have served in a tailor’s shop, been a painter and decorator, a tour guide, a translator, a lawyer in courts of law, and adviser in solicitors’ offices, an actor on the stage of a theatre, a chauffeur, a teacher of English and writing technique, I can play a musical instrument, I can do woodwork and I can wire an electrical plug. I can garden and I can lift weights. I can talk and sometimes I can make people laugh. And sometimes I can make myself cry. I have an orderly mind that expresses itself in disorder, and I can learn.

Some of these things, I cannot do virtually, some I can.

So, what can you do? Tell us. Everything. What are your talents, abilities, what can you do on your own and what can you do with others? Can you weave baskets? Can you program computers? Can you lead a country? Can you lead a family?

Time to think. Because those who can help themselves can help others. Those who can leverage themselves, can leverage the world.

Take your time. We are listening. Meanwhile, the tea is finished — I’ll make some more.