Speaker Paul Nomantas from The Gambian Schools Trust

Paul said that he had visited The Gambia on honeymoon and then went back 30 years later. On the plane home he met Linda a Trustee of The Gambian Schools Trust. He told her that he might be interested in doing some volunteering if he ever found time. Six months later he was made redundant at Yorkshire Bank and volunteered to do a bit of work for them which led very quickly to him becoming a trustee.

The Gambia is on West of Africa and is surrounded entirely by Senegal. It is a long thin country around a river and was created by the British who colonised it to give them route to the coast to ship slaves. It has little in the way of natural resources. It is one of only 2 countries to have the definite article in its name the only other is The Bahamas.

There is only 1 Bridge to cross the river which was only built 4 years ago. Before could take 2 weeks to get a ferry crossing so Senegal wanted the bridge built to speed up people getting from one part of their country to the other. Although the population are starving, they have a very basic lifestyle.

The trust formed 20 years ago and the trustees each go over on average twice a year. Two trustees live there 6 months a year from November to April. Originally the trust worked with state schools to provide supplies of books and equipment. But recently they have built 6 schools. They employ local labourers to build and repair the schools which contain 15 libraries, computer rooms and they have even installed water pumps. The pumps were necessary because the dehydrated students were unable to concentrate properly In the more remote up country schools they have built teachers quarters.

Besides their own built schools, they distribute resources to over 100 state schools. Each year in October they send one 40 feet shipping container full of books desks chairs etc from schools that are throwing things out because of curriculum changes. All lessons are taught in English but there are 6 tribal languages.

This year they sent 600 banana boxes full of books and equipment. They only send stackable chairs as they are all same size and it means they aren’t shipping a lot of fresh air. Once the container reaches The Gambia it is unloaded by local volunteers overseen by the 2 resident trustees and stored until shipped to local schools.

When building a school, they have to make their own bricks. Some UK volunteers help but the work is mainly contracted out to local builders.

Njalal school was originally built out of hay bales and the children sat on buckets for chairs or homemade benches. The trust built them a new school from scratch starting autumn 2022 and it was completed in 4 months. The school is a long way up country so it was decided to build whole school quickly rather than one classroom at a time as they normally do.. They had to dig 75M bore hole for water, build 4 classrooms, a library, a kitchen, an outer wall and teacher's accommodation. It took 14,000 homemade blocks and was built without any machinery. The total cost was about £40,000 including solar panels for electricity. It was built from a bequest in a supporter’s will and is for children 4 to 11 years old. Once a school is finished the teachers are paid by the state.

One example that Paul gave was of Hassan Jallow who went to a primary school in 2004. This helped him do a computer sciences course and now he has his own company and employs 8 to 12 staff. The company does software programs for Volvo Mercedes-Benz and Audi among other things.

Another example was Samba who is the head of a village. He can't read or write but when showing him around a school he saw a poster of the solar system. He said the poster was wrong because it showed the Earth as a ball and he said it is square. When asked why he said because the BBC frequently mentions the 4 corners of the earth.