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Dr Thomas
Gambia
95 Posts |
 Posted - 16 Dec 2006 : 12:47:49
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Hello Folks
I have read Bantaba for quite a time and feel I would like to take part in some of the discussions.
I an retired and living in Spain.
I am 65 years old, white, born in "Bathhurst" Gambia
I have lived in Gambia for periods of 5 years at a time.
At this time i am looking after my parents who are 96 & 92
I will return full time to Gambia at some time in the future to be with the people I love.
Tom
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anna
Netherlands
730 Posts |
Posted - 16 Dec 2006 : 13:40:38
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| Well, it's always reassuring to have a doctor in the room! |
When an old African dies, it is as if a whole library has burnt down.
Amadou Hampate Ba (Mali) |
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gambiabev
United Kingdom
3091 Posts |
Posted - 16 Dec 2006 : 17:00:45
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| I'm interested to know what took your parents to Gambia? Were you educated there or in the UK? I am sure you will have alot to offer the bantaba. You are someone who should really be able to comment on Gambian life from a white persons perspective. I look forward to reading your postings. |
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Lily
United Kingdom
422 Posts |
Posted - 16 Dec 2006 : 17:41:51
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| Hello Tom, I am new too so we can begin together. Welcome. I expect you'll have a lot of valuable contibutions to make |
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mbay
Germany
1007 Posts |
Posted - 16 Dec 2006 : 22:24:07
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welcome and feel free Dr.
quote:
Originally posted by Dr Thomas
Hello Folks
I have read Bantaba for quite a time and feel I would like to take part in some of the discussions.
I an retired and living in Spain.
I am 65 years old, white, born in "Bathhurst" Gambia
I have lived in Gambia for periods of 5 years at a time.
At this time i am looking after my parents who are 96 & 92
I will return full time to Gambia at some time in the future to be with the people I love.
Tom
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Dr Thomas
Gambia
95 Posts |
Posted - 19 Dec 2006 : 14:24:13
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| Well Bev in answer to your Question, my parents were traveling to England from China. Due to no protection and no convoys they were obliged to stop in Bathurst for 2 months. We then went to England to live. I was Educated in Yorkshire, and in much later life at UCLA. At the time I was working for Exxon.I have been to gambia every year since 1960. And had about 18 years residency. |
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Cornelius
Sweden
1051 Posts |
Posted - 19 Dec 2006 : 15:10:37
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Nostalgia & current Whiteman’s perspective? Bwana?
Graham Greene gave Sierra Leone the name " The Soup Sweet Land" (Also known as "THe White Man's Grave" - as mosquitoes - mostly female mosquitoes, made jihad on the missionaries and wiped them out with malaria, the malaria which WHO has all but eradicated.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Sierra_Leone
"You are someone who should really be able to comment on Gambian life from a white persons perspective ", croons Gambia's own Bev. O.K. Karen Blixen, watch out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Blixen
Do you understand that there were thousands of British residents in Sierra Leone and the Gambia during the colonial era? They were the backbone of the Colonial civil service in Sierra Leone, prior to Independence we are talking about some 30,000 plus in Sierra Leone alone at any given time before Independence.
I remember a classmate, Richard Fairweather……I remember Bill Lines, Mr. Normansell and cronies, the City Hotel – Graham Greene talks about it all in Norman Sherry’s volumes “ The Life of Graham Greene” and in “The Heart of the Matter” .
Eye-opener, entertaining and instructive too:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&rls=GGLJ%2CGGLJ%3A2006-51%2CGGLJ%3Aen&q=%E2%80%9CThe+Life+of+Graham+Greene%E2%80%9D+&btnG=Search&meta=
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&rls=GGLJ%2CGGLJ%3A2006-51%2CGGLJ%3Aen&q=Graham+Greene+%3AThe+Heart+of+the+Matter&btnG=Search&meta=
We are privileged to have Dr. Thomas with us and to have his reminiscences about the good old days and the good new days to come....
White person's perspective? What's that? Your perspective? Gambie-Bev’s perspective? An impie's perspective? Post-colonial nostalgia?
Perhaps you mean from an Englishman's perspective, for it’s written
“A glorious character deny it who can
is breathed in the words “I’m an Englishman “
from “Norman Sherry’s “ The Life of Graham Greene, Vol. II, page 103 :
“On Wednesday ( 7th January) he was again left on board and played chess with Kitzkuran; “ All religions say a man must have a woman two times a week.” ( At least, especially for those who have at least FOUR))
(From Graham Greene’s letter to his mother, 2nd April 1942.)
That passage was preceded by this one:
On page 101, "......in Freetown:
“ He was seen sitting in the Park with two little black boys…..The boys were offering him singing and dancing:
“Gentlemen & Ladies?”
“Schoolgirls.”
“How old?”
“OH fourteen to twenty-four”
“And drinks?”
“Whisky & gin & port”
“Expensive?”
“All drink expensive now.”
“Is there anything else you can do?”
“There are ladies”
“Expensive?”
“Cheaper than London”
“Ten shillings.”
“Oh no. You no get girl for 10/- in London.”
“Fifteen shillings?”
Yes all right.”
He went off with them.”
Both Dr.Thomas and Gambiebev the sometimes wonderful and all Roman Catholics should enjoy this one:
From “The Life of Graham Greene (Vol. 3 ) By Norman Sherry
“In late 1967 Greene went off with his friend Mario Soldati to Sierra Leone and wrote for The Observer an article with the compelling title “ The Soupsweet Land” about coming back to the place where he had worked for MI6 during the war. He was returning for a happy visit though his enjoyment is not evident in the photograph taken there, showing a tall slightly forbidding Greene and Soldati, confident and at ease in West Africa”
( I’ll skip a paragraph here keeping it short for the Chief-in-Exile’s sake)
“ On this Greene’s third journey to West Africa, he and Soldati visited the University of Sierra Leone. We see Greene in photographs standing among students and the Vice-Chancellor Davidson Nicol - to whom Greene had been kind when that young man was at Cambridge.”
Lets skip to the second paragraph and on page 508: hilarious!
“ In Sierra Leone Greene and Soldati - visited brothels together and smoked opium.”
( AS for the brothels I had been informed that they exist in a rather indirect manner and I remember how incensed I was to get confirmation that the business was still thriving when I read in one of the most reputable travel guides of the early 90s about the tourist land that we love our Sierra Leone which located the main police station by the “adjoining" adjacent to it which was identified as a brothel . The Tourist guide matter-of factly said the Police station next to the brothel and I expected it to continue with that famous line from Blake which says:
“ Prisons are built with stones of Law. Brothels with the bricks of religion.”
Well lets continue with Graham Greene:
The paragraph continues with a visit - rather a re-visit to the famous City Hotel which is one of the place actors in his Sierra Leone novel “ The Heart of the Matter”
Page 509:
" Greene: “ Coming back to Freetown and Sierra Leone last Christmas; I thought I belonged to a bizarre past which no one else shared. It was a shock to be addressed by first name on my first night, to feel a hand squeeze my arm, and a voice say, “ Don’t you remember me, we met in Pujehun? Lets have a drink at the City.”
Further down the page, this could please the dear old vice president (Solomon Berewa - if he’s a jolly good fellow):
“ Greene and Soldati went to Midnight Mass, and he recalled the priest he knew during the war, Father Mackie (Who used to teach Creole)…..And Greene, always observant noticed:
“ The girl in front of me wore one of the surrealist Manchester cotton dresses which are really seen…….the word “Soup sweet” was printed over her shoulder, but I had to wait until she stood up before I could confirm another phrase: “FENELLA LAK GOOD POKE”
Father Mackie would have been amused, I thought, and what better description could there be of this poor lazy lovely country than “Soup Sweet” ?”
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Edited by - Cornelius on 19 Dec 2006 15:48:18 |
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