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    West Africa Is My Back Yard: Ex-Pat Life in The Gambia And Beyond. Part 1: So where on earth is The Gambia anyway?: West Africa Is My Back Yard, #1
    West Africa Is My Back Yard: Ex-Pat Life in The Gambia And Beyond. Part 1: So where on earth is The Gambia anyway?: West Africa Is My Back Yard, #1
    West Africa Is My Back Yard: Ex-Pat Life in The Gambia And Beyond. Part 1: So where on earth is The Gambia anyway?: West Africa Is My Back Yard, #1
    Ebook94 pages1 hour

    West Africa Is My Back Yard: Ex-Pat Life in The Gambia And Beyond. Part 1: So where on earth is The Gambia anyway?: West Africa Is My Back Yard, #1

    By mark williams

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Join international best-selling author and ex-pat Brit Mark Williams on the first part of this odyssey through the history, geography, culture and daily life of the country he calls his home - The Gambia and the region he calls his back yard - West Africa.

    Part memoir, part travelogue, part...

    If you like Bill Bryson's meandering travelogues that leave no stone unturned to share the author's fascination with the world around him, you'll love West Africa Is My Back Yard.

    Part two of the series coming soon to an ebook retailer, subscription service or digital library near you.

    All proceeds from the series go towards supporting, babies, children, families and schools in The Gambia.

    LanguageEnglish
    Publishermark williams
    Release dateMay 25, 2015
    ISBN9781908961822
    West Africa Is My Back Yard: Ex-Pat Life in The Gambia And Beyond. Part 1: So where on earth is The Gambia anyway?: West Africa Is My Back Yard, #1

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      Book preview

      West Africa Is My Back Yard - mark williams

      All proceeds from this series go towards supporting babies, children, families and nursery schools here in The Gambia.

      Nursery schools like Wellingara CIS, a not-for-profit community school just a mile or so from where I live.

      ––––––––

      ––––––––

      They may look happy (in fact, you won’t find happier children anywhere on the planet!) but many of these kids live in conditions you wouldn’t keep an animal in back home in the First World, and only go to school at all thanks to sponsorship.

      Imagine your child being born and brought up in a home like this – two tiny rooms without running water or electricity.

      ––––––––

      ––––––––

      A grandmother, mother and five children live here. You’ll meet them later in the series.

      Imagine bringing up a family on less than a dollar a day – on a good day. Imagine knowing your children are going to bed hungry and will wake up hungry.

      Imagine knowing your children could be at school if only you could afford the uniform and a pair of shoes for them.

      Imagine knowing your baby has a one-in-five chance of not seeing his or her fifth birthday thanks to preventable diseases like malaria - because you cannot afford a mosquito net - or a minor infection because you cannot afford to pay for a simple course of antibiotics.

      Life isn’t easy here in West Africa. Least of all in The Gambia, one of the poorest countries on the planet.

      Even for relatively wealthy ex-pats coming here to retire in the year-round warmth by the sea, life here can be a challenge. This is no French Riviera or Spanish Costa retreat, even if you can afford a fancy home with a swimming pool and all mod cons

      As for living like the locals...

      But there’s always one, and by chance you’ve just found him.

      If you’re looking for the bog-standard socks-&-sandals expat tale of life in a foreign land, this is not the series for you.

      But if you want to experience the real Gambia and the real West Africa behind those glossy brochures you see on the travel agents’ shelves; if you have an inquisitive mind and a sense of adventure (even if just from your armchair); and if you don’t mind having all your preconceptions about Africa turned on their head as we go, then join with me as we embark on a journey through the country I now call my home and the wider region I call my back yard.

      Welcome to The Gambia.

      Welcome to West Africa.

      1 – Welcome to The Gambia. Welcome to West Africa.

      ––––––––

      Countries don’t come much tinier than The Gambia. At three hundred miles long and just thirty miles wide, The Gambia is the smallest country on the African mainland, as well as one of the poorest. A thin finger of land poking unceremoniously into the side of its much larger and richer neighbour, Senegal.

      If you’ve heard of The Gambia at all then it’s likely a) you are confusing it with Zambia, b) you’ve got a map fetish like me and are just as comfortable retiring for the night with an atlas for your bedtime reading as with the latest bestselling novel, or c) you know someone who has been to The Gambia on a winter-sun holiday.

      Because at the western end of that aforementioned three hundred mile finger of land are thirty miles of stupefyingly beautiful picture-postcard white sandy beaches and casually swaying picture-postcard green palm trees, where the picture-postcard blue Atlantic Ocean gently laps the picture-postcard shoreline beneath picture-postcard blue skies and a picture-postcard blistering yellow sun that has the exceedingly endearing habit of shining pretty much non-stop through the winter months.

      C:\Users\Robert\Desktop\MY IMAGES\Gunjur-Coastline-Gambia.jpg

      Being just a six hour flight from London it’s no surprise then that The Gambia has become the winter-sun tourist destination for over 100,000 Europeans each year.

      But unless they knew where to look they’d be hard-pressed to find this tiny country on a world map. And that suits me just fine. The fewer tourists who come here dropping empty suntan lotion bottles on my beautiful beaches, the better.

      You see, I may have been born and bred in Britain, but that was a long time ago. Nowadays The Gambia and West Africa is not just my home and my back yard, but my personal paradise.

      Mine, I tell you! All mine!

      But I was brought up to share so, much as it pains me, I’m going to let you into the travelling world’s best kept secret.

      No, not the picture-postcard beaches, beautiful as they are. And not the tourist strip that lines some of the said beautiful beaches, with a range of hotels and like accommodation to suit all tastes and budgets.

      No, I’m going to share with you the real Gambia and the real West Africa most tourists who come here – and sadly even many ex-pats who take up residence here – never even realise exists.

      Because as we’ll see, if East Africa is the cradle of civilization, then West Africa is the crucible of the modern western world.

      You may have been brought up to think of Africa as a land of mud-huts and famine, horrific tropical diseases and civil war, poverty and despair, or perhaps a slightly more positive perspective of safaris and cocoa plantations, sandy deserts and jungle rainforests. And sure, West Africa has all of these.

      But it also has beauty and wealth, tranquillity and happiness,

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