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Friday March 23, 2007
Micol Martini and Adam Hyde

On the morning of Friday March 23, 2007, Micol and Adam visited a primary school of around 130 students in the town of Bintang in central Gambia. The town is located between the capital, Banjul, and Soma.

The kids in the school range from around 3 to 6 year olds. When the kids are 6 or 7 years old they move up to another school which is across a clearing from the primary school. We arrived in time for the morning assembly, where the children sung the national anthem, their school song.  From there, the kids lined up and walked to classes while singing. The woman to the side were crushing the grain that was to become lunch, and the teachers were either trying to control those too young to concentrate on assembly, or preparing for the day's teaching ahead.

One of the teachers from the 2nd level then gave us a tour of the school during which we were introduced to the women crushing grain for lunch, showed the 3 different classrooms and "dream corner" for individual play and briefly met the kids from the two younger levels.  After meeting the teachers and having an introduction to how the school operates, we were introduced to the class of 6 year old students who would be participating in the KEEPS exhibition project. The teacher was very flexible and welcoming.  He was willing to give us the class to direct as soon as we were ready so before jumping in, we took 20 minutes to prepare our "game" and set up for the project. 
Having little time to prepare and the openness given to us by the teachers actually allowed KEEPS to run well.  We arrived at around 9.15am on a Friday, and classes conclude at noon. Perhaps because of the shorter day, it seemed quite relaxed.  The teachers explained Friday was a review day to go over the past week, so distracting the kids from their normal classes was not a problem.

Having quickly prepared a game to play with the kids so that we could get to know each other, we introduced ourselves and got things underway. At first the kids were quite shy, perhaps uncertain of what it was we wanted and of what they was expected of them; but after dancing, spinning, laughing and jumping about for half an hour or so the kids warmed up and we were able to commence with the painting.

While The Gambia's official language is English, sometimes it proved difficult to communicate. We think this had less to do with any language barrier, and more to do with differences in expressions and our strange and almost unannounced interruption into their typical day, which must have been a bit confusing for them, particularly given the young age of the kids. We realised that 6 is a good lower age limit for the KEEPS exhibition, as it is about that age that the concept of 'importance' begins to materialise. Conceptualising this with the children was a challenge, though we got there in the end.

Interestingly, not one of the kids painted anything to do with another human being; not their teacher, family, friend or love. Many depicted images having to do with nature such as clouds, the dark night, flowers, the sky while a few others painted the Gambian flag. It is interesting to compare this to the Canadian or English KEEPS where family featured most prominently. The kids had a great time with the painting, and there was a generous portion of paint shared across kids' limbs, the floor, desks and the teacher by the end of it all.
Having completed the painting, we cleared away the paint and brushes and the teacher lead the kids in song, which was a great experience to be a part of. They sang three songs, the second of which was the classic 'if you're happy and you know it.'  It was interesting to see how this song seems popular all over the world, and was identifiable to us being American and Australian and sung by children in the Gambia as well.   The third song was amazing.  The lyrics, we think, are "Today we are very happy to have some people visit us.  So you are welcome to our school.  We, are gonna love you, every new day of our lives...."

Afterwards, we sat with the teachers to chat. The conversation was starting to flow and Micol began filling out the visitor's book. She asked; "what date is it today?" To which they replied, "the 23rd of March". "It's Thursday right"? Said Micol. "No, it's Friday,  the 23rd". We looked at each other in disbelief. It was midday on Friday and we had thought it was Thursday. That night we had planned to head to Boboi, a small camp area on the beach in Southern Gambia. As it turned out, over the course of our trip we had lost track of the days and sitting with the teachers suddenly realised our flight was leaving from Banjul at 3:30pm and that we were nearly 3 hours away from there!

When we left, the kids were running around the small village waving around with pride the pens we had given them. We hope those pens prove very useful for them.

We managed to make our flight unshowered, unprepared, and covered in dust, but happy. Though relieved, we didn't really want to leave….

~ Micol and Adam