Chapter 4 - End Days

With the project coming to a close i'll be devastated to leave friends here behind. Today i handed out football shirts, baseball hats & beloved flat peaks to children with next to nothing.

The internet connection in Gambia isn't the best and its been hard for me to get access until now. 

The past 2 nights have been unexplainable.

Since the start of the project we have had help from a friend of ours, a 25 year old named Sai Kou. Saturday night he wrote and conducted a speech to the students about the opportunities they behold having the life they have in England and how hard it is to make a life in Gambia, within 10 minutes after this speech he was arrested by the Gambian militia for having a dispute outside the hotel with our truck driver. The Gambian militia took Sai Kou by the neck and dragged him down the dusty path to a holding cell nearby. Thanks to efforts that were nearby he was released within the hour.

Sunday night I stayed in the slums of a Gambian village. My sleeping quarters consisted of a wooden bed in a tin roof shanty house, it was a horrifically scary experience.
The village has a population of around 15,000. That’s 1 white person to every 5,000 black people. Walking around the roads, alleys and side streets just lit by stars and moonlight was intense and i felt like my adrenaline was running for about 5 hours straight. I was with some well respected boys so no one came across in a ill or violent manner, in fact was really friendly and the streets were filled with locals of all ages. If this was England i would no doubt have been dead before dawn. The shops were still open, meat was being grilled, football was being played and kids were running amok. I felt like the center of attention, compared myself to Ross Kemp a few times, same first name, same job, just not as hench.

I woke up in the morning dying for water and gasping for air, it was humid beyond belief, i cannot express how hot i felt. I cant believe these people wake up to the scorching heat that was suffocating my body. The next day i felt so unclean, filming was hard but i got some fantastic stuff, still praying there's no problem with the hard drive which is currently storing 160GB of my HD footage. Throughout the day i felt more and more dirty, like the dirt was seeping through my skin and affecting me inside. I understand that if your brought up in a certain environment it becomes normal but the hygiene levels must be catastrophically low, i can see how fast diseases are spread and  how contagious they become due to the heat and lack of running water

The flight back has been delayed and i've booked this afternoon to interview the students about there experience and final thoughts on how they might change when they get home, especially in terms of appreciating what they have and the opportunity they behold living in such a developed and well structured country. (maybe well structured was an over-exaggeration)

Thanks to everyone that's kept up with reading this.

I'll post something final when im back home so keep check.

This past week has been amazing and the people I've met wont be forgotten.

Ross.