The Gambia

February 4-5, 2004

About two weeks ago I was working in my office when I received a call from the Ambassador of The Gambia. I don’t generally talk to ambassadors, so I adopted my most “your highness” tone of voice. He said that representatives of the University of The Gambia were in Dakar for a visit and would like to meet me. I set up an appointment for the next day.

At 10 AM the next day, a gentleman name Ibrahima Dondeh, dressed in an obviously African-tailored Western-style business suit and tie arrived on campus. He is the registrar of the University of The Gambia. He explained that this is a new endeavor. Gambia has never had a university before, and this one has been in existence for three years. And on March 6 they will be graduating their first students. According to Mr. Dondeh, there are currently 900 students in four schools – Medicine, Agriculture and Science, Humanities, and Economics and Management. I thought he told me that 150 students will be graduating, I am later to find the number is closer to 70. I need to note that these first graduates had credits from other schools. This is a bonafide university, with a four-year Bachelor degree requirement. And Mr. Dondeh’s main purpose in visiting me is to ask if we have caps and gowns that they can use for the “convocation”, and consequently to invite the president of Suffolk University to attend the ceremonies.

Mr. Dondeh doesn’t know much about Suffolk University’s program in Dakar, so I explain to him what we do, what resources we have, show him around, and ask questions about his university. His answers are quite vague. Concerning his invitation, I inform him that President Sargent would be flattered, but due to his busy schedule and difficulty in traveling, that he would probably not attend. I ask him to send me a formal invitation, and I would convey it to Boston. If President Sargent is unable to attend, perhaps another representative will be able to. And I offer that I could come. Mr. Dondeh is quite impressed with the Suffolk – Dakar’s program and resources and invites me to come and visit, perhaps before March 6. I offer that I am quite busy, but would love to visit his campus.

The next day I receive a faxed letter to the President of Suffolk University officially inviting him to come to the University of The Gambia’s convocation on March 6. I fax it on to Boston, along with an e-mail to a couple of vice presidents informing them of the invitation. I also do a Google search to find the Web site of the University of The Gambia. Not much to see. They have, sure enough, four schools, a full curriculum of courses, and a rather skeletal faculty listing, virtually none with doctorates. I am curious, yet dubious now.

The Gambia is a tiny country. It is totally surrounded by Senegal, except the west which borders the Atlantic. In fact ethnically the residents of Gambia are virtually the same as those of Senegal, primarily Wolof, with a smattering of Mandink, Pular, Aku, and other groups. It became a separate country merely due to the fact that France grabbed Senegal and the British grabbed the piece that is now Gambia in the 1800’s. So Gambia’s official language is English, although Wolof predominates, even more than what I hear in Senegal.

Where Senegal adopted many of its French colonizers’ customs – baguettes, French language, French cuisine - Gambia was influenced by the British – English breakfasts, English language, lousy food. And I later find that even though ethnically they are the same peoples, the Senegalese look down their noses at the Gambians (everybody needs to look down on somebody), give them a hard time with entry to their country, and have very little economic collaboration. Both countries’ main product is peanuts though. Peanuts.

So two days after my meeting with the enthusiastic Mr. Dondeh, I get a call from him. He turns the phone over to the Acting Dean of the School of Economics and Management, Mr. Suleyman Fye. Equally enthusiastic, Mr. Fye invites me to come to visit the Gambia. Can I come tomorrow? Well, no, I have meetings and classes. How about the day after? Very persuasive and I am a bit caught off guard. I inform them that I will review my schedule and call them back. My curiosity is now piqued and I assume that their offer means they pay to bring me to The Gambia. It is a mere 45 minute flight to Banjul, the capital. It is the opportunity to visit another country in West Africa and to see for myself. So I carve out two days in my schedule, inquire about flights, and call them back to say I am coming. I give them my arrival time and am told that Mr. Faye will meet me at the airport. In Africa that doesn’t mean much, but what the heck.

So last Tuesday at 9:30 AM, Manga picks me up and takes me to the Dakar airport. International flights tend to arrive and leave in the middle of the night, so the airport is very much less than its typical disorganized chaos. I zip through check in and go to waiting salon A, reserved for inter-African travelers. There are only a few people there and I settle in to wait with a good book. I can only imagine what Air Senegal International is like! Since I am only going for on night, I have a small carry-on bag, a change of clothes, a toothbrush, my camera, and lots of promotional material about Suffolk – Dakar. Although the Gambians’ agenda is their campus, mine is my campus. There must be something in it for us too.

The flight is right on time. It’s a small propeller airplane, similar to the “puddle jumpers” I am used to in the Caribbean, when I have gone on dive trips. Although I am given seat 10A, someone is already sitting there, so I just take any available seat. The plane takes off on time. The stewardess comes through with meat sandwiches wrapped in cellophane. I pass. From the window I can see all of Dakar, including our campus, and then, as we head south, much of the coastline of Senegal.

We land safely at Banjul International Airport, again reminding me in size of a little Caribbean airport. I deplane and enter the terminal to go through immigration and customs. I had been told that Americans need a visa, but that I could get one at the airport. My guidebook says it costs about $40. Well, the immigration officer asks me where my visa is? I have also forgotten to bring my yellow fever certificate. I assure him I have had all my shots and that I was told I could get the visa in Gambia. He reluctantly puts a special stamp in my passport and tells me I must go to the main office in downtown Banjul tomorrow to get a temporary vis or I can’t leave the country.

So I walk through customs and out into the main terminal. I am immediately and ebulliently greeted by Mr. Fye. He is a sixty-ish gentleman, dressed in a boo boo and traditional cap. He says, let’s go. I tell him I will also need to go to the immigration office downtown. He takes my passport out of my hand, walks past all the security checkpoints to the immigration desk and talks to them in Wolof for a few minutes. He comes back and says it is all set. I don’t need to go to the immigration office. He has taken care of everything, although my passport still has the stamp and notation in it. He promises to accompany me to the airport tomorrow to get me through immigration so I can get out of Gambia.

And outside is a brand new SUV with leather seats and a driver waiting for us. Mr. Fye says he will take me to check in at my hotel, then we must go to the university, as he has scheduled a full day for me. That is fine with me. I came to work. The hotel is called Paradise Suites Hotel. It is not far from the airport and I have no idea where we are in relation to anything. He takes me to register, then I go to my room for a couple of minutes to hang up my pants. I forgot to mention that, taking a cue from the way Mr. Dondeh was dressed when he came to visit me, I am wearing a jacket and tie (I couldn’t bring myself to wear a suit). I come back out to the lobby where Mr. Fye is waiting to whisk me away to the university.

The University of The Gambia doesn’t really exist. There are several offices and rooms interspersed in various government office buildings which seem to house an administrative staff. I see a few students milling around outside, but during two days there, I didn’t see a single classroom and only met or even saw a couple of faculty. Well, it is only three years old. Do they have a plan to create a campus? Is there funding for infrastructure, faculty, books, computer labs, anything? I asked a lot of times and didn’t really get clear answers. I think I know enough about how things work in West Africa to figure it out though. More on that later.

I am brought into Mr. Dondeh’s office, where we chat for a few minutes. I ask some questions about programs, students, faculty, resources. Not much clarity yet. I am ushered into the “Vice Chancellor’s” office for a meeting. It appears that Gambia relies on significant “Technical Assistance” from Nigeria. There are several Nigerian bureaucrats assigned to assist in Gambia for three-year stints. The vice chancellor is one such individual. I can’t remember the guy’s name, although I think I was introduced. He had a big, grungy office with a desk and a sitting area with a sofa and a couple of chairs. I sit on the sofa. The vice chancellor, a round old man with a long white goatee (no moustache), waddles over to sit down. Mr. Fye does all the talking. The vice chancellor’s general reply is “Yes, I was just thinking that,” with everything Mr. Fye suggests or proposes. By my second meeting with him on my second day, I am absolutely positive that the guy is either senile or just plain stupid.

Mr. Fye then decides I probably need a nap. I must be tired from my trip – all 45 minutes of it. So he brings me back to my hotel. I haven’t had lunch and invite him to join me at the hotel. He says he will just have a drink while I eat. I order a nicoise salad and he orders a chicken sandwich. The menu is quite English. In Senegal I have become used to a mix of African and French, usually quite good. I cringe at the thought of bangers and mash. After a quick lunch, Mr. Fye says he will be back to pick me up between 4 and 5 PM. He is going to take me to meet with a group of faculty. He says we will then go out to dinner with a group of faculty. He recommends a Chinese restaurant, which is fine with me.

I am not tired at all. The hotel is moderately nice, a few European tourists sitting around a little swimming pool. Nothing much else there. I am eager to check my e-mail. I ask at the desk and they give me directions to an Internet café. They say it is a 10 minute walk. I walk on a dusty dirty road, actually not more than 10 minutes. I find a little center of a town. There are several touristy restaurants, a bank, some souvenir shops, and the Internet café. I have changed 5,000 CFA into Dalasi, the local currency. It costs about 20 cents to use the internet for a half hour. I log in, and boy is it slow. Dial-up is all they have in Gambia. How can they possibly have a university with this, I wonder. It takes a half-hour just to scroll slowly through my e-mail and reply to the urgent ones. I then walk around the little town, buy some water and a snack, and head back to my room. I want to be there by 4 for Mr. Fye. Not.

I sit in my room reading, then watching CNN until around 6:30, when he calls to tell me he will be there in a few minutes. So he arrives at about 8 PM, no driver and SUV now. We hail a cab to go to meet the faculty at the restaurant. I think the taxi has a broken axle or something. It creaks noisily to the center where I had been in the afternoon. We enter a nice looking Asian restaurant, where Mr. Dondeh is waiting for us. Nobody else. So they have a swell time, on university funds, and order a lot of food. I now know that the Wolof for “doggie bag” is “doggie bag”. They took home a lot of food! And while I tried to focus on their university and look for ways Suffolk – Dakar could gain from any collaboration; they preferred to talk American politics. Thankfully dinner ends and Mr. Dondeh drives me back to the hotel. Mr. Fye promises to pick me up promptly between 9 and 10 the next morning, as he has set up, at my request, a meeting with a group of students.

So I sleep well, maybe there aren’t as many mosquitoes in Gambia as in Senegal. I get up at 7 AM, have a leisurely breakfast at the hotel restaurant – banana bread, grapefruit, and coffee. I am ready and waiting at 9 AM. Around 10:30, Mr. Fye calls to tell me that he has set up the meeting with the students for 11 and will be there shortly. A little after 11, he shows up with the SUV and the driver. I check out of the hotel and we proceed back to one of the other buildings. He shows me the “library”. It is a large room and about as many books are on shelves as in my living room. I peruse the business section. Most are very old editions of American and British textbooks, at least five to ten years old. He begins to hunt for some students, any students, to meet me. Finally he has assembled about eight young students and proceeds to introduce me. His introduction is taking a very long time, full of inaccuracies, and a rambling list of things I have promised to do for the University of The Gambia, the students, and Mr. Fye. (More on that later). I attempt to interrupt him on a couple of occasions to clarify, but eventually just give up. When he has finished, I introduce myself, tell the students about our campus in Dakar and ask them to tell me how I can help them. The students one-by-one begin to recite a speech, almost as if it has been prepared ahead of time, thanking me for coming. Nothing more. It reminds me of students whose education consists primarily of being lectured to and then regurgitating things by rote, with no original thought sought or given. We are then served a snack of cake, meat pattie, a piece of chicken, and soft drinks.

After that meeting and the requisite photos, we are taken by a pick-up truck which appears out of nowhere to meet the acting Dean of the Humanities Program. He turns out to be a light-skinned Gambian (most of these people have a heritage of slaves who returned to Africa in the late 1880s). He has a Ph.D. and was a professor at the University of Wisconsin for 30 years. It seems as though this is his retirement hobby. We have a nice discussion about this and that for a while. Then I am taken to another office to meet the acting Dean of the Agriculture and Science program. She is a very nice woman, a refugee from Sierra Leone. Her office is strewn with Christian pictures and sayings. She is in charge of the convocation exercises. She tells me that they are in the process of having gowns made for the ceremonies and that the ones they want from us are merely for back-up. I ask several times how they plan to get the gowns we have from Dakar to Gambia. She and Mr. Fye assure me that they will take care of that. I sense she is delighted to have an outsider to complain to about the University.

Since last night, Mr. Fye has be talking about drafting a “memorandum of agreement”, which we both will sign before I leave Gambia this evening. During all my meetings and waiting for meetings today, he is drafting it long-hand, to be given to a secretary to type later. I am uncomfortable about signing anything, knowing that it is all about things we are going to do for them. I quickly realize that this document has no chance of being completed before I leave. He has written many pages, scribbles mostly. The secretaries seem to work very slowly here, and there are regular power outages, making computers unusable. But for your curiosity, here are some of the ideas he is thinking I have committed to:

· The use of the gowns

· Giving Gambian students a 75% discount on Suffolk-Dakar tuition

· Giving full scholarships to several University of The Gambia students to get graduate degrees in Boston, with the idea that they would return to be faculty

· Giving a full scholarship to both his sons and Mr. Dondeh’s daughter for graduate studies in Boston

· Hiring Mr. Fye to teach in Dakar

· Allowing his faculty to come and learn how to use computers at our Dakar campus at no charge

· My coming to teach some courses in Gambia

· My helping them find visiting professors to teach in Gambia for free

· And on and on and on

By 4 PM there is still no power and all the secretaries seem to have left for the day, so I am not going to have to sign anything. He promises, as does Mr. Dondeh, that he will finish the document tomorrow and e-mail it to me. I doubt he knows how to use e-mail, so I assume he will fax it. Well, that was four days ago, and I haven’t seen it. Can’t wait to commit Suffolk University to such an agreement!

We have one final meeting with the senile Vice Chancellor. He isn’t ready for us, so I duck out and find a secretary’s computer to check e-mail. It is so slow that I give up. I am told that the gentleman is ready for us now. Mr. Fye is still writing! I am sitting on the sofa. The Vice Chancellor is sitting at his desk reading something, and we are waiting. After about ten minutes, the Vice Chancellor looks up and sees us sitting there. He hadn’t noticed. He shuffles over to the sofa area and as Mr. Fye runs through the list of things I can allegedly do for them, he mutters “Yes, I was thinking of that” after each one. Thankfully it ends.

Mr. Fye then takes me by pick-up truck to his home for lunch. It is 5 PM and I need to get to the airport by 7 PM. His wife has prepared DjabouYap. This is the national dish of both Senegal and The Gambia. It is greasy rice with vegetables and meat. DjabouJen is the same thing with fish. I politely eat and thank her for her delicious food. I say that it is much better than the Senegalese version. Mr. Fye says he thinks I am like a brother to him. He is amazed at how we have connected so intensely in only two days. He then goes on to ask for more favors, including introducing me to his two sons, one a civil engineer and the other a telecommunications worker. They were both educated in England. Of course they can both come to Boston and get graduate degrees at Suffolk with full scholarships, although the sons really don’t seem that interested in it.

A little before 7, the SUV arrives and Mr. Fye and I are driven to the airport. Now comes a test - will I get through immigration unscathed? The driver starts to go to the parking lot, about twenty feet from the little terminal. Mr. Fye says something in Wolof, the only word I recognize is “VIP”. The driver then leaves the parking lot and goes the wrong way on the road leading to the main entrance, 5 feet away from the terminal. We get out, I thank the driver. Mr. Fye immediately finds the head of security for the airport, a friend. He walks me through ticketing, immigration, security (I bypass the x-ray machine). I wave good by to my dear friend, Mr. Fye, and go into the waiting salon. Such relief to be there. I wait for about an hour for boarding. Everything is on-time and I arrive back in Dakar at 9:30 PM. Manga is waiting for me. It is great to be home, Dakar at that moment feels like home.

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention that Mr. Fye gave me the official University of The Gambia Course Handbook. I read it on the plane. I have two observations. They have a very ambitious list of course offerings, but virtually no faculty. The other is that the School of Medicine offers a Bachelor of Surgery degree. Think of that the next time you are laid out on the table waiting for the surgeon to arrive!

Another adventure to assimilate.

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