Memories of The Gambia, West Africa

For quite sometime, I have been trying to put together a travelogue sort of a thing stringing together my memories of our stay at The Gambia, West Africa. Here is an excrept of the same. I need your valuable suggestions and feedback for me to make it more readable and interesting.

"We shifted to our house at a place called Latre Kunda which was about 4-5 k.m from the school that my parents were going to teach. The house was a typical upwardly mobile West African House which had a tin roof and in side there was artificial ceiling. The house was inside a complex which had 2 other houses on either side of it and a drive way leading on to it. Initially we were the only occupant in the complex and alter joined by two of our other neighbours. We were at last happy to settle down in the house which we really liked a lot. The house was all furnished by the Jamat (community) and also had utensils and kitchen ware all purhased new and installed. The area market was just opposite to our house which had temporary as well as permanent vendors selling their stuff. The market resembled a typical African market where the temporary vendors had there products spread across a mat on the earth and most of them had clustered their product in to small heaps and sold those heaps at a given price. Very few people at all (only a few permanent shop had weight system). The market had a vegetable section, a grocery section, a fish and non veg section and a stationery and miscellaneous section. The market used to open at about 9 a.m in the morning and used to go on till 1 p.m in the noon. To avoid the mid day heat, the temporary vendors will shut shop at 1 p.m and will resume at about 5 p.m in the evening. The market had atypical smell of its own which used to be hot, humid and a peculiar characteristic smell – the smell of dried fish, groceries, palm oil etc all mixed up to give way to a heady smell. Here also people put up small road side stall selling minced beef balls soaked in palm oil and local condiments which used to be served with French loaf all for 50 Bututs (1 Dalasi = 100 Bututs). Besides there was grocery shops storing fresh French loafs directly from the bakeries which used to be treat for us because of its taste when taken with meat or chicken peas curry.

Whenever, we used to enter the market or go outside, small kids would rush to us shouting ‘Tubabs’ ‘ Arabs’ etc. The term ‘Tubabs’ meant foreigners and some people also mistook us for Arabs. My brother used to study in a nearby primary school and his fan following was to be seen to be believed. Initially we used to go and pick him up at the end of his school but later we just gave up as his journey from his school to our school used to be another freedom march of the Mahatma Gandhi where numerous school kids would accompany him and he will be there right in the centre smiling gloriously."

Gone are the old sweet days of childhood !

Childhood was such a nice joy ride for all of us. Those were the days when Television was just making its foray in to the still regulated Indian market. To have a television in one’s house was considered to be a real matter of pride. It so used to happen that in a given area or colony there was rarely a television set found in anybody’s house. Those who could afford the large, heavy black and white set were treated with respect and people used to make friends with the owners and tried to be in the right side of their humor.

It so happened that we were the few people who were treated with such respect.

The reason being that my Nana’s house had a big black and white television which was recently bought by my younger uncle and what frenzy that created…We waited with bated breath each time Sunday would approach as that would be the day when we would go bag packing to my Nana’s house early in the morning. The whole of our family would travel in hand pulled rickshaw and it used to be a long way from my house to my Nana’s house. We would reach their much to the joy and happiness of our uncles, aunties and cousins. My mother’s grandfather's’s house was just across the boundary wall and my special friends were the sons of my mother’s aunt. I would immediately jump and go to their house which will put my grandma in a fit. Once I am on the other side, we would have a whole lot of game laid out in front of us from which we had to choose. There was kite flying by my young uncle Nasir, or marble playing by my buddy cum uncle Papu.

However, television programme used to be the winner hands down!

What joy it was to see Star Trek, Spider Man , Vikram and Betal etc on a Sunday along with home grown serials like Hum Log, Buniyaad etc which were quite in demand during the early days of television in India. The special attraction came in the evening in the form of Hindi feature film at 5.45 p.m . before that they showed a sports based programme called ‘ World of Sports’ which my uncle watched keenly as he himself was a national level badminton player.

Our Nana’s T.V room used to be filled up to full capacity by evening time as the entire neighbourhood will pour in to watch the movie. People will watch through advertisement, umpteenth announcement to be able to watch the movie. Advertisements and other announcements was considered as a necessary evil, an useless distraction in the noble pursuit of watching the much awaited movie.

Those were the days when the only channel used to be the state sponsored channel Doorodarshan which did not have lots of programme and also the number of T.V transmitting stations were few in number. So people used to have long. Spooky T.V antenna’s being supplemented by T.V Boosters all in an effort to enhance the T.V signal. Due to lesser number of programmes the T.V channel used to work only at specified time. People would switch on their T.V much before the programme started and would also watch through the agriculture related programme ‘Krishi Darshan’ just to be able to see their film song based programme ‘Chitrahaar’.

One of my favorite programme used to be Spider Man, which is the old cousin of serials like Shaktimaan. But unlike the newer generation we never used to jump off buildings thinking ourselves to be ‘Spider Man’!

The ultimate fun was on festival days when they would show a good movie related to the occasion or the religious background.

The most boring time were the National Days when the channel used to invariably show Richard Attenbrough’s “Gandhi” which even a kid could guess if asked about the movie that they will run.

There used to be lots of anticipation among movie freaks during election days, as the whole day used to be filled with Hindi movies and they also showed latest movies too.

In those early days of television, renting a VCR (Video cassette Recorder) was a matter of dreams for youngsters like me. We used to have VCR along with Video cassette of latest movie rented during festivals at our Nana’s house. Thing used to come to such a pass that, because of the demands of such commodities in the rental market, it had to be returned on time failing which (even a delay of 5 minutes) used to result in the penal of actually paying for the entire next days rent too. To avoid such a situation, all of us cousins used to watch all the movies throughout the night and the determination with which we did was unparalleled compared to our efforts in studying for exams too!

In today’s era of multiple channels, each competing and vying for viewers attention and TRPs, our childhood seemed a distant story located in some fairyland where innocence had its place under the sun and the mind was still unadulterated...