Two schools.

During the course of our latest trip we were able to visit several schools. Most are doing well, even though several are operating in difficult circumstances. It's great to see the combination of eager student and enthusiastic teachers. We were saddened to see that one school, which had been the pride of its village, struggling. The number of pupils had dropped, the classrooms were in disrepair and the qualified teaching staff had left. There was an air of desperation: basic educational materials - paper, pencils, chalks - were lacking. A couple of rooms were occupied with junk, another had not been repaired following damage from a falling tree. A gardener and a caretaker had been dismissed and the school garden, which had previously provided both food for the children and a small income from the sale of surplus crops in the local market, had fallen into disuse. We provided what help we could but it was beyond our means to fund the repairs and wage bill for the little school. It appeared that the people who had sponsored the school for several years had been unable to continue and the villagers had withdrawn many children and sent them to a new kindergarten a short distance away.
 We made a couple of visits to this new school - what a difference. The head teacher already was in charge of a large lower-basic (Junior) school and had decided to provide the youngest children with fully qualified staff, breakfast every day, medical support if needed and a very happy atmosphere. She funded much of the initial cost of this operation from her own pocket. We made a contribution towards the cost of rice, provided a large number of dictionaries which had been presented to GOES (and for which we had paid Thomas Cook a large sum of money as 'excess baggage'!) The school seemed a truly happy, industrious place of learning.
 I'm haunted by that other, crumbling little school. We had known it in happier days, I had sat in the shade of a tree and taught previous generations of teachers a little more about English language and told stories to youngsters who seemed to enjoy hearing - and helping to make up - tales from two continents.

You could support GOES by buying any or all of the Malinding  series of Kindle ebooks. Who knows, you may be the one who enables an autoclave to sterilise an instrument used in an operation to save a life!

Free book!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Happy-Nest-Malinding-Village-Archive-ebook/dp/B017Q5X3NM/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1450441344&sr=1-1&keywords=Happy+Nest


Hope this works - it's a link to 'Happy Nest', the latest in the Malinding village series. It's the village archive, to which the villagers have contributed mini-auto-biographies, poems, and in one case, a short story which relates how the writer, a teen aged village girl with a longing for education and a career as a nurse, encounters Ed, the anti-hero of the series, with hope but little expectation. Happy Nest is on offer, free, at Amazon, for five days from 18/12/2015
Enjoy!


PS
Of course we hope you'll buy the rest of the Malinding books - they fund the charity (Gambian Occasional Emergency Support - GOES) which supports education and the provision of medical care in the Gambia.

A mixed bag!

It's been a funny sort of day. Started off by getting a clean bill of health from the clinic - they manage my asthma and angina.  Sun has shone all day!
 Thought I would admire the nice new cover for Empty Bananas (designed by Adam Vickerstaff) - it wasn't on the book. Drat! bother! Trudget!  I was certain I'd installed it last week. Checked with KDP - I had managed to download it but I hadn't pressed the 'save & publish' button. I have now - Empty Bananas has a gleaming new cover illustrating Ed's* progress from a small boat to a Gambian village (Malinding). You can even see his motor bike basking in the shade ...
 Nearly forgot - the nurse, Joanne, at the clinic this morning was interested in the work GOES does and offered to donate some equipment when we next travel out to the Gambia.
 To offset all this good news we still have no word that the parcel containing more ECG paper for Banjul Hospital has arrived. Fingers crossed - I can't see that the contents would be on any use to anyone else.





*Ed is the anti-hero chap who ... well, you could just read the books and sponsor GOES which helps real people!

"Why do you do it?"

Not always the easiest question to answer. I was looking back through my jottings and came across this entry, about twelve years ago. It may give a clue about why we continue this work. Not happy reading.

"The darker side of life in The Gambia was brought home to me on my second trip. An elderly man who had been collecting fruit from a tall tree with the aim of selling the fruit to buy a cup of rice to feed his family, fell to his death a few feet from where I was standing. Our efforts to save him failed. He had been warned that the tree was unsafe, but he ignored the warning. The taxi I was using for the day was commandeered to take his body to the mortuary, and later that same day he was buried. Many people live a hand-to-mouth existence. Things we Westerners take for granted such as education, healthcare, clean water and support in time of hardship, are simply not available to many other people. At the time of this accident I was on my way to Mandinari village, where I was providing an English Language course for the school staff. I found on the first day that I was offered food and shelter for the duration of my stay. Setting up GOES to offer a little support was the least I could do."

Post this message I still feel the shock I felt that day, when a man, about my age, died simply from trying to feed his family.
Thanks for reading this,
Tom

Sorry, Blog - I've been neglecting you!

But I have been busy, honestly! I'm tangled up with an application for Gift Aid on last year's donations; has to be done on line - and if you've been reading this blog for any length of time you'll have guessed that 'online' and 'Tom' are not happy partners! However, we're on the verge of success: I am now waiting 'ten working days' for a code number which will enable my user number to submit the detailed claim for the tax refund. Hopefully. Fingers crossed. Of course it will.

 Chasing Freedom Home, the latest Malinding village book, is tip-toeing into the sales on Amazon.

As soon as the rain stops J 7 I will go for a refreshing trike/bike ride (and cake and coffee) and all will be well with our bit of the world. Trouble is, of course, that so many bits of the world won't be well. Still, that's no excuse not to do what we can.

 Another thought, offered to me by a friend years ago: the main trouble with growing old is that you forget how absent-minded you were years ago!

 Where did I put the last receipt book for donations????

Chasing Freedom Home

Chasing Freedom Home - yours, from Kindle ebooks, for $3 or £1.83!  (Sorry, I tried to rotate it but it kept insisting on reclining. Exhausting business, being published!

As you may guess from the cover, it's an anti-slavery book.
All income from sales go to GOES.

To everything there is a season ...

And this was the season to be bone idle for a couple of days! We went to visit my daughter and be waited on hand and foot. It didn't quite work out like that because I decided that it was high time the latest book was finished! Didn't quite happen but the first draft is on paper - only numerous edits and re-writes and the design of the cover to worry about! GOES was presented with a very welcome cheque, which will be paid into the bank on Monday and immediately sent via BAYBA to help a young family in a small fishing village. So, the being bone idle intention didn't quite work but we had a most enjoyable few days together - apart from our host - hope you're better soon!
 The smog, laden with dust from the Sahara, might have been the prompt to finish the book?
Must find out about the copyright laws relating to 18th Century art work - 'Am I not a man and a brother?' It would make a great cover picture.

All in a week's work!

Honestly, we really do more than sit around chatting to our friends and eating delicious Gambian food. Sometimes we really are quite busy! But yes, we do sit around and chat! The art of conversation is alive and well and living in The Gambia. Everybody has a turn to speak and it's rare to be interrupted. I love this country; the eagerness for education, the kindness to strangers, the politeness of children and the gentle sense of humour.

 I'll deal with the work GOES did on this visit but for now I'm just enjoying memories and wishing I was back in the sunshine.

P.S. If you're waiting for a text from me I had better tell you I've lost my 'phone. Hope to find it soon ...

Best wishes, and thanks to all my friends for their help.

Tom

We're back!

Returned to UK about 06.00hrs. Just woken up. Reports later, but it all went well. I think ...

Free Ebooks!

The entire Malinding series - all 4 of them - Empty Bananas/Mussukunda/The Mechanical Girl and The Alkalo are on Kindle Books (Amazon) for 5 days on free offer. Stories for Gambian Children is there too. If you're familiar with The Gambia, or thinking of taking a holiday there they might be just the books you're looking for. Happy reading!
Tom

Fundraising - what we've tried so far ...

We have tried sponsored cycle-rides, writing books (five so far - Google 'Malinding'), and selling things on Ebay ( a hat-sizer, a very small locomotive, a 40 year-old Seagull outboard, two scooters, a bike, a boat and an unidentified navigation device, to name a few.) We use Easyfundraising as a search engine, which pays GOES 0.5p per search - it all mounts up. We beg for donations and old reading glasses and new medical supplies: I think people run away when they see us approaching

Words make money - I hope!

I spent another pleasant day at Gladstone's Library in Hawarden, near Chester, yesterday. It's a wonderful resource for writers: desks to work at, food to eat (the cakes are tasty) and even beds to sleep in if you want to stay overnight!
As darkness fell I drove home with 2000 new words added to the latest book in the Malinding series. Just 20,000 more to go! This will be the fifth (and possibly the last) book in the story of life in a Gambian village, seen through the eyes of a mixed-race family. Malinding village exists only in my mind, as do the characters who inhabit it, and who travel between there and the North West of England.
The books are for sale on Amazon for Kindle readers. All money from the sales go directly into the GOES Co-op Bank account, and from there to help the humanitarian work of that charity in The Gambia. Much of the work of the charity which has been described in this blog has been funded, at least in part, by these works of fiction. So, imaginary people help real-world men, women and children: fiction becomes fact.
Back to cake - no! I meant back to work!
Tom

When do we say 'Good-bye' ?

Been thinking (yes, I know it's dangerous!) about how and when we cease to work with GOES. The charity is, in a sense, our baby - we conceived the idea, cherished it, watched it grow, became quite proud of its achievements ... and then we grew old and it became hard work!
 We have to accept that at some time we will be physically unable to travel out to The Gambia a couple of times a year, and I feel that now is the time for us to decide what to do! Our main concern is the future of the many children we support - and the living conditions of their parents. Only this week we have heard of the deaths of a very young child and of the father of a young woman whose education we sponsored. These people have become part of our extended family and their lives are interwoven with ours. I don't know the answer; I do know we must try to find it. Sometimes being 77 is great; sometimes it's not!
Tom

Thinking about another free promotion for two of the 'Malinding' books ...

The first of the books, 'Empty Bananas', and the third, 'The Mechanical Girl' could be put on Amazon's Kindle ebooks free offer again. I thinking about what to do.
'Empty Bananas' was the book that started it all off. The first chapter, about an unhappy little girl, was a short story I wrote many years ago. I read it to my local writing group - Vale Royal Writers' Group - and put it back in the drawer. I kept thinking about the old man in the story and he grew into Ed, the anti-hero of the first book. I was concerned about the little girl, and she became Jodie, a world class wheelchair athlete.
I wrote the book and decided to publish it on Kindle. I was so keen to put it on sale that I published the wrong version; it contained all sorts of mistakes, and made a generally poor impression. Col gave it a very fair write-up and I was encouraged to wrestle with the technology and publish a better-edited version.

I wrote 'The Mechanical Girl' as a fictional autobiography of a youngster in one of the villages who enjoyed making toys out of scrap materials for the smaller children. She showed great ingenuity, making tools to help her in her task. I gave her a different name and wrote a fictional account of what her life might have been. She is the only one of my characters based on an actual West African. All of my other characters, and the village of Malinding itself, are pure fiction.

Right then; decision made. I'll put 'Empty Bananas' on free promotion, some time next week. Probably. I'll let you know! It won't bring any money to the charity (GOES, in case you'd forgotten) but it might encourage the sale of the other books ... hint, hint!