When, in the third year of my teaching degree, the opportunity arose to teach in a nursery school in The Gambia, West Africa, I knew I wanted to go. An English couple from Cheshire, Glynn and Ian Jones, had sponsored a nursery school in a village called Mandinari, near Lamin, allowing a much larger building to be erected.

They were now looking for student teachers to help the staff at the school. It was a voluntary post, and expenses were to be paid by the students themselves, but I, and three other student teachers from Bradford College, volunteered. We wrote countless letters to companies asking for donations, and held charity sales, to cover our expenses and buy medical and specialist equipment. There were also vaccinations to have, and a series of meetings with Glynn and Ian to prime us on what to expect when we arrived.

Finally, on 19th April 2000 we disembarked at Banjul Airport, The Gambia, and from there to Mandinari, where our hosts had prepared the warmest possible welcome. Our bags were whisked away, and children grabbed our hands, and led us to the mud houses they had prepared for us. The villagers had worked hard to make the accommodation as ‘European’ as possible: they had bought bed cloths for the straw beds and tin chests to lock valuables in, there were oil lamps for the evenings, and they had even built a toilet seat to put over the hole which was our toilet.

The school building had been completed just before our arrival, and the tables and chairs were not yet ready. The 100 pupils were poised precariously on planks of wood resting on breezeblocks. The walls were bare, the blackboards needed painting and there was not a teaching resource in sight. But watching the children obediently repeating their exercises – like a different era in British schools – made us all keen to begin teaching.

The women and children spoke little or no English, though some of the men spoke English very well. We, of course, knew not one word of the six tribal languages spoken in this one village. It was in these first few days that we realised just how difficult the task was going to be, teaching English to these children, some of whom had never even seen a white person before, or heard English spoken. We taught in pairs, and gradually the children became less timid, and even began to enjoy the lessons – Gambian classrooms enforce strict discipline, an approach which does not encourage a sense of fun.

English is the official language of the Gambia, and the importance of acquiring it as a means of communicating with the wider world is strongly emphasized throughout the Gambian education system. All teaching is carried out in English. So, from the age of seven children are immersed into a solely English-speaking environment. Our approach attempted to be perhaps more multicultural: we tried to learn a little of the Mandinka language, and to integrate this into our lessons.

The enthusiastic spirit of the Gambian staff and pupils meant that no one was deterred by the communication barrier and lack of resources. With a few story books, a bit of cardboard, the help of the children and one of the teachers acting as a translator we managed to provide some very entertaining lessons. We worked closely with the idea that an additional language is learned and more importantly, understood more comprehensively, if the learner is able to use a visual matching process. So, using the children as our main resource we introduced masks, puppets and other props along with reading the story in both languages. In a country that teaches in a very formal and strict manner, it was wonderful to see the children acting out the stories themselves with smiles on their faces, taking such a genuine delight in learning.

When the time came to leave our Gambian family and friends behind there were tears all round. But, there remained an air of gratefulness and happiness with the locals that this venture had taken place in their village. I would gladly return to this wonderful country of sincere, generous-hearted people. It was a pleasure and an honour to teach children who so obviously enjoyed learning, in a community that respected the gift of education.

Jodie Pashley

Jodie Pashley is a 4th year QTS Language and Literature student at Bradford College

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