Abdou´s life in The Gambia

Abdou´s life in The Gambia

Background Story:

30 years old Abdou is the oldest of a family of four brothers, Sanna, Idressa, Ibrahim, Karamou and his 14 years old sister Fatou. His father passed away of cancer in 2005 and he also  lost his two older brothers. One in a work accident and the other who unfortunately drowned while trying to reach Europe in the hope to find work to support the family. Since then Abdou took on the responsibility for his family including his widowed mother, Sunkary Manjang.

 Abdou is also a pre-school teacher at one of the local pre-school, near his village of Freetown, in The Gunjur region of The Gambia. 

Abdou´s  Salary as a pre school teacher is extremely low since local schools also struggles to find funding to keep running. The young man earns a monthly salary of 2500 Gambian Dalasi which is an equivalent of about 50 euros.  For the price of 1100 dalasi (22 euros) for one bag of 50 kg of rice,  Abdou buys 2 bags of 100 kg for the cost of 2200 dalasi (45 euros) to last through the month for his family. This leaves him only with 300 dalasi ( 6 euros) which he splits between his sister and brothers for the daily lunch at school or other things they may need. The young teacher is left with having to make best with the free resources that are available to him and to try to sell wood on the weekends for extra money.

Abdou and his brothers have also hand built a house made out of blocks composed of compact soil and water. Every summer, during the raining season the house has major water damage and every fall he has to rebuilt the walls. His brothers and sister don’t even have a bed and sleep on dirt floors. Not being able to afford cement so the house stays stable during the raining season creates a lot of worries for the family. Every year, when the raining season comes, his mother gets severely ill and the family has to constantly rebuilt part of the house so it doesn't fall apart.

How will these funds be used to help the family?

Thank you for those who have donated on my previous gofund page (behindthephotos) a couple for years back. For the past two years, my mother, sister and I have been sending Abdou monthly financial support to contribute towards food, the education of his little sister Fatou and other basic needs of the Manjang family. In October 2017, We have also donated six months of complementary salary for the 5 pre-school teachers at the school Abdou used to work at, Freetown pre-school (Abdou recently changed schools and works at another one right outside the village).  Your donations were a great help and contributed towards all of this.

Our second step is to build a safe, stable and sanitary home for the family. We have already started buying cement and more than 300 blocks were made to start the foundation of the house. This would not only benefit the family but also part of their community. Ideally, the goal would be to bring a water pump on their property so the community including children of the village could have access and share clean water.

On our last trip in October  2017, we have asked how much the coast of a full house and water pump would be and a contractor give us an estimate of about 13,000 euros. We are aware that this is a long stretch but we are looking to make this happen in the long term and it may take some years before doing so. Any contribution on this new page will contribute towards saving to make them a house and water pump
for the village in the future.

Please check out the short documentary film above I have made about Abdou´s life in The Gambia.  This will better inform you and to understand the living circumstances of Abdou and his family and the challenges they face daily.

Thank you for your time, bering receptive and your potential donation. Any donation is of great help however small it is.

To learn more in depth details about Abdou and his family, you can check my past photo and written stories on Medium:

Abdou´s life in The New Gambia- Part 1
https://medium.com/@clementmartz/abdou-s-life-in-the-new-gambia-e4a0eff1a43d

Abdou´s life in The New Gambia part 2
https://medium.com/@clementmartz/while-driving-from-freetown-village-to-attend-the-sunday-morning-christian-mass-in-a-country-thats-4de6e58fcd16