Abdou ended up in Europe the hard way, and not by choice. While escaping the former dictator of The Gambia, over the course of 6 years, he survived the deadly Sahara desert, from kidnappings and forced labor and dodging terrorist insurgencies to nearly dying in the Mediterranean Sea – only to make it to Europe to bounce from country to country and from prison to the streets in search of asylum.
But Abdou endured. He never gave up. He studied and worked as many under-the-table jobs as he could. He organized with other African immigrants. And against all seeming odds, as Vice President of Sidicato de Manteros de Madrid, as a restaurant chef and a commercial model, and as an associate producer in Tactical Aesthetics, he finally got his Spanish residency papers this February and we flew from Spain to The Gambia to surprise his son Mame Touray.
Well known for his anti-corruption lyrics, Ali Cham has been persecuted for his music, helped to bring down a dictator with his song “Boka C Geta G”, and he continues to inspire the youth to build a better Gambia.
On March 15th, 2018, Spanish police chased an undocumented immigrant named Mame Mbaye from the tourist-heavy Puerta del Sol in Madrid’s city center down several blocks to Lavapies, the immigrant neighborhood. While being pursued by these police officers, Mbaye had a heart attack and died in the open street. The scene of yet another young black man killed on the heels of the police deeply affected locals and led to a week-long social upheaval.
Formerly called James Island and St Andrew’s Island, Kunta Kinteh Island presents a testimony to the main periods and facets of the encounter between Africa and Europe along the River Gambia, a continuum stretching from pre-colonial and pre-slavery times to independence. The site is particularly significant for its relation to the beginning of the slave trade and its abolition. It also documents early access to the interior of Africa.
Kerr Ndongo opened their community to us and Kerr Ndongo is one of our new homes. Here we plan to build a solar-powered shipping container clinic for women and children to facilitate childbirth, prevent malaria, and now the novel corona virus. This will be our first location to test our pilot project for a “clinic-in-a-box”. Clinics-in-Boxes are prefabricated shipping containers that unfold into fully equipped solar-powered pop-up clinics with medication, sanitary medical supplies, and the interior designed for urgent clinical care for remote communities located far away from medical facilities.