Tower and Town, September 2019

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TTV: David Poole

In December of 2017 the TTV group had some preliminary meetings - letting all us teenagers get to know each other, as well as starting to map out exactly what everyone's role would be within their projects (writing life stories, learning the art and skills of photography and exploring the barriers to the export / import of mangoes from The Gambia to UK). I was nervous to say the least. (TTV's mission is helping young people with teen anxieties).

The first few sessions we had were awkward, some people tended to stick with people they already knew. But after splitting up into our subsections (I was part of the writing group) we all just got closer and closer.

While the photography group were learning how to shoot portraits, all of us got to hear more about the Mango Project's ideas and progression. We regularly discussed difficulties and advantages in processing and providing the fruit to sellers (whether through import or export) - visiting Tesco’s Tangmere Pepper Farm to try and gain knowledge of the production process.

My project was interviewing people at home and in Gunjur, finding out about their lives and how they interlink with each other or differentiate - all through the medium of writing. Again it was a very nerve-wracking experience as I'd never actively interviewed people before. Saying this I met some amazing elderly people. In England, Andrew and John (John particularly was an incredibly smart and inspiring man), and in The Gambia, Fa Karamo, the lovely old man who used to be a photographer... the only one for miles around at the time, and Nyamsimba - an interesting woman due to her active involvement in Female Genital Mutilation within the country. Talking to these elderly people and young people within the Gambian community of Gunjur, I got a sense of the importance that family and the elders held in their village. You live with your parents as well as your children and greatly respect those older than you. Such a contrast to the UK!

Something about the Gambian experience opened something up within my writing. While in England I'd struggled for weeks just over the opening lines of my work. In Gunjur I could power through my pieces in a matter of days, from first draft to the final piece. It's easier to 'capture lives' out there as well, when everybody you meet is so intensely alive. Strangers greet you and smile at every turn, whereas in England the depressed people of London's tubes and streets seem to blur into some dystopian isolated future. The difference in Gunjur was clear, the happiness that emanated from people was integral to their lives. To understand someone, you don't have to map out their entire life, from child to adult to elder, just choose the best bits, the parts that have real meaning within them.

My partner while in The Gambia was an amazing man called Binako. With many of his friends taking the 'back-way' to Europe, he had many life struggles - but he still maintained such a positive life view. We learnt more and more about each other over my two weeks, I even got to meet his family and friends in their shared "compound" and have a meal with them, and had great conversations about false (or sometimes true) opinions and stereotypes that both England and the Gambia would have about each other.

David Poole