The story of Eleman Bah

In January 2021 on my Facebook Page, I found this delightful and unexpected message from a young man called Eleman Bah, whom I have not seen since 1987.

Hello Robin,

I am not 100% sure, if you are the Robin that I know, but as I read in your CV you were in The Gambia as Director of Actionaid in the early 80s. My name is Eleman Bah from Kerewan Samba Sira in Gambia and you came on a visit to the primary school there in 1983 or 1984. We, the children, were standing in a queue waiting to take a penfriend picture. And then you saw me - with serious eye problems. My salvation!!!! You picked me out of the line and helped me to get the necessary eye operation.

You took me with you to your house in Bakau, where I met your children Edward and Catherine and your wife Michelle. You treated me like your own son. I never forgot in all these years what you did for me and I never will! I am so grateful for your help in those days and I am happy that I found you on Facebook. So if you're THE Robin Poulton let me say thank you very much for saving my life and giving me the opportunity for a better future.

Best Regards from the Gambia

Yours

Eleman

Of course I responded at once. I had gone to the village of Kerewan Samba Sira to take photographs of school children. I was Director of ActionAid The Gambia (AATG) and the funding for our community schools and women’s agriculture and village income-generating projects and came from sponsorships: generous donors in Britain – and in Northern Ireland especially – agreed to support a child’s education by paying a sum of money every month. In exchange, they received reports about our programs, and two or three letters and drawings from ‘their’ sponsored child. If you ask an African child to come for a photo, (s)he will stand to attention with an expression of terror on their faces.

When I took over leadership of the organization, our photos were dreadfully unappealing. So I became the photographer. Every child had to hold a watering can, which is a good symbol of ‘development’ and requires two hands: their bodies immediately looked more interesting, and the watering can encouraged smiles. I had snapped 50-odd children with their watering can. The very last in the queue was Eleman Bah. I found myself staring at an unhappy kid with inflamed eyes and outward-twisted lower eyelids. He was clearly suffering and it took me about 30 seconds to decide I must take this boy to the eye clinic in the capital city of Banjul. So I took the hand of Eleman Bah, and had myself led to his mother’s house.

My education specialist for the West of the country was Rex Bojang, who explained that The Director wanted to kidnap her son (no, that was a joke) and take him to have his eyes fixed. Permission was given, and within 10 minutes the poor little boy found himself in a motor vehicle speeding towards the coast. Eleman – of course – had never seen the ocean, which crashed against cliffs below our house, and rolled onto the beach less than 200 yards away.

He had probably never seen a White Man, and he had certainly never met any European children. That night he found himself in a bunk bed, sharing a room with my son Edward who was eight years old. Eleman must have been nine or ten. But children are flexible, and Ele soon adapted to the new family – with my wife Michelle and daughter Catherine Leila – and the house with its flush toilets, running water and shower, and the tree house in which Ele and Edward spent a lot of their playtime. Eleman sent me a picture: I was probably the photographer, but my copies were lost long ago.

The next day, I took Eleman to the eye clinic in Banjul. The physical defect of a lower eyelid that rolls outwards is known in the medical profession as ectropion. It is easily corrected with a minor surgical intervention, and three days later Ele was walking around with large patches over his eyes. The treatment – repeated dressings until the eyes were cured – probably lasted ten days, after which Eleman went back to his mother and to the ActionAid school he was attending.

We were educating something like 9000 children in the schools we were running or supporting: we provided materials to a number of Gambian government schools, while ourselves running 49 community schools. Ours was a community development project, of which education was an important part. But just as important as the actual schooling (in our ActionAid philosophy) was the fact that the schools were built by the parents under our professional supervision, and parents had a role in the teaching and supervision of their school …. as well as running their own vegetable gardens, their honey-producing cooperatives, etc. with ActionAid technical and financial support. We provided credit to thousands of women in something like 150 villages from one end of The Gambia to the other.

Among the 9000 school children, naturally Eleman had a special place and I would stop off in his village specifically to check on his progress until I left The Gambia at the end of 1987 after nearly 5 years as Director. And of course, we lost touch. Here is the miracle of Facebook. Eleman tells me that he is married with two children: a boy and a girl called Malick aged 9, and Salimatou aged 6. They are now my honorary grandchildren!

He has been quite an explorer. “After finishing my secondary school in Bansang and working for the water company I came on a visit to see my brother in Germany in 1997 where I met my wife in 1998. We got married in 1999 in Gambia. We lived in Frankfurt until 2013. I worked at the Museum of Worldculture and from 2006 at the international airport Frankfurt. In all these years we were building a house here in the Gambia because we were always dreaming of living here. What we could realize. In Juli 2013 we both went back to Gambia for good.”

Ele now runs a civil society organization called Organisation for the Advancement of Women and Children the Gambia which he runs together with his German wife Vera Schmitz. They have financial support from Germany, and benefit from fundraising through the Sportverein in the town of Gerolstein, which has just celebrated its centenary.

The next photo shows progress in their building renovation in The Gambia, where the health center has fallen into disrepair. Living quarters and a community center are being built, together with a Maternal and Child Health Center for the village of Kerewan Samba Sira and surrounding communities.

When I was running AATG in the 1980s, I was often asked whether our work was successful. I used to reply that we were providing education to children, improving nutrition levels, and helping their mothers increase their incomes …. Which are all ‘good’ things to do. Women who generate incomes gain in prestige; they obtain increasing status and are better able to take their own decisions. This benefits their community. For all of this, I was able to provide data. Our semi-annual reports written by my team of Gambian specialists, were famous for their rigour in monitoring and analysing our results, and for the way we presented our programme.

“However,” I used to finish my answer, “The real impact of our work will be measured in 25 or 30 years time. That is when we will be able to know how successful our education has been, and whether our villages cope better with modern life than the communities where we are not working. ActionAid is training a new generation of Gambian leaders: if they are leading community associations and NGOs in 30 years time, I will know that we have had some success.”

So you can well imagine that reading the Eleman Bah story brought me real pleasure. Perhaps we had some success! Ele is only one person, of course; but here is the story of one young man whose education led him to create a community association that is improving the lives of women and children in The Gambia. Eleman is leading Gambia’s development. ‘Development’ is a never-ending process, like children growing up. Every year, new children are born who need protection and education while they grow. Young mothers also need protection and support. How delightful it is to see that Eleman and Vera have taken over this mentoring work. They are the next generation of West African leaders, and I am proud to have had a small part in their story.