Salikenni

Salikenni is a village of narrow, sandy lanes and houses of cement block or mud brick with roofs of rusty corrugated metal, all huddled close together on a broad, undulating plain in a small country called The Gambia in West Africa.

The people in the village are almost all Mandinka, and they still greet each other in the ancient way.

• "Where are your people?" - meaning how are they.
• "They are there." - meaning they are well.
• "Where is your husband?"
• "He is there."

Even in the most casual meetings, as when two people pass on a lane, the greetings go back and forth and on and on until each has asked about the children and grandparents and uncles and aunts and maybe cousins in the other's family.

From about November through May it never rains. The surrounding plain is brown, and the air is often laden with blowing dust. But when the rains come in June, the land becomes green and beautiful. Men and boys go out then and cultivate peanuts, the village's main cash crop. The women and girls go to wetter ground, closer to the winding Gambia River, to grow rice, the village's staple food.

Abdoulie Samateh began working in the peanut fields when he was five. His job then was to carry lunch, a basin of rice with a peanut sauce, out to his father and older brothers. When he was bigger, he would follow behind the iron cultivator, pulled by a bull, as it weeded the rows. Bending low and holding a small, hand-held hoe, he would scratch out the weeds the cultivator missed.

Abdoulie is 20 now, and he's about to graduate from high school. He's in grade 12 this year at the St. Augustine Senior Secondary School in Banjul, the capital city. Since grade 7 his tuition, books and other costs have been paid for by the Salikenni Scholarship Fund. He is one of our best students. Next year we hope to raise the money to send him to either the University of The Gambia or to one of several business related schools in the country.

Abdoulie's younger sister, Maimuna, is also one of our students. She was about to drop out of school after 6th grade because the family could not afford to pay the higher fees for middle school. She, too, has become a good student and is in grade 10 this year. Without the Fund's assistance it is unlikely that either Maimuna or Abdoulie would be in school now.