Gambia Books

The World and a Very Small Place in Africa: A History of Globalization in Niumi, the Gambia (Sources and Studies in World History)

Donald R. Wright

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Not just about Africa 5 out of 5 stars.
10 of 10 people found this review helpful.

This is the most important book I have ever read about Africa and the global economy. I read Mr. Wright's first edition and was in contact with him as he wrote his second. He used a unique archive of audiotapes of oral history, which is maintained in the Gambia. He also conducted personal research on his several trips to The Gambia.

When I was posted there, I visited the oral history project which has transferred thousands of oral histories from magnetic tape to CDs and which has transcribed and translated these oral histories. Donald Wright makes a very convincing case to counteract our bias for written records. He points out that the written records of the colonial powers were biased to make the colonial powers look good at the expense of the local populations. Using oral histories, especially in Africa, is a very valid and useful tool in historical research. What Donald Wright also shows was that African society and culture was well developed and self-sustaining. Africa was not the backward and helpless place we like to think it was. What distressed me most is that most African-Americans share the common preception that Africa was a backward coninent, when that is far from the truth. It is my wish that every American, especially every African-American read this book.

The nation of Numi (which is now part of The Gambia and Senegal) was proud and completely self sufficient, mostly through its own agriculture. Its trading relations served only to provide luxuries that people desired, but not what they required. With European expansion, Numi became dependent on European traders for staple food supplies while supplying peanuts to European buyers, with prices set in Europe -- i.e., the global model of trade we have now. The new European trading model differed greatly from the previously used Islamic/African/Asian trading model, with its ban on interest which left trading partners on a far more equal footing. Numi moved from being at the center of its own universe to becoming a forgotten place on the distant margins of a universe that has been constructed to serve the interests and wealth of Europe, North America, Japan and other big players. Donald Wright lays out the facts without emotion, but the reader cannot help but get emotional. Wright's description of the slave trade is a case in point. Wright does not go down the path to describe, in detail, the horrors of the slave trade. He outlines, rather, the need for regional African powers to have horses to dominate their neighbors. He went on to describe how horses could not be bred in tropical Africa, so they were traded for slaves at 15 slaves per horse. Wright's account of this terrible enterprise, which held human life so cheaply, struck me with greater force than other more detailed descriptions of the personal sufferings in this horrible trade in people. This is a must-read book. Donald Wright is a gifted writer who keeps your interest and pulls you from page to page. By the end of the book your ideas and view of the world will have changed. Mine did.

Editorial Review:

Focusing on Niumi, a small settlement at the mouth of the Gambia River in West Africa, Donald Wright provides a fascinating insight into the effects of globalization on a small African country, and places these events into deep historica context. Combining his own personal experiences with on-site historical research, Wright shows how rapidly changes are taking place even on a distant edge of the world economy. This new revised edition places greater emphasis on Niumi's relations with world systems and the steady change its residents have experienced as part of this process. Written in clear, accessible prose, and drawing on archival and oral traditions, The World and a Very Small Place in Africa connects world history with real people on a local level.

The Rough Guide to The Gambia 1 (Rough Guide Travel Guides)

ROUGH GUIDES

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Editorial Review:

"The Rough Guide to the Gambia" should prove a useful companion for a visit to Africa's most accessible country. Detailed maps and plans are complemented by expert and upbeat guidance on the beaches, villages and music, the mangrove creeks and the Gambia River itself. There are first-hand reviews of pretty much every accommodation, restaurant and bar option in the country, both on and off the beaten track and for everyone from shoestring travellers to luxury tourers. The guide is also full of trademark candid insights into Gambian history, politics, music, language and culture.

Le Kajoor au XIXe siecle: Pouvoir ceddo et conquete coloniale (Collection "Hommes et societes")

Mamadou Diouf

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Performing Africa

Paulla A. Ebron

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Subjects -> Entertainment -> Music -> Musical Genres -> Ethnic & International -> Ethnomusicology
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Editorial Review:

The jali--a member of a hereditary group of Mandinka professional performers--is a charismatic but contradictory figure. He is at once the repository of his people's history, the voice of contemporary political authority, the inspiration for African American dreams of an African homeland, and the chief entertainment for the burgeoning transnational tourist industry. Numerous journalists, scholars, politicians, and culture aficionados have tried to pin him down. This book shows how the jali's talents at performance make him a genius at representation--the ideal figure to tell us about the "Africa" that the world imagines, which is always a thing of illusion, magic, and contradiction.

Africa often enters the global imagination through news accounts of ethnic war, famine, and despotic political regimes. Those interested in countering such dystopic images--be they cultural nationalists in the African diaspora or connoisseurs of "global culture"--often found their representations of an emancipatory Africa on an enthusiasm for West African popular culture and performance arts. Based on extensive field research in The Gambia and focusing on the figure of the jali, Performing Africa interrogates these representations together with their cultural and political implications. It explores how Africa is produced, circulated, and consumed through performance and how encounters through performance create the place of Africa in the world. Innovative and discerning, Performing Africa is a provocative contribution to debates over cultural nationalism and the construction of identity and history in Africa and elsewhere.

Our Grandmothers' Drums: A Portrait of Rural African Life & Culture

Mark Hudson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

fascinating and funny 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

If you ever go to Gambia, this is the book to get, together of course with the ubiquitous Lonely Planet. Hudson, a young adventurer, spent 14 months in a Mandingko village, observing and commenting on the daily life. Amazingly, he was allowed to join one of the women's societies... so he followed them around, participated in their dances, field work and intrigues and documented this stuff in OGD. Hudson shows that African women are, although destined to a life of hard work, circumcission & mostly unhappy arranged marriages, far from helpless creatures. They are economically independent, they are free to choose their lovers, they sing and they dance:

"It was in the early hours of the morning before the dancing began in earnest, the figures of the women glowing as though golden in the light of the hurricane-lamp, as they came running towards the drummers, spinning around only at the last moment to dance. This was what they liked more than anything elese - the extremity of this total bodily exertion, this fervent, almost ecstatic unleashment of energy, in which every muscle, every last atom of their energy would be used. It was as though the rhythms of the drums..[...]... were touching something actually inside the women themselves, to which their frenetic shaking was an involuntary, though wholly pleasurable response. They called it dia - sweetness."

"Hear the sound of these drums!
Our own drums!
Here the sound of these drums!
Our grandmothers' drums!"

Hudson shows that African life can be strange beyond our imagining. The pragmatic and relaxed attitudes towards the body and sexual activity; the separatedness of women and men, who get together pretty much just for sex; the ancient initiation formulas and rites, the pragmatic interpretation of the Muslim religion mixed with animism and, above all, the aliveness of these people get through in this book really well. These Mandingko use their bodies for pleasure in a way which makes Westerners look like hollow emaciated specters lost in our greedy little calculating minds. There is much fun in African lives and much sadness - sadness that we have forgotten about.

We need to learn from Africans about how to inhabit our bodies and about how to live in the present moment and this book gives us first hand information on these topics. Highly recommended.

Encounters in West Africa

Hossein Kamali

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Editorial Review:

Encounters in West Africa is perhaps unique in its kind, informative, critical and at the same time entertaining. It gives an overview of West African history, the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the Amistad Revolt. It refers to major events since the European colonialism; aspects of cultural heritage and traditional beliefs in sorcery and witchcraft, secret societies, initiation and wedding ceremonies and the status of African women.
The author explains how slavery fueled the engine of western economies through draining African wealth and human resources and addresses the critical question "Why Africa endowed with rich resources remains the world's poorest region in the twenty-first century!" In response, while recognizing the internal political conditions and social instability as the major constraints, he blames the West and the United States in particular for ignoring Africa despite giving much attention to some other territories. He then draws attention to the pressing issues facing Africa and the challenging role of the international community and Western media for a change of policy. The author believes that education should be given first priority in any donors' assistance package to Africa which should include health care education and sharing knowledge and technology transfer with effective community involvement.
The author's aim is to enrich the awareness of the reader about the potential resources, rich heritage and traditional values of Africa with the hope to promote international partnership with the continent.
The last parts of the book cover the author's interesting memoirs, some advice to visitors before travelling to the region and references to institutions and NGOs affiliated with West Africa.

Migrants, Credit And Climate: The Gambian Groundnut Trade, 1834-1934 (African Social Studies Series) (African Social Studies Series)

Kenneth Swindell, Alieu Jeng

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Editorial Review:

Only the second volume dedicated to Dante and the Franciscans, this collection of essays offers a Franciscan reading of the "Divine Comedy". Nine of the ten essays address how "Dante's Comedy" and his "Vita Nuova" were influenced by Franciscan spirituality; the tenth essay addresses the influence that "Dante's Comedy" had on the preaching of the Franciscan Order. More specifically, the essays in this volume are truly interdisciplinary and contribute to the understanding of how Dante understood and employed Franciscan sources in his literary production and how Bernardino of Siena integrated Dante's work in his preaching.

Historical Dictionary of the Gambia

Gailey Harry A.

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Editorial Review:

Like its two predecessors, this edition looks at The Gambia's history from precolonial times to the present. It includes entries on significant persons, places and events, institutions and parties, and various political, economic and social aspects. It provides a longer chronology, a more probing introduction, and expanded and additional entries. An extended bibliography takes into account new scholarship and publications.

The Gambia Colony and Protectorate: An Official Handbook (Library of African Study)

Frances Archer

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Editorial Review:

Comprises a broad history of the Gambia, followed by extensive practical and statistical information. First published in 1906, it remains a source of historical data and interest.