Mini Mulai

Yesterday evening, Sunday 14th November, something very Gambian occurred. Mulai, our landlord, knocked at our door to introduce us to a new family member and so it was that we first met Mulai Junior. a small boy, perhaps 6 or 7 looking completely overwhelmed. As you read on I urge you not to judge, after 10 months here I am just beginning to scratch the surface of the complexities that make up Gambian culture and if I have learned one thing it is – do not judge what you don’t understand.



Mulai (junior) comes from a village called Tabanani, some 10k over on the southern mainland. It is a poor, rural community completely dependent on subsistence farming as a means of eeking out a living. It seems the Mulau Junior’s family have been supported by Mulai Senior for some time, I don’t know how this first happened or why, I don’t think they are blood relatives. Anyway it transpires that MJ’s parents have decided to go to the coast to try and make a better living and so it was that MJ was “given” to Mulai Senior. I use the word “given” as that it is how it was explained to us. So, on a Sunday afternoon a small boy and his few belongings were delivered to Darboe Kunda where he will live as a family member for the foreseeable future. And that is that – he is immediately one of the family and at once is included in all activities around the compound.


And so back to our first meeting, Mulai and Mulai enter so that the little one can meet the toubabs. The boy looks in shock, left with a new family he now has to greet white people who he will hardly have seen before. With no English he looks nervous and unsure, and who can blame him? We offer him a glass of orange juice and he sips not seeming sure how to even drink in our presence. I just wanted to pick him up and hug him but I think that might have been the final straw for the lad so I refrained. Introductions complete he left, no doubt relieved that the encounter was over.


MJ’s future is actually quite bright. Whilst living with Mulai Senior he will go to school, learn English and be generally well looked after and cared for. Furthermore the continuous stream of volunteers who Mulai rents his house too will, no doubt, make sure his future is well provided for. Having said all of this, and having cautioned against judging, it’s hard not to wonder how the boy must be feeling. One can only try to imagine. And his parents – what must they be going through and what does it say about their plight that they are reduced to this. I could go on and on because I think the whole episode reveals much about the society and community that has come to be our home; I can only sympathise and admire them all at the same time.


Footnote: Mulai Junior was very cheery this morning and we spied him playing with our motorbikes and trying on our crash helmets, just what a little boy should be doing when he thinks no one is looking.