The other evening I went to the ‘Point Bar’ a short stretch up the Banjul highway from where I live in Latrikunda. I had finished some work on a School Management Manual I am involved in writing and decided to go and find some European Champions League football to watch. (At this point I recall an email from an anonymous friend, let us call her ‘Jane Willis’ who told me ‘Great blog; I enjoy everything except the stuff about football’, so my apologies to you ‘Jane’).
I found that the Point Bar were showing Liverpool’s match at Porto, and I arrived midway through the first half. I am a little uncertain about this bar and have only been there a couple of times. The Gambia is incontrovertibly a Muslim country and therefore bars that sell beer are not exactly commonplace (except in tourist areas). So I have wondered what kind of people go to this bar, and what kind of reputation I will attract when seen there…so I have not visited often. Nonetheless the clientele seem very friendly, just like almost everyone else in The Gambia, so perhaps it is fine. The fact that we are just a few days into Ramadan did not appear to make much difference; a number of customers were in the bar, sat at tables and watching the football. I arrived midway through the first half and enjoyed what I could hear of the commentary over the deafening noise of Senegalese drumming playing on the stereo in the same room.
At half-time GRTS (Gambia Radio and Television Station) broke away from their European feed and announced that they would now broadcast a reading from the Qur’an (with simultaneous translation into English) followed by a Ramadan quiz. GRTS provides a good service to this tiny country, but it can resemble hospital radio, or watching the most painful clips from TV Bloopers shows. For this reading from the Qur’an, two women (that was a surprise give that men occupy nearly all positions of responsibility in Islam) sat at a glass table in front of a picture of the Haram in Mecca. Both were wearing full Hijab, one pink and one black.
The first woman chanted from the Qur’an and the other gave a translation (second surprise, as I understood that the text of the Holy Qur’an is only to be read and heard in Arabic, and is not to be translated. This has a large impact on education here; the majority of teaching is delivered in English (probably the third language of most children) but they also have Islamic and Arabic (fourth language) studies too (unless they attend a Madrassa Islamic school, in which case the emphasis is the other way round). Parents feel pretty strongly about children receiving this component of their education – one of the most common reasons given for keeping pupils at home is when a school does not have an Arabic/Islamic teacher. I don’t recall too many parents at Beauchamps High School complaining because insufficient priority was given to RE.)
The reading was going well (although I could not hear much due to the stereo thumping behind my head) except that the woman in pink kept fidgeting and making shifty sideways glances. It was as if someone off camera was pulling faces at her. The camera wobbled from time to time, and the picture behind them rocked slightly, giving the impression that this programme was being broadcast from a boat. The second woman was not to be thrown off-track and pressed on conscientiously until suddenly she disappeared mid-sentence and we returned to Portugal just in time for kick-off. We never did get our Ramadan quiz.
During the second half the colours suddenly went funny. In a trice Liverpool players were dressed in blue instead of red, and the blue and white of Porto became gold and claret stripes. Liverpool v Porto instantly became Everton v Bradford City. The grass turned a pleasing shade of lilac, and the ball and pitch markings were deep purple. The dark ball appeared to glide across the paler surface; it was reminiscent of one of those games in the snow with an orange ball, when you can never tell if the ball is on the ground or in the air. It certainly brightened up a dreary second half. Then at 88 minutes it went off completely and I still don’t know the final score. Never mind, it’s not about knowing the result, it’s just about taking part. Anyhow, there will always be another game and another venue to watch it in, and with any luck it will be as entertaining as this one.
