Here I sit with the men of Ballen, a Jola village along the south bank of the River Gambia near the Senegalese Casamance border. This is Ismaila Bojang’s home village and he made this photo. He was my favorite worker in Fajara and my interpreter on this prayer walking trip. See “The Miracle Leaf Story” for a report on that Prayer Walk. And on the Gambia Missionary page find all the stories I have from 3 years in The Gambia and of course this website has my Life StoriesPage motivated by a 2013 Writer’s Guild experience.
In every village there is a tree like this with benches where people gather to tell stories and take care of village business. Thus it is my symbol for Gambia Stories. They call it “The Bantaba” which is the Mandinka word used or understood by every tribe in The Gambia. Here is the first paragraph of one interesting definition of the Bantaba:
Me dancing in The Gambia
West African dance revolves around notion the “Circle of the Bantaba,” literally interpreted as “The Dancing Ground” – among the Mandinka of West Africa. The Bantaba is a place where community, affirmation, confirmation of self purpose is initiated – a spiritual circle around which the community revolves.
~Web Source of quote on plexus.org
Slideshow of The Bantaba in The Gambia
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And here is a more official definition of “Bantaba” from the official Gambia tourist website Access Gambia:
The name “Bantaba” is derived from the word for a large tree, which is called Bentennie in the Mandinka language and is a traditional meeting place for the men of the village. The origins of the word is from the Mandinka for tree which is “Bant” and “aba” means “where to meet” and so the 2 words combined says Bant-aba, the equivalent of a gazebo.
And in some ways my “Bantaba” today is this website, especially the page here titled Life Stories.It is one of the ways I share the joys of my life on this website, my “electronic” Bantaba. 🙂 And of course my BLOG is an almost daily story-telling channel! 🙂
