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These photos were made in 1999-2002 in the Banjul and Serekunda areas of The Gambia, plus two in Albreda at the Slavery Museum near Juffre, the home of Kunta Kente of Roots book & movie. I believe these are the work of 4 different Gambia artists and most likely all were commissioned to do these public paintings.
READ MORE for a slide show of 8 different Street Art paintings . . .
Continue reading “STREET ART: The Gambia, West Africa”
A post I wrote yesterday was scheduled to release at 4 am this morning and it did – for 30 minutes – then at 4:30 AM I woke up and felt compelled to delete it, meaning most of you who subscribe got an email linking you to “Whiffs of West Africa” and received an “Oops message” saying the post is not there.
I felt guilty that I was inflaming the few Trump supporters who still follow my blog, so at 4:30 AM I deleted the post that compared Trump to Yahya Jammeh, the Gambian despot who refused to step down when he lost the election and the featured photo showed him being escorted out by military troops.
Joe Biden has declared this “A TIME FOR HEALING” and I don’t want to make it more difficult for him. So I will honestly try to write no more anti-Trump posts and I hope you “other guys” will decide to work with Biden to bring America back together for peaceful progress as one nation, not two! And yes, the above flag photo is mine, photographed back in 2005 at the Everglades National Park Visitors Center. 🙂
E pluribus unum – Latin for “Out of many, one”
God Bless America!
P.S.
StoryCorp.org and Public Radio are trying to organize “One Small Step” where you can join them in getting people with opposite views or politics to simply talk to each other. Click the link to check it out and see if you want to participate. Sounds like a great idea Americans!
Featured Photo above is of a Mandinka Potter in the Makasutu Forest of The Gambia, West Africa using an old foot-treadle potter’s wheel. Scripture is my addition to a favorite photo from my 3 years in The Gambia, a print of which hangs in my bedroom here.
Though I dropped my paid subscription to Christianity Today, I continue to get the free CT Newsletter and just read this article that speaks to my desire for a new church and new identity: The Heart of the Evangelical Crisis. I hope the link works for you to read it. Like other writers on the subject, he does not have all the answers, but describes the problem in an interesting way that rings true with much of my life experiences.
While serving as a missionary in The Gambia, West Africa, I soon quit calling myself a “Christian,” a “Baptist” or an “Evangelical” as I related to Muslim friends calling myself “A Follower of Jesus.” The difference in our relationships was amazing with a new label and I found other reasons for the title when I returned to the states for the first 12 years of my retirement and even now while living as an expat American Retiree in the Roman Catholic Costa Rica. I’m a follower of Jesus! 🙂
The primary focus of this blog is retirement in Costa Rica, my love of nature and especially the birds here in Costa Rica, but occasionally I feel the need to speak my deep feelings about what I consider a crisis in America today, for which I partly blame Southern Baptists (the largest of the Evangelicals) for whom I worked my total adult working life. I now have no pride in those years, even though the denomination was different when I started. I apologize to the readers whom I offend when I speak like this, but it is a sincere concern of mine that I feel compelled to express at times. We who follow Jesus cannot allow the “Republican Trump America” of today to define Christianity! Far from it!
Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?
Matthew 16:24-26