Greetings from Bakoteh Proper.

How is everyone in England? We hope

you are all well.

We are in the middle of the dry season and every where is very dry and dusty. It will

not rain again until April.

The bananas are just coming in to season here. You can see the bananas are green but

when we pick them and leave them for some days they turn

yellow and are ready to be eat.

On February 18th The Gambia celebrated 50

years of Independence. We

were once part of The British Empire and Commonwealth.

Portuguese settlers first came to this area of West Africa in the 1500s. And they introduced peanuts

from South America. Peanuts are now our main

export

Under the Tudors and the Stuarts the

British and The French fought over who should control this part of Africa.

The French formed the

country called Senegal which surrounds The

Gambia. French is spoken there.

But the British wanted to control the River Gambia because it was an important trading

route and was used a lot in the slave trade

So The Gambia is a long thin country 20

kilometres north and south of the river. The

British run the country as a colony up to 1965.

But now we are independent country and we have our own Government and our

own currency the dalasi. We also have our own flag, stamps and national anthem.

Here is the Gambian flag. The blue represents the

river. The green the fertile farm land and forests and the red the sunny climate

here.

And here are the words to our

national anthem and we are going to sing them to

you

Click speaker to hear us sing the National Anthem.

On February 18th there were big celebrations at The National stadium.

Even our president was there.

Each school sent 20 children

and two teachers to take part in the big

march.

We have only had two presidents since we gain independence in 1965. Sir Dawda Kairaba Jawara was our

first Prime Minister. He is the man on the right. He became the first President when we became a Republic in 1970. The man on our left is our President now: His Excellency

Professor Alhaji Dr. Yahya Jammeh. He came to power in a coup called The July 22nd revolution twenty years ago and

he has ruled the country ever since.

Our current President has done much to try to develop our country and tells us what

to do to make The Gambia strong. He has many

important messages for us.

The mobile phone companies like

Comium and Africell sponsor many bill boards celebrating

Independence

We say a big thank you for the

Christmas cards, we think they are lovely.

We hoped you enjoyed learning

about The Gambia. We say bye for

now.

Next time we are going to tell you all about African

drums and african

drumming. Bye