Fence for the community garden in Fulacunda

We are a group of tourism students from the Netherlands who went in a 2 week learning trip to the Gambia. The purpose of the trip was not only to complete a project for the study, but also learn how to create a sustainable, community driven tour in a place affected by "leakeage"*,  sex tourism and poverty. 
When going for 5 days deep inside of the Gambian country, we had the opportunity to spend half a day with a family from the village of Fulacunda. Each one or two of us visited the compound of one of the families in the village. We cooked together, did shopping and discussed the problems in the village. There is no way to describe the warmth, honesty and respect of these people. With so little to live off and many hardships because of the lack of governmental support in the country, this people opened their houses and hearts towards us, without expecting anything return. Needless to say we were deeply touched by these people. 

We then wanted then to give something back. To everyone in the community. That's how we discovered a common problem.  

Each compound has a small piece of land in the community garden. A little corner where they farm potatoes, tomatoes, capsicums and other vegetables. Each one of the families  sell the small harvest between them. However, the donkeys and cows (who run free in this country) are constantly destroying the already poor crops. The lack of money and materials in the area gives the village the means to only construct a fence out of palm tree leaves, which does not stop the animals.

When finding out about the problem, we decided to built a proper fence around the garden.

We are 18 students, 1 teacher and two coordinators working together with two locals from Tanjeh. The locals will receive the materials and build the fence together. We want to make everything transparent, share each cost through updates. The costs are as follows: 

Area: 100 m x 100 m 

Fence: 800€ 
Steel poles: 137€ 
Cement: 52€ 
Wire to straighten the fence: 200€ 

Total: 1189€ 

The rest of 11€ will be given to the welder who needs to cut the poles to size.

Our partners will be two representatives from Travel2Learn. Part of a  Dutch operator on a mission to create sustainable, community - based tourism in The Gambia, they will help with buying materials, assisting with construction and sending us updates directly from the country. Two of our local guides, Ensa and Salam, volunteered to organize the work in the village.