Lamin and his Dad
Most of the stories in this series are about the ridiculous situations Lamin Barrow and I somehow find ourselves in.
There are quite a lot of those.
Over the years we have encountered exploding palm wine, learner drivers, police checkpoints, angry peanut men, wandering livestock, hotel air conditioning and more unexpected adventures than any sensible person would deliberately seek out.
But friendship is not built entirely on the good days.
Sometimes it is built on the bad ones too.
Lamin and I have shared some wonderful moments together over the years. We have also shared some of the hardest, even when we have been separated by thousands of miles and an entire continent.
Towards the end of his life, Lamin’s father, Bantang Barrow, needed to have part of his leg removed. I suspect diabetes played a part, although I am not completely certain.
Diabetes is becoming an increasingly common problem in The Gambia. Like many developing countries, improvements in life expectancy and changes in lifestyle have brought new health challenges alongside the old ones. When diabetes is not diagnosed or managed effectively, it can damage circulation, particularly in the feet and legs. In severe cases, amputation becomes the only option.
Sadly, this was the situation facing Bantang.
Because Lamin was Bantang’s oldest son, it was ultimately his permission that the hospital needed before they could remove part of his father’s leg.
It is the kind of responsibility none of us ever expect to carry.
Yet, sooner or later, many of us find ourselves facing exactly these moments. As our parents grow older and more fragile, difficult decisions begin to arrive uninvited. They are decisions we never wanted to make, decisions we often feel unqualified to make, but decisions which nevertheless become ours.
I remember the phone call vividly.
Lamin rang me from the hospital only minutes after being asked to make that decision.
Naturally, he was devastated.
He told me what had happened.
Then he cried.
And I sat thousands of miles away in England wishing there was something more useful I could do than simply listen.
Sometimes there isn’t.
Sometimes all you can do is be there.
And, sometimes, that is all friendship really asks of us.
Around the same period, Bantang also lost one of his eyes.
I can’t remember exactly when.
The details are not especially important.
What I do remember is something Lamin told me later.
In 2019, I visited Sankandi and took portrait photographs of many members of his family, including Bantang. The following year I was able to take printed copies to The Gambia and give them to Lamin. Shortly after I returned to England, he took the photographs back to the village.
A few days later Lamin rang me.
Bantang, he explained, had spent a long time studying his portrait.
He seemed fascinated by it.
That may sound unusual, but, in rural parts of The Gambia, particularly among older generations, opportunities to own photographs of yourself have not always been common.
Lamin told me his father simply sat looking at the picture in amazement.
For the first time in his life, he had seen himself exactly as other people saw him.
He had never seen an image of himself with an eye missing.
In 2022, Bantang was admitted to hospital again.
He was very ill.
Once more, Lamin rang me.
This time there were no words.
I could hear him sobbing.
Then the line went dead.
I knew immediately what had happened.
The following year, when my own father passed away, it was Lamin I wanted to speak to first.
Not because he had all the answers.
Not because he could somehow make things better.
But because he understood.
“I will pray for you,” he told me.
I am not religious.
Yet hearing those words brought me immense comfort.
And when my mother passed away in June 2025, I rang Lamin before I spoke to almost anyone else.
“I am by your side,” he told me.
And I believed him.
Bantang Barrow was, as you might suspect, an interesting character in his own right and I had several encounters with him over the years.
The first time I met him was at a family gathering held at an apartment owned by a man called Lamin Darboe.
Lamin Darboe was Lamin Barrow’s brother.
In actual fact, they were cousins.
But, in Gambian terms, they were brothers.
It’s worth remembering that family relationships in The Gambia operate according to rules which appear to have been designed by somebody attempting to make British people extremely confused.
If you spend enough time in The Gambia, everybody eventually becomes your brother, sister, uncle, auntie, cousin, mother or father whether they are related to you or not.
After a while, you stop asking questions.
It is Lamin Darboe’s apartment where I now stay whenever I visit The Gambia. Lamin Darboe is a good friend of mine even though I think we have only actually met in person three times. We have, however, spoken several times on the phone.
Lamin Darboe lives in Oxford with his English wife, Michelle, and their two children. They have been happily married and living there for more than twenty years.
Anyway, I’m getting off the point again.
In February 2014, Lamin Darboe and his family were also in The Gambia and, because of my friendship with Lamin Barrow, I was invited to a gathering of Lamin Darboe’s English and Gambian family at his apartment.
You’ll have to forgive me for constantly using full names for Lamin Barrow and Lamin Darboe, but I genuinely can’t think of an easier way to tell them apart.
Back in those days, members of Lamin Darboe’s English family stayed at the apartment while some of his Gambian family, including his mother, who I still know to this day, lived there whenever they were not in their home village of Sankandi.
The gathering was extremely pleasant. It was one of those wonderfully chaotic evenings filled with conversation, laughter, food, visitors arriving unexpectedly and relatives who seemed to materialise from nowhere.
Lamin Barrow’s father, Bantang Barrow, was also in attendance.
Or, at least, he was for some of the time.
My impression was that he had appointed himself as the evening’s entertainment.
There was a door leading into the apartment close to where I was sitting. It remained closed for most of the evening.
Then, without warning, it would open.
Out would emerge Bantang Barrow.
He would stroll into the gathering, command everyone’s attention and launch into a highly animated story delivered entirely in Mandinka.
Within seconds, everyone would be roaring with laughter.
Then, having apparently completed his work for the evening, he would disappear back through the door.
The door would close.
Several minutes later it would happen again.
Out would come Bantang.
Another story.
More laughter.
Then off he’d go.
I never discovered exactly what was behind that door.
Part of me likes to imagine there was a dressing room where Bantang was preparing his next routine.
Perhaps there was mildly stressed Gambian stage manager.
Maybe refreshments.
Possibly cue cards.
Whatever was happening behind the scenes, it was clearly working.
The closest comparison I can think of is Ronnie Corbett.
If Ronnie Corbett had been born in rural Gambia instead of Edinburgh, there is every chance he would have ended up very much like Bantang Barrow.
He possessed the same natural gift for storytelling.
The same mischievous twinkle.
The same ability to make people laugh before he’d even started speaking.
The frustrating thing, of course, was that I understood almost none of what he was saying.
At that point my Mandinka vocabulary consisted largely of greetings, numbers and the linguistic equivalent of pointing vaguely at things.
Yet it didn’t matter.
Humour has a strange way of crossing language barriers.
You could see immediately that Bantang was the centre of attention.
You could see immediately that people loved him.
And you could see, perhaps for the first time, how Lamin had been shaped into the person he now is.
I met Bantang Barrow several more times before he passed away.
On one occasion, when I was visiting Lamin’s home village Sankandi, he invited me to sit beside him on his woven mat outside the front of his room in the Barrow compound.
Like many traditional compounds in rural Gambia, the Barrow family compound revolves around a central open area where daily life unfolds beneath the sky.
Bantang spoke no English and my Mandinka was practically non-existent, so we sat together in companionable silence.
But, on this particular occasion, I was visiting at the start of the rainy season.
Dark clouds gathered overhead. Large raindrops began to plop gently, but meaningfully, onto the orange dusty ground of the family compound.
Watching the sky darken overhead, Bantang taught me a simple phrase in Mandinka.
“Samaa ka naa.”
The rainy season is coming.
I think that was the last time I ever met Bantang Barrow in person.
Several years later, however, a simple act of kindness from Bantang would have a significant, profound and ongoing impact upon my life.
Bantang Barrow prepared juju for me.
Read the Introduction to ‘Travels With Lamin’ here:
👉Travels With Lamin – An Introduction | Building Futures in the Gambia
Find all the other chapters here:
👉Travels With Lamin: Stories from The Gambia and West Africa | Building Futures in the Gambia
Book Lamin and his taxi here:
👉Lamin Barrow Taxis – The Gambia’s Number One Taxi Driver
And find out more about Lamin’s work with BFiG Busumbala Nursery School here:
