Lamin and the Drone
For many years, I’ve taken thousands of photographs of life in The Gambia. I’ve also recorded plenty of video. But I’ve always wanted a different perspective on things.
A different view.
A view from above.
And so, in January 2026, I bought myself a DJI Mini 5 Pro.
For all the geeks reading this – and I count myself amongst you – a DJI Mini 5 Pro is a remarkably sophisticated piece of technology. It is a small, folding camera drone weighing roughly the same as a large packet of crisps, yet somehow equipped with a high-quality camera, satellite navigation, intelligent subject tracking and enough obstacle-detection equipment to navigate safely through the Death Star. It can shoot beautiful video, follow a moving person automatically and, under the right conditions, remain airborne for considerably longer than my attention span.
In short, it is a tiny airborne film studio controlled by computers, satellites and what I can only assume is witchcraft. It can identify trees, buildings and other potential hazards in almost every direction.
What it cannot do, however, is compensate fully for the man holding the controller.
I bought my drone right at the start of January and I was flying out to West Africa on 14th January, so that gave me just two weeks to register it, pass the necessary test, work out what all the buttons did and become a calm, competent and responsible drone pilot.
I like leaving things until the last minute.
It makes life more exciting.
Before I could legally fly it, I needed an Operator ID and a Flyer ID. The Operator ID involved paying some money and sticking a number onto the drone. The Flyer ID involved passing an online theory test to prove that I understood such basic principles as not flying near airports, not dropping things onto people and not using the drone to peer through somebody’s bedroom window.
Fortunately, I passed.
All I needed then was some actual flying practice.
This would have been straightforward had I bought the drone in June. Instead, I bought it in January, during a spell of freezing English weather in which we had experienced heavy snow and the outside world appeared to have been placed inside a particularly aggressive freezer.
Drone batteries, I quickly discovered, are not especially fond of the cold.
Neither are my fingers.
Nevertheless, somewhere between the snow, the ice and my rapidly approaching flight to The Gambia, I had to learn how to get the thing into the air, move it around without hitting a tree and, most importantly, bring it back again.
This last part seemed particularly important because the drone had cost rather too much money to become a small and technologically advanced ornament in the upper branches of a sycamore.
By the time I left for West Africa, I had passed the test, completed a couple of freezing practice flights and developed just enough confidence to be dangerous.
With my impeccable sense of timing, I had also managed to buy my drone just as the laws surrounding drone flying in the United Kingdom became more stringent.
And, not wishing to be left out, The Gambia had done exactly the same.
The Gambia Civil Aviation Authority had, quite rightly, placed restrictions on flights close to Banjul International Airport, government buildings, military installations and other sensitive sites.
To be honest, I was already familiar with these restrictions where ordinary photography was concerned. Right from my first visit, I had been told very clearly and very firmly not to take photographs of military or government buildings.
I followed this rule religiously.
Sensitive buildings in The Gambia tend to be guarded by soldiers or police officers carrying very large guns, and very large guns work remarkably well as a deterrent.
On one occasion, however, while taking a photograph of an ordinary street in Banjul, I accidentally composed the picture with part of a government building in the background.
A soldier with a very large gun was across the road like a shot.
Possibly not the best choice of phrase.
I escaped without punishment, but the guide accompanying us received a severe telling-off.
“You should know better,” the soldier repeatedly told him.
“You should know better.”
I stood beside them attempting to look innocent, apologetic and, above all, completely unrelated to the large camera hanging around my neck.
I had already had one rather memorable run-in with the police over my enthusiasm for photography, and I was in no hurry to repeat the experience.
Over the years, I’ve walked past government and military buildings many times. On a few occasions, I’ve even been inside them.
A Gambian friend of mine, Lamin Manneh, was, when I first met him, the Captain of President Yahya Jammeh’s personal guard. Lamin invited my friends and me to his home at Fajara Barracks, close to Bakau, on several occasions. We were shown around the barracks and his wife cooked us wonderful food.
My camera, however, remained safely hidden in its bag.
There were lots of soldiers.
There were lots of guns.
And I felt that wandering around enthusiastically photographing everything might be misinterpreted.
I’ll talk more about Lamin Manneh on another occasion.
Returning to the subject of drones, I was therefore perfectly happy to respect Gambian flight restrictions, just as I would respect the restrictions in the United Kingdom.
Unfortunately, this presented me with a problem.
BFiG Busumbala Nursery School – the charity school I particularly wanted to film – was in Busumbala Village.
And Busumbala Village was very close to Banjul International Airport.
I’ll return to that not entirely insignificant little problem shortly.
My first and most immediate concern was getting the drone into The Gambia in the first place.
I have never been stopped at Banjul Airport by security officers concerned about an Englishman carrying backpacks full of cameras, video equipment, phones, chargers, batteries, cables and other suspicious-looking technology.
But I’m aware of people who have.
These encounters tend to involve a great deal of shouting and arguing before a not insubstantial piece of financial encouragement changes hands.
Banjul Airport taxes can be numerous, imaginative and, occasionally, invented on the spot by a security officer who has taken one look at a nervous English traveller and decided that a previously unknown Camera With Too Many Buttons Tax has just come into force.
Because Gambian drone regulations had recently changed, it occurred to me that, if I was ever going to be stopped while entering the country, this would be the time.
Alongside my usual collection of cameras, video cameras, phones, batteries and enough electrical cables to rewire a small hotel, I was now carrying a drone.
So, what was I to do?
Naturally, I turned to that great repository of human knowledge and wisdom known as Facebook.
That was sarcasm, by the way.
I went to a Gambian tourism group, explained the situation and asked what people thought I should do.
The responses ranged from the reassuring—
“You’ll be fine. Nobody will stop you.”
—to the less reassuring—
“You’ll definitely be stopped and they’ll make you pay a large bribe.”
Sorry.
Tax.
There were also some genuinely sensible suggestions. I could write a covering letter on behalf of Building Futures in The Gambia, listing all my photographic equipment and explaining exactly what I intended to do with it. Better still, I could contact the Gambia Civil Aviation Authority and obtain written permission to bring the drone into the country.
This was something I had already been considering.
There was just one small problem.
As I may have mentioned, I had only two weeks.
Time was short.
And obtaining paperwork from a Gambian organisation can take minutes, hours, weeks, months, years or, occasionally, the entire remaining lifespan of everyone involved.
The Gambians like their bureaucracy.
And they do not believe it should be rushed.
Now, the Gambia Civil Aviation Authority has a website. A little Googling will easily allow you to find it. The same little bit of Googling will also uncover reports on various forums suggesting that the website is not always there.
And when I went looking for it, it wasn’t there.
Sigh.
Fortunately, a few minutes later, it appeared.
At the top of the website was an email address.
Marvellous.
I wrote them a lovely email explaining who I was, the charity I represented, why I wanted to bring a drone into the country and all the responsible and entirely legal things I intended to do with it.
I sent it.
I received an immediate response.
This was astonishingly efficient.
The response informed me that the email address no longer existed.
Sigh.
Not a problem.
I had already found two other email addresses for the GCAA elsewhere on the internet.
I sent the same carefully composed missive to both of them.
They both bounced back.
Sigh.
After a little more contemplation and a brief consultation with an online friend of mine—hello, Di Miles—I decided to telephone the GCAA.
The telephone number was displayed prominently at the top of the website.
It would cost a fair bit to call The Gambia from a British mobile phone, but written permission would be worth it.
I rang the number.
It’s there, at the top of their website.
Go and look.
The number was dead.
No ringing.
No connection.
No telephone.
Sigh.
At this point, I decided to do what I really should have done at the very beginning.
Ring Lamin Barrow.
Fortunately, in early January 2026, Lamin Barrow’s brother, Lamin Darboe, was visiting The Gambia from England.
As I’ve mentioned previously, Lamin Darboe lives in England with his wife, Michelle, and their two children. He also owns the apartment where I stay during my visits to The Gambia.
Lamin Darboe tries to return to The Gambia most years, and our visits had overlapped before. On those occasions, I had promptly stolen Lamin Barrow from him and taken him away on what Lamin Barrow refers to as my “mission”.
In January 2026, I was going to steal him again.
Fortunately, being a Gambian man himself, Lamin Darboe can survive without Lamin Barrow.
Just about.
I, on the other hand, would be completely helpless. Leaving me in The Gambia without Lamin Barrow would be like putting a penguin in the middle of Birmingham city centre and expecting it to buy itself a fish supper.
When I rang, Lamin Barrow was driving his taxi and Lamin Darboe was sitting in the passenger seat.
This was extremely fortuitous.
Lamin Darboe has lived in England for many years, speaks excellent English and is accustomed to the strange noises made by British people when they are worrying unnecessarily. He would therefore have a much better chance of understanding my increasingly frantic drone-related waffling.
I spoke to Lamin Darboe.
“Leave it to me, Peter,” he said.
I instantly felt considerably reassured.
I now had not one but two Lamins solving the problem on my behalf.
There are very few situations in life that cannot be improved by the involvement of an additional Lamin.
A day or so later, I spoke to Lamin Darboe again.
“Good news!” he announced.
“I have a friend who used to work for the Gambia Civil Aviation Authority.”
Well, of course he did.
“Even better news,” continued Lamin Darboe. “I have a cousin who works in security at the airport.”
Well, of course he did.
“He will meet you at the airport. He will arrange for you to pass through customs without any problems. He will inform all the relevant people.”
I sighed.
But this time, it was a relaxed and contented sigh.
The official website would disappear randomly.
The official email addresses did not exist.
The official telephone number was dead.
But Lamin Darboe knew a man.
And that man was his cousin.
Never underestimate the strength of family relationships in The Gambia.
The Gambia is the perfect shining example of the old saying:
“It’s not what you know.
“It’s who you know.”
And so, on 14th January 2026, I drove to Manchester Airport, endured all the usual check-in and luggage-related shenanigans, ate a full English breakfast and drank a pint of cider.
This is a longstanding tradition.
The full English breakfast gives me my first photograph for Facebook and reassures everyone that my journey to West Africa has begun in the most culturally appropriate way possible.
Then I climbed aboard the aeroplane bound for The Gambia.
Right from the outset, things were unusual.
The captain announced that our flight time would be five and a half hours.
I looked at the passenger sitting next to me.
“I don’t think that’s right,” I said.
Normally, the flight to The Gambia takes somewhere between six and a quarter and six and a half hours. And that is from Gatwick, which is several hundred miles closer to The Gambia than Manchester.
I didn’t wish to question the captain’s knowledge of aviation.
But I did.
Nevertheless, before switching off my phone, I managed to send Lamin a hurried message warning him that I might arrive an hour earlier than expected.
Then, I switched my phone off.
And I went to sleep.
Or, at least, I entered that peculiar half-sleeping, half-dozing state that is possible only on an aeroplane, where your neck hurts, your mouth falls open and you repeatedly wake up convinced that several hours have passed when it has actually been eleven minutes.
But it makes the journey feel quicker.
And, as the captain had predicted, we arrived after only five and a half hours.
There must have been a very strong wind encouraging the aeroplane to go faster.
But…five and a half hours!
An extra hour in The Gambia.
Marvellous.
I joined the rest of the passengers and slowly filed towards the cabin door.
This is a moment I always savour.
Upon reaching the open door, the heat rushes into the aircraft like someone opening an enormous oven.
I love it.
Then comes that wonderful dry smell of sandy roads, burning charcoal and a faint but unmistakable hint of fish.
I love it.
Then I step outside, blinking, into the glorious Gambian sunshine.
I love it.
And then comes the slightly ridiculous bus journey to the immigration hall at Banjul International Airport.
I don’t love that quite as much.
Honestly, I could walk from the aeroplane to the correct entrance in less than two minutes.
I have legs.
The entrance is clearly visible.
There is nothing particularly dangerous between me and it.
But walking is not permitted.
Instead, I and as many other passengers as physically possible are crammed into a very hot, very dusty bus.
It is the Gambian version of Sardines.
Except, instead of squeezing as many people as possible into a wardrobe, the challenge is to force an entire planeload of passengers into a bus without anybody having a panic attack or dying of suffocation.
Eventually, through some small miracle of engineering, the doors close.
And then comes the truly ridiculous part.
Rather than driving directly to the nearby entrance, the bus sets off in the opposite direction.
It travels away from the terminal.
Down a service road.
For no obvious reason.
Then, perhaps because common sense finally intervenes—or because the driver senses that the engine is about to splutter to a lifeless stop—the bus turns around.
It then drives back up another service road and deposits a heaving mass of hot, dusty and increasingly bewildered passengers outside the entrance we could have walked to several minutes earlier.
In hindsight, I love it.
It’s all part of the fun.
However, by this point, I was beginning to feel slightly nervous.
I found myself thinking about my drone.
The drone was sitting innocently enough in my backpack, slung over my right shoulder, but now it suddenly seemed rather more conspicuous than it had five minutes earlier.
The strange thing was that, to anyone watching, I looked exactly as I always did after stepping off a flight to The Gambia.
Slightly battered.
Very sweaty.
Increasingly dusty.
And considerably more unkempt than when I’d left Manchester.
The only difference was that somewhere beyond Immigration Control, a Gambian man I’d never met before was supposedly waiting to collect me.
I didn’t know his name.
I didn’t know what he looked like.
I only knew that he was expecting me.
Along with the rest of the weary passengers, I drifted towards Immigration Control, where an impressively long queue had already formed.
Everyone wore the same slightly glazed expression of people who had spent five and a half hours folded into an aeroplane seat and now just wanted to get on with their holiday.
As always, I looked wistfully towards the much shorter queue marked Residents Only.
Surely, after all these years of visiting The Gambia and travelling around West Africa, they’d let me use that one.
No.
I decided not to test the theory.
Maybe one day.
Instead, I shuffled patiently forwards until I eventually found myself standing in front of a small glass-fronted immigration booth occupied by a very serious-looking Gambian Immigration Officer.
The officer studied my passport for a few moments before glancing up at me.
“What is the purpose of your visit?”
“Holiday. And charity work.”
A not uncommon answer in The Gambia.
“Where are you staying?”
This is where things became ever so slightly awkward.
He was clearly expecting the name of a hotel.
“I’m staying with a friend.”
He paused.
“Where?”
“Tranquil, near Bijilo.”
There was another pause while he tried to decide whether this was an acceptable answer or whether I’d simply misunderstood the question. Eventually, apparently satisfied that I hadn’t invented a fictional village in an attempt to gain entry to the country, he nodded and turned to the biometric scanner.
“Finger.”
I pressed my index finger onto the little square of glass.
Nothing.
“Press.”
I pressed a little harder.
Nothing.
“Harder.”
By now, I was convinced that if I applied any more pressure I’d simply push the scanner through the desk.
Still nothing.
He sighed almost imperceptibly and pointed at another finger.
We repeated the process.
Then another.
And another.
Then, my thumbs.
Occasionally, the machine rewarded our combined efforts with a reluctant beep, only to immediately refuse to recognise the very next finger as though we’d never met before.
After several minutes of increasingly determined pressing, prodding and silent mutual disappointment, the officer reached what appeared to be the only logical conclusion.
He gave up.
Presumably, because he’d decided that the machine had collected enough of my fingerprints to satisfy the Gambian authorities.
The officer pointed towards a small camera mounted on the end of a flexible metal stalk.
I leant forwards, stooped slightly and peered into it.
Nothing happened.
The officer looked at me with a faint expression of bewilderment before making an upward waving motion with his hand.
I had absolutely no idea what he was trying to tell me.
He repeated the gesture, this time with a slightly more exaggerated flourish, as though communicating with someone who didn’t share a common language.
It finally dawned on me that he wasn’t telling me to stand up straighter at all.
He was telling me to straighten the camera.
I cautiously grabbed hold of the bendy metal stalk and raised it until the lens was somewhere around eye level instead of chest height. The officer immediately nodded with quiet approval.
“Yes.”
I looked into the camera once more.
This time it beeped almost instantly.
After the prolonged battle with the fingerprint scanner, I couldn’t help feeling slightly insulted that facial recognition appeared to recognise my face without the slightest hesitation.
I paid the requisite airport fee.
And then, with one final stamp in my passport, he waved me through as though deciding that anyone prepared to wrestle with Gambian immigration technology for that long was probably harmless enough.
I stepped into the baggage reclaim hall, where the familiar carousel was already turning lazily beneath rows of anxious faces searching for suitcases that all looked remarkably similar.
I stood beside the carousel and resigned myself to the usual long wait, while quietly hoping that my luggage hadn’t decided to take a holiday, completely independent of me, in South Africa.
This was where things changed.
Almost immediately, I saw a Gambian man making a determined beeline towards me.
He looked vaguely familiar.
“Peter!” he called, holding out his hand as he reached me.
We shook hands.
“Do I know you?” I asked. I recognised his face.
“Yes. We have met before. Lamin Darboe arranged for me to meet you.”
Brilliant.
The power of Lamins.
“One moment,” he said.
Then he walked away.
And, almost miraculously, my suitcase appeared on the carousel directly in front of me.
It hadn’t gone to South Africa.
It hadn’t gone anywhere else.
It had arrived in The Gambia at exactly the same time as I had.
This may not sound particularly remarkable, but anybody who regularly travels with checked luggage will understand that it felt like a minor administrative miracle.
I grabbed the suitcase.
A moment later, my new Gambian friend was back at my side.
“I have spoken to security,” he said. “You will get through with no problem.”
He escorted me towards the luggage scanner, lifted my suitcase and backpack onto the conveyor belt and sent them both disappearing into the dark belly of the X-ray machine.
The backpack, of course, contained the drone, several cameras, batteries, chargers, cables and enough other photographic technology to make me look as though I was either filming a documentary or preparing to open a small electrical shop.
“Come,” he said.
We walked to the other side of the scanner.
My suitcase and backpack were already waiting.
That was it.
No questions.
No suspicious glances.
No newly invented Drone Importation and Excessive Cable Tax.
Nothing.
Throughout this marvellously quick and efficient process, I received occasional looks from other passengers still struggling with their luggage and paperwork.
The looks appeared to say:
“Why is he getting preferential treatment?”
I knew the answer.
The power of Lamins.
We passed into the main arrivals hall, where Lamin Barrow would normally be waiting for me.
But he wasn’t there.
Instead, my new best friend was carrying my luggage and was hurrying me through the crowds towards the car park.
I remained mildly perturbed by the absence of a certain Lamin Barrow.
I shouldn’t have been.
Lamin has an extraordinary ability to appear exactly where you aren’t looking.
As we approached the car park, he ambushed me from behind.
He had clearly been hiding and waiting for the perfect moment to pounce.
Like an overexcited Labrador that had just spotted its favourite human across a field.
If happiness could hide behind a concrete pillar at Banjul International Airport, it would probably look remarkably like Lamin Barrow.
One moment, he wasn’t there.
The next, he was beside me, grinning as though the previous twelve months had never happened.
“Hello, bro!”
A hug.
We continued towards Lamin’s taxi, where he took my luggage and loaded it into the back of my favourite dusty, battered green vehicle.
I thanked my new Gambian best friend and explained that this was probably the fastest I had ever travelled from one side of Banjul International Airport to the other.
I also demonstrated my gratitude in the usual and customary Gambian way. I had dalasis prepared in my pocket especially for this occasion.
But I had one final question for the friendly and exceptionally helpful airport security officer.
“By the way,” I said. “Tell me your name, please.”
Before I reveal his answer, however, I feel that I need to jump forwards in time just a little.
If only to create some entirely unnecessary tension.
Two days later, on Friday morning, Lamin and I visited the charity school – BFiG Busumbala Nursery School in Busumbala Village.
We had already been there on Thursday morning, when I had performed my usual role of introducing myself to the children, getting them all wildly overexcited and then leaving the school in a state of chaos, as though it had been struck by a small, dusty, balding and slightly sweaty tornado.
On Friday morning, however, I was going to record video footage of the school from above.
This would be the maiden flight of my drone in The Gambia.
I was very excited.
Even Lamin Barrow was mildly curious.
But, as I unpacked and unfolded my little DJI flying marvel, a slight concern lingered at the back of my mind like a wasp trapped behind a curtain.
Just over there, a few miles beyond the school and Busumbala Village, was Banjul International Airport.
Had you stood on a chair and craned your neck a little, you might almost have been able to see it.
I exaggerate, of course.
But it was still uncomfortably close to the place where I was about to embark upon my first Gambian flight of airborne photographic discovery.
Hmmmmmm.
I placed the drone on the ground about ten metres in front of the school.
I took the controller from its bag and switched it on. It gave its customary electronic chirrup as it established communication with the drone.
I watched the screen as, one by one, it made contact with satellites orbiting high above the planet.
Technology.
Satellites.
Navigation systems.
Witchcraft.
Everything appeared to be working perfectly.
I pressed the button instructing the drone to take off.
And…
Nothing.
A warning immediately flashed onto the controller screen.
I will paraphrase:
YOU ARE IN A FLIGHT-RESTRICTED ZONE. YOU DO NOT HAVE AUTHORISATION TO FLY.
Sigh.
It knew.
The drone knew exactly where it was.
It had spoken to satellites somewhere above Africa and discovered that I was standing far too close to Banjul International Airport.
Sigh.
Lamin looked at me.
I looked at the drone.
The drone looked at nothing.
However, at the bottom of the controller screen, a question had appeared:
WOULD YOU LIKE TO REQUEST AUTHORISATION?
A glimmer of hope.
Could I?
Would I actually be allowed to fly this close to the airport?
Who would grant the permission?
How long would it take?
Would it involve another website that disappeared, three email addresses that didn’t exist and a telephone number connected to absolutely nothing?
I tapped the question.
The controller informed me that I would need a data connection.
A data connection?
Where, in the middle of the school grounds in Busumbala Village, was I going to find one of those?
I looked hopefully towards Lamin.
“Lamin?”
He looked back at me with immediate suspicion.
“Yes, bro?”
“Can I connect my drone to your router, please?”
I explained why.
Lamin had a small portable router. Whenever I visited The Gambia, I paid for a month’s worth of data and carried it around with us. It allowed me to send photographs and videos back to England, update the charity’s Facebook page and even make live video calls from the school to entire classrooms of children in Britain.
Modern technology is marvellous.
Modern technology is also very fond of menus, passwords and making simple tasks take considerably longer than expected.
After much hunting through menus, submenus and menus which appeared to lead back to the menu I had just left, I finally connected the drone controller to Lamin’s router.
Once again, I attempted to fly.
Once again, I was asked whether I wished to seek authorisation.
I pressed YES.
This time, there was a brief pause while data flew backwards and forwards between Busumbala Village and, presumably, someone very important sitting behind a large desk somewhere.
Then the controller asked me another question:
DO YOU HAVE AUTHORISATION TO FLY?
Oh.
Oh dear.
Did I have authorisation to fly?
I had an Operator ID.
I had passed my online drone-flying examination in England with flying colours. I had a Flyer ID.
I was fully entitled to fly the drone in appropriate locations in the United Kingdom.
But was I authorised to fly it here?
In Busumbala?
A few miles from Banjul International Airport?
The honest answer was that I wasn’t entirely certain.
I stared at the question.
The question stared back.
Eventually, with all the confidence of a man who would very much like the answer to be yes, I pressed YES.
There was another pause.
Then a new message appeared informing me that a telephone number was required.
My British phone was largely useless in The Gambia.
So…
“Lamin?”
Once again, I looked towards him.
He looked back at me with even greater suspicion.
“Yes, bro?”
I explained why.
I typed Lamin’s telephone number into the controller.
What was the worst that could happen?
Perhaps a swarm of black helicopters would appear over the horizon. Perhaps armed Gambian security officers would descend on ropes like a particularly angry West African branch of the SAS.
Hopefully, if that happened, it would be after I had flown home.
They would arrest Lamin instead.
It wasn’t as though he had never been arrested and locked up before.
I’ll return to that story on another occasion.
So, I entered Lamin’s phone number.
The controller informed me that a security code would be sent to his phone and that I would then need to type the code into the controller.
What a tremendous faff.
After a few tense seconds, the code arrived.
I looked towards the horizon.
No black helicopters.
Not yet.
I entered the code and pressed the take-off button again.
The controller asked:
DO YOU HAVE AUTHORISATION TO FLY?
Tentatively, I tapped YES.
There was a pause.
And then the drone magnificently came to life.
Its propellers began to spin. It rose smoothly from the dusty ground and hovered two metres in front of me, waiting expectantly for my next instruction.
I had done it.
My drone was flying in The Gambia.
Lamin looked at me.
Then he walked away.
I think he had lost interest.
Or the will to live.
Possibly both.
Nevertheless, I flew the drone and recorded some wonderful footage of the school from above.
I strongly suspected at the time – and have since confirmed – that, if it hadn’t been safe for me to fly, my drone would have remained locked.
Nevertheless, I didn’t fly too high. And I was up and down in less than ten minutes.
I didn’t want to push my luck.
As I write this, more than six months later, Lamin has still not been arrested for unauthorised drone flights in The Gambia.
They have his telephone number, so they should be able to find him.
However, as we have already established, some things take a very long time to happen in The Gambia.
Perhaps I should say that he has not been arrested yet.
Anyway, speaking of Lamins, let us jump backwards two days to Banjul International Airport, where I had just experienced the smoothest journey through all the usual airport nonsense that I had ever known.
It had all been thanks to my friendly airport security officer.
Although I recognised his face, I could not remember his name.
“Tell me your name, please,” I said.
He replied:
“Lamin Barrow.”
Of course it was.
The power of Lamins.
The power of Lamin Barrows.
I did consider another title for this chapter:
Lamin and the Lamin Barrow.
But that would have given away the ending.
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:
