Lamin and the Sports Day: The Longest Journey
Note: It’s best to read Lamin and the Sports Day: Finding Alasanna | Building Futures in the Gambia before you read this.
It was nearly two years before I finally returned to The Gambia again in February 2016.
By this time, Alasanna had gone.
He’d left his compound.
He’d left his village.
He’d left his country.
Before that visit, I already knew some of what had happened during the previous year 2015. But it was only by talking to people, asking questions and quietly joining together all the little pieces that I finally discovered the rest of Alasanna’s story.
It was an emotional time.
On my journey home, Lamin’s brother, Lamin Darboe, and his wife Michelle shared my flight. They were returning from a long stay in The Gambia to their home in Oxford.
At one point, I told them what had happened to Alasanna.
Or, at least, I tried.
Because somewhere between Banjul International and Gatwick, England, I realised I wasn’t really telling a story anymore.
I was trying not to cry.
I failed.
Lamin Darboe listened quietly. He knew this story already.
Not Alasanna’s story specifically.
But this story.
It wasn’t unfamiliar to him.
Or to Lamin Barrow.
Or, for that matter, to just about every Gambian.
Sensing that I needed rescuing from myself, Michelle changed the subject completely.
“So…” she smiled.
“How many tapalapas have you eaten this week?”
(A tapalapa, by the way, is The Gambia‘s answer to an English crusty baguette. If you’re there for any length of time, you’ll eat rather a lot of them.)
So…you’re probably wondering what happened to Alasanna.
If you’ve spent time in The Gambia yourself, you may already know the answer.
If not…
I’m afraid you’ll have to wait just a little bit longer.
Because there’s another story I need to tell first.
I should probably apologise.
But this is how my brain works.
My memories don’t arrive in neat chronological order.
They all turn up together.
Talking over one another.
Elbowing each other out of the way.
Like Black Friday shoppers convinced there’s only one television left.
Eventually one memory wins.
Usually not the one I intended to write about.
You’ve probably noticed.
And if you’re still wondering about the question I asked Alasanna at his Sports Day in 2014…
“When are you running?”
Don’t worry.
There is an answer.
We’ll get there.
For now, though, we’re travelling back to 2012.
My first return to The Gambia was with a group of teachers organised by the previously mentioned Doctor Des and Pam.
While I spent much of the week working with the assembled teachers, I also had my own “mission”, as Lamin Barrow would have called it.
My mission was to check on the construction of the library project at Makumbaya Lower Basic School.
Naturally, Lamin was my taxi driver.
Occasionally we were joined by an Official Tourist Guide.
Alongside my main mission, I also had what gamers would probably describe as a “side mission”.
I wanted to visit other schools and simply have a good nose around.
Looking back, those journeys driving around The Gambia with Lamin were really when our friendship began to grow. Hours spent together in a taxi will do that.
And if you’re still wondering what any of this has to do with Alasanna.
It’s all relevant.
Promise.
One of the schools we visited was Kombo Kerewan Upper Basic School.
This was the school Alasanna attended after leaving Makumbaya Lower Basic School, so I thought it would be nice to surprise him and see how he was getting on.
Lamin and I arrived and I immediately set about finding the Head Teacher and asking whether it would be alright to look around.
Looking back now, wandering unannounced into a school and expecting an audience with the Head Teacher seems rather presumptuous.
I’d certainly never do it in England.
Then again…
I think we’re all a little more confident than we should be when we’re younger.
And definitely more naïve.
Fortunately, Gambian schools (in my experience) tend to be wonderfully welcoming places.
And, for the Head Teacher, every unexpected visitor might just become an opportunity.
A visiting tourist may become a supporter.
Or tell other people about the school.
Or perhaps sponsor a child.
I once visited another school where an entire display board was devoted to photographs of children hoping to find sponsors.
So, when I introduced myself at Kombo Kerewan Upper Basic School, the Head Teacher was more than happy to show me around.
His name was Mr John Gomez.
I explained to Mr Gomez why I’d come and how I hoped to catch up with Alasanna.
Mr Gomez then took me on a tour of the school.
Like many Gambian schools, it faced its fair share of challenges.
Kombo Kerewan Upper Basic School, like Makumbaya Lower Basic School, sat a little off the beaten track and didn’t receive many visitors.
I’ve often thought that’s one of the quiet injustices of overseas charity work. Schools close to the tourist areas are far more likely to receive overseas visitors and benefit from their generosity. Schools further up country can be just as deserving, but they’re rarely seen.
It’s a subject I’ll come back to another day.
The school itself also faced some very specific problems.
The water pump desperately needed repairing and, if it failed completely, two thousand students would lose their water supply.
There was no perimeter wall. It had been started but then the money had run out.
Nothing separated the school grounds from the surrounding village.
But perhaps the most striking thing of all was the cemetery.
It stood right beside the sports field.
Funerals would sometimes take place while lessons continued nearby.
Some of the younger children found this frightening.
Mr Gomez had spoken with local village leaders about the problem but, at the time of my visit, little had changed.
Mr Gomez introduced me to Alasanna’s form tutor.
He was twenty-seven years old and also happened to be Head of Science.
He spoke warmly about Alasanna and how hard he worked in class.
We chatted about teaching before he proudly showed me the practical lesson he’d prepared for the following day.
Upper Basic Schools teach pupils in Grades 7 to 9, roughly equivalent to ages thirteen to fifteen.
Unlike Gambian nursery schools, they receive government funding.
It isn’t a huge amount.
But it’s certainly more than nursery schools receive.
They receive absolutely nothing.
Even so, the resources available were extremely limited.
His next lesson was about electrical circuits.
The school couldn’t afford proper science equipment.
So he’d visited the local market.
Using his own money.
He’d bought two short lengths of wire.
One battery.
One light bulb.
That was his science lesson.
With obvious pride, he connected everything together.
The bulb lit up.
He smiled.
Now, when I taught Year 6 science in England, I had cupboards overflowing with wires, batteries and bulbs.
My biggest challenge was usually untangling everything and discovering which batteries still had any life left in them.
This teacher had two wires.
One battery.
One bulb.
And he treated them like priceless scientific equipment.
I’m absolutely convinced his pupils learned every bit as much as mine ever did.
Sometimes enthusiasm is a far more valuable teaching resource than money.
I also managed to spend a little time with Alasanna.
We chatted for a while in the school grounds before he took me to see his classroom.
Or perhaps I should say…
…he took me to show me off to his classmates.
I suddenly found myself feeling less like a visitor…
…and more like the slightly odd exhibit in an impromptu Show and Tell session.
Before I left, I spent a little longer talking with Mr Gomez.
One sentence he said has remained with me ever since.
“The problem in our country is that the students get a good education and then they go. They do not stay and help develop our country.”
At the time, I wasn’t entirely sure what he meant.
By February 2016…
I understood perfectly.
Right.
I appreciate that I’ve been bouncing backwards and forwards through time a bit, so here’s a quick recap.
In 2011, I met Alasanna. He was attending Makumbaya Lower Basic School.
In 2012, I visited him in his village and later at his new school, Kombo Kerewan Upper Basic School.
In 2013 and 2014, I continued to visit Alasanna and his family every time I returned to The Gambia.
In 2014, I attended Alasanna’s sports day and asked him when his race was. I still haven’t given you his answer.
I’ll get back to this.
Trust me!
Alasanna supported Manchester United, so I even bought him a United home shirt as a gift.
I support Aston Villa.
You can imagine how it hurt to buy a Manchester United shirt.
Incidentally, Lamin Barrow also supports Aston Villa.
This has absolutely nothing to do with me.
He supported Villa long before we met.
Lamin Barrow is, clearly, a wise man.
Also, whenever I visited Alasanna, I’d quietly leave him with a few dalasis.
He’d never asked for money.
Not once.
At the time, I simply hoped he’d spend the money on school supplies or perhaps help his family a little.
Sadly…
I now think I know where all of that money eventually went.
Okay.
We’re catching up.
We’re now up to 2015.
This was the first year I didn’t return to The Gambia.
I’m not entirely sure why.
I think it was simply that life got in the way.
At the time, I was working full-time as a Deputy Head Teacher and, occasionally, the stars just refuse to line themselves up in the right order.
Even though I couldn’t visit, Alasanna and I kept in touch.
The letters had stopped.
Technology had taken over.
Alasanna had set up a Facebook account and, whenever he could find a mobile signal, he’d send me the occasional message through Messenger.
Sometimes he had to travel just to get a reliable connection.
But it worked.
We could still chat.
As I write this in July 2026, Lamin Barrow and I speak almost every day.
Sometimes more than once.
We’re constantly sending each other WhatsApp messages and he sends me photographs and videos so I can keep the ‘Building Futures in The Gambia’ charity website updated with everything that’s happening at the BFiG Busumbala Nursery School.
WhatsApp really is a wonderful thing.
The Gambia has embraced modern technology and, for the most part, mobile networks are now surprisingly reliable.
It wasn’t always like that.
Years ago, if Lamin wanted to send me photographs or even make a phone call, he’d often have to travel to the nearest internet café.
Those early conversations were an adventure in themselves.
You’d ask a question…
…wait…
…hear half the answer…
…lose the signal…
…ring back…
…and start all over again.
Anyway…
I digress.
Back to Alasanna.
For the first few months of 2015, our Facebook messages continued.
Then, one day, he sent me a very short message.
He’d been knocked off his bicycle by a car.
That was it.
No explanation.
No details.
Just one sentence.
This was the very bicycle that my teacher friend Nichola and I had bought for him the previous year.
I immediately contacted Lamin.
Within no time at all, he was racing over to Makumbaya to make sure Alasanna was alright.
Thankfully, he was.
The bicycle…
…wasn’t.
It was also during the first couple of months of 2015 that I discovered Alasanna’s brother, Adama—the father of Baby Peter, who they’d rather kindly named after me—was in Libya.
He sent me a Facebook friend request and we exchanged the usual pleasantries.
I never asked why he was in Libya.
It wasn’t really any of my business.
Besides…
Libya didn’t mean anything to me back then.
Why Libya?
You’ll find out soon enough.
Then…
Everything went quiet.
The messages from Alasanna stopped.
I should explain that the chronology of what happened for the rest of 2015 is a little hazy.
At some point afterwards, Alasanna lost access to his Facebook account. It disappeared completely, taking every message we’d exchanged with it.
So, the fragments of conversation I’m about to describe are reconstructed from memory rather than copied word for word.
Fortunately, I still have the handful of messages I exchanged with his brother Adama during that period. There weren’t many, but they’ve helped me piece together the timeline.
At some point, Alasanna also created a new Facebook account.
It’s still there today.
But, like I say…
After those first few months of 2015, Alasanna’s messages stopped.
His final message arrived on 14th February 2015.
He continued to call me n fama (my father).
But, occasionally, I was simply Dad.
As time passed, I’d send him the occasional greeting.
“How are you?”
“Hope you’re okay.”
Nothing.
No reply.
No indication that he’d even seen my messages.
The weeks slipped by.
The silence stretched on.
By the middle of the year, I was becoming genuinely concerned.
So I spoke to Lamin.
His response was exactly the same as when we’d heard Alasanna had been knocked off his bicycle.
He got into his taxi…
…and drove straight to Makumbaya.
A few hours later, my phone rang.
It was Lamin.
His response was simple.
“Alasanna has gone.”
“What do you mean… gone?” I asked, trying to keep the worry out of my voice.
“He has taken The Back Way.”
It was the first time I’d ever heard those words.
The Back Way.
At the time, they meant absolutely nothing to me.
But, over the following months and years, I would discover that almost every Gambian seemed to know someone who had taken “The Back Way.”
A brother.
A cousin.
A son.
A friend.
All lost to The Back Way.
“He has taken The Back Way,” Lamin said.
I didn’t know what those words meant.
I didn’t know where Alasanna had gone.
I didn’t know how he’d travelled.
I didn’t know why he’d left.
And I certainly didn’t know what lay ahead of him.
Another couple of months passed.
Gradually, I began to accept that I probably wasn’t going to hear from Alasanna again.
That made me incredibly sad.
But what could I do?
Then, in September 2015, a Facebook message appeared.
It was short.
Brutally short.
“Dad. I have been in prison. They totured me.”
I can still see that message now.
Even the spelling.
He wrote totured.
Not tortured.
I replied immediately.
“What do you mean? Are you okay?”
Somehow, I managed to snatch a very brief phone call with him.
There was no WhatsApp in those days.
International calls to West Africa were painfully expensive.
The signal faded in and out.
We kept losing each other.
But I understood enough.
He’d spent a month in prison.
He was now living in a refugee camp somewhere near Tripoli, the capital of Libya.
A man had found him some work.
He was earning a tiny amount of money.
Then…
Silence again.
About a week later, another message arrived.
“Dad. I have been mugged by child solders on the way from work. They take my money and my clothes.”
Again, I remember the spelling.
He wrote solders.
Not soldiers.
But there was absolutely no mistaking what he meant.
Another message suggested this wasn’t an isolated incident.
It happened regularly.
I stared at the screen.
I had absolutely no idea what to say.
Then…
More waiting.
Still no messages.
My concern for Alasanna’s safety continued to grow.
Then, one Sunday morning in early December, I was sitting on an exercise bike at the gym.
As usual, I was attempting to convince myself that I was exercising while actually scrolling through Facebook.
I was browsing various Gambian news pages when I came across an article published two days earlier.
As I read it…
…I felt my blood run cold.
Two days before, ISIS fighters had entered the largest refugee camp in Libya near Tripoli.
They’d taken one hundred West Africans down to a nearby river.
Lined them up.
And shot every one of them in the back of the head.
I got off the exercise bike.
I left the gym.
I drove home.
At home, the first thing I did was look for Alasanna’s brother, Adama, on Facebook.
Adama was also living in Libya.
I sent him a message.
“Hello. Have you heard from Alasanna?”
His reply came back quite quickly.
“No.”
Then, almost immediately:
“Why? Have you? Is anything wrong?”
I couldn’t tell him what I’d just read.
I didn’t want to frighten him.
So I lied.
“No. I was just wondering how he was doing.”
“Okay.”
That news story wouldn’t leave me alone.
It went round and round in my head.
Surely it couldn’t be the same refugee camp.
But the article had said it was near Tripoli.
Alasanna was living in a refugee camp near Tripoli.
I tried ringing him.
Nothing.
The following day, I was on a teaching course.
At one point, a colleague looked at me rather carefully.
“Are you alright?”
“No,” would have been the truthful answer.
Instead…
“Yep. Fine.”
I seem to remember that I was trying to hold back tears.
Tuesday came.
I checked Facebook.
Nothing.
I sent another message.
Nothing.
I tried ringing again.
Nothing.
By now, I felt physically sick.
Then, on Wednesday evening…
…a message appeared.
“Hi, Dad. How are you?”
I rang immediately.
I don’t really remember what I said.
I think I just blurted everything out.
“Alasanna… are you okay? I was really worried. I heard ISIS fighters had shot one hundred West Africans in a refugee camp.”
There was a pause.
Then he replied.
“Yes. They took two of my friends and killed them.”
By early 2016, Alasanna had crossed the Central Mediterranean and reached Italy.
He found himself in another refugee camp.
This one was very different.
Here, he was treated with dignity.
With kindness.
Like a human being.
We spoke a couple of times after he arrived.
His strong Gambian accent was starting to develop the faintest hint of an Italian twang.
It made me smile.
For a while, he suffered from severe stomach problems.
Probably all that Italian pasta.
He also seemed to spend every spare moment in the gym.
John Cena had always been his hero.
Before long…
Alasanna was beginning to look a bit like him.
Alasanna survived.
And, in Italy, he began to build a life for himself.
A couple of years ago, he returned to The Gambia to visit his family.
Lamin bumped into him on the Senegambia Strip.
“He is a very big man now,” Lamin told me.
In typical Lamin fashion…
…that was all he had to say.
I spent much of that February 2016 visit asking people about The Back Way.
Everyone seemed to know someone who’d taken it.
For some Gambians, it was spoken about almost matter-of-factly.
Some laughed when I mentioned it.
For others, it was a source of genuine heartbreak.
Suddenly, the words of Alasanna’s Head Teacher, John Gomez, began to make perfect sense.
“The problem in our country is that the students get a good education and then they go. They do not stay and help develop our country.”
That was what he meant.
He wasn’t talking about students moving to another town.
He was talking about The Back Way.
Adama had taken The Back Way.
Alasanna had taken The Back Way.
And they were just two names among thousands.
I did consider describing The Back Way – and the journey involved – in detail here.
But I don’t think I should.
There are people far better qualified than me to explain every stage of the journey.
If you’re curious, you’ll find no shortage of information.
Needless to say…
It is unimaginably dangerous.
Alasanna crossed the Sahara in an overcrowded truck run by people traffickers.
I strongly suspect he paid for that journey with the money I’d quietly given him over the previous few years, hoping it would help him stay in school.
That’s a thought I’ve carried with me ever since.
After that came Libya.
Then, eventually…
The Mediterranean.
On a tiny, overcrowded boat.
The rest of the story has become painfully familiar to all of us.
We see it on our television screens.
We hear politicians argue about it.
We read newspaper headlines.
But it’s very different when the person making that journey isn’t a stranger.
It’s a fourteen-year-old boy you once bought a Manchester United shirt for.
I’ll briefly touch on The Back Way again before I finish this chapter.
But first…
Let’s return to February 2014.
And Alasanna’s Sports Day.
Alasanna had invited me to watch him race.
Lamin had eventually managed to get Keith, Hannah and me to the event.
(After getting us slightly lost.)
I’d been unable to find Alasanna.
Fortunately…
He’d found me.
At last, I could ask the question that had been bothering me all morning.
“So…” I said enthusiastically.
“When are you running?”
“Yesterday.”
I frowned.
“What?”
“Yesterday. I ran yesterday.”
I looked at Hannah.
Hannah looked at Keith.
We all looked at Lamin.
Lamin looked at his phone.
It suddenly made perfect sense.
There were so many students competing that the Sports Day stretched over several days.
We hadn’t arrived early.
We’d arrived twenty-four hours late.
Somewhere across the sports field, a man had become seriously unwell.
People were gathering around him while others tried to help.
I think it was heatstroke.
Or perhaps exhaustion.
To be honest, I wasn’t paying much attention.
Alasanna was standing in front of me.
Looking rather expectantly.
“So…” I said, trying to recover what little dignity I had left.
“How did you do?”
“In your race?”
“How did you do?”
“I won.”
Every time I return to The Gambia, I make a point of visiting Alasanna’s family compound in Makumbaya Village.
For many years, I would sit with his father, Ensa Beyai, on the family bantaba. These days, Ensa’s legs aren’t quite as flexible as they once were, so we sit together on a pair of battered old plastic chairs outside his room instead.
Ensa doesn’t speak English and my Mandinka is still spectacularly inadequate. So, after we’ve exchanged the traditional greetings, we’ll often sit together in comfortable silence while Lamin translates whatever conversation we decide to have.
Every year I notice the same things.
Ensa seems just a little more frail.
The children are all a little taller.
And there always seems to be another baby somewhere in the compound.
Sometimes we talk about Alasanna. I’ll show Ensa the latest photographs from Alasanna’s Facebook page. These days they’re usually gym selfies. John Cena would be proud.
In those early years, though, there was always a question I desperately wanted to ask.
How does it feel to lose your sons like that?
Alasanna took The Back Way.
His brother Adama took The Back Way.
Perhaps other members of the family have too. I honestly don’t know.
I can’t begin to imagine what it must be like to watch your sons disappear on one of the most dangerous journeys in the world. To know they might not survive. And even if they do… you may never see them again.
I’ve wanted to ask Ensa that question many times.
But I never have.
Some questions simply feel too personal.
One person I always notice has changed dramatically is Baby Peter.
When I first met him, he was a baby in his mother’s arms.
Now he’s almost a young man.
During my most recent visit, in January 2026, I met him outside the compound. He was working on the new road being built through Makumbaya Village, right past the Beyai family home.
He’d already left school.
That made me sad.
In hesitant English, he asked whether I would buy him a mobile phone.
“Maybe next time,” I told him.
I hope there will be a next time.
Because I can’t help worrying about him.
When I first met Alasanna, he was about the same age Peter is now.
And I find myself wondering whether Peter already has his future mapped out.
I pray that it doesn’t involve another very long journey.
I’ve spoken to Lamin about The Back Way on several occasions.
I’ve asked him whether he ever considered taking it himself.
Without the slightest hesitation, he’s always given exactly the same answer.
“No.”
He wants to visit England.
He wants to represent the charity.
He wants to tell people about BFiG Busumbala Nursery School.
He wants to visit the many friends who’ve travelled to The Gambia to meet him over the years.
But he’ll do it the legal way.
The right way.
He has no concerns about any of his children taking The Back Way either.
And why would they?
Lamin has worked incredibly hard to give them the best education and the best opportunities he possibly can.
His eldest son, Muhammed, may well end up in Europe one day.
But, if he does, it’ll hopefully be as a medical student.
Because he wants to become a doctor.
That’s a very different journey.
Occasionally, I’ve met young Gambians who tell me they want to take The Back Way.
The most recent was in January 2024.
A young man called Baboucarr.
Or “Skinny”, as everyone knew him, because of his slight frame.
He worked at The New Wild Monkey Bar on the Senegambia Strip, so whenever Lamin and I visited, he was usually the one serving us.
He and Lamin had the sort of friendship that consisted almost entirely of taking the mickey out of each other.
It was lovely to watch.
On my final evening before flying home, Baboucarr and I found ourselves talking for quite a long time.
He told me his wages weren’t enough.
He told me he wanted to take The Back Way.
I won’t repeat everything we discussed.
But I did my very best to persuade him it was a terrible idea.
When I returned in January 2025, Baboucarr was still working in the same bar.
When I asked him about his life, he smiled.
Then he told me something I’ll never forget.
He’d decided not to take The Back Way.
Because of our conversation.
When I returned again in January 2026, he was no longer working at The New Wild Monkey Bar.
But Lamin had seen him.
He was still in The Gambia.
Still building a life there.
At least in part… because of one conversation.
I wish I’d had the chance to have that same conversation with Alasanna.
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:
