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We have wonderful news. Mariama Dampha, who we’ve been supporting since 2012, has been admitted to the University of Notre Dame Masters of Global Affairs program. Such programs are completely beyond our financial means, so crucially, she has also been offered a full scholarship and a teaching fellowship that will pay enough to fund her room and board.
Our path to meeting Mariama started in 2012, when Kebba Sanyang and I met Peace Corps volunteer Joanna Lahaie while we were all waiting for the ferry from McCarthy Island across the River Gambia on a visit to our 20+ scholarship students in the boarding program at Armitage Senior Secondary School on the island. Joanna was living in Janjanbureh and working as a teacher trainer at Armitage, and we saw many ways we could collaborate.
A few months later, I got a note from Joanna: “there is a young girl in my family compound, Mariama Dampha, who is an orphan; the head of my compound came to me seeking sponsorship for her. Frankly, given the love I have grown for her, and the fact I know she is a serious student. I went ahead and asked her to write a letter seeking sponsorship.” Joanna knew that we couldn’t use our donors’ funds for Peace Corps-nominated students, but we were delighted to provide a structure through which she or her parents could fund the scholarship.
Mariama’s life had been a struggle to that point. Her father was a nurse who married five women and fathered closed to twenty children. But he also divorced his first wife and then, when Mariama was in 2nd grade, Mariama’s mother too. Her mother moved with her four children back to her home village of Cha Kunda to live with her own mother. She was also pregnant, depressed, and malnourished; Mariama has memories of her leaving the village again and again on a cow cart for Bansang Hospital.
Her mother was also pregnant and gave birth to a malnourished baby girl, but a few months later she was re-admitted to Bansang Hospital, where she died of anemia when the hospital had none of the O+ blood type she needed. Shortly thereafter, the newborn sister died, and then her second youngest sister, leaving Mariama and her two brothers in the grandmother’s compound. Her oldest brother was sent away to a Qur’anic school in Senegal, and her younger brother went to live with her father. But although Mariama was asked to repeat 2nd grade, her father continued to send funds for her to stay in school, through grade 5. It was then that her mother’s younger sister got married to a man from Janjanbureh and decided to take Mariama with her. Which is where Mariama met her first Peace Corps volunteer, Blair Cochran, after her new uncle became a Peace Corps volunteer host.
There are some good schools in Janjanbureh, as it is the regional capital and the British had educated the sons of upcountry tribal chiefs there. In March, 2011, Mariama talked with her father on the phone and told him she was first in her 8th grade class. He was proud and told her he would send a gift, but the next day, he too died. With her uncle's help, she stayed in school and in 9th grade, Mariama had the highest test results in the entire school. She had her heart set on the prestigious boarding program at Armitage Senior Secondary School but her uncle told her he could not pay for it. So she turned to the new Peace Corps volunteer living with the family - Joanna Lahaie.
With a GambiaRising scholarship, Mariama moved onto the Armitage campus and soon became the leader of the GambiaRising students boarding there. In 10th grade, she was 2nd in her class, in 11th she was #1. Joanna organized a Math Club at the school; Mariama became its President. I visited Armitage every year, and my conversations with Mariama were always highlights of the trip.
Given her family history, it is understandable why after graduating from Armitage, Mariama wanted to study Public Health at the University of The Gambia (UTG). While there, she became active in the Student Association of Public and Environmental Health (SAPEH), where she was elected “Minister of Health”. And she was active in many public service activities: cleaning the beaches, organizing blood drives, even speaking on the radio about health issues.
In 2018, I was at a conference at Yale and met Professor Jeffrey Skolnik, whose online course on Global Public Health I greatly admired. Professor Skolnik offered to work with Yale to make his course available to students of University of The Gambia (UTG), an opportunity that excited me greatly.
When I was next in The Gambia, I met with several people who could make the necessary arrangements within UTG, and I invited Mariama to that meeting. Several months later, none of the UTG officials had moved the ball forward, and Mariama asked “Can I just do it?” And so, through SAPEH, Mariama organized the enrollment of several dozen UTG students to take the course. It took her just a few days to get everyone signed up.
In July, 2019, Mariama was awarded her Bachelor of Science degree in Public and Environmental Health, cum laude. After several internships with local clinics, in 2020 she was offered the position of Public Health Officer for the Ministry of Health and moved to Albreda on the north bank to take up her duties.
Mariama was on her way. She knew that a Master's Degree would open doors to serving in more meaningful ways, but she also knew that was beyond GambiaRising's means. So she focused on the good that she could do with the opportunities she had. That’s when things get really interesting. In 2019, former Peace Corps volunteer Mike Talbot contacted me for advice on places to stay while he would be in The Gambia studying their Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Mike's dates overlapped with the dates I would be in country meeting with Coordinators and students. " I'm staying at a businessman's home in Kotu through AirBnB; there are three bedrooms. I am traveling with my stepdaughter Emily but why don’t you take the third one?" While there, Mike joined us when we met with some of our college and university students, and asked if he could talk with some of them about Notre Dame’s Master of Global Affairs program. “As long as there’s no expectation that we could pay for such a program," I said, "please go ahead." "But there’s one other student I want to be sure you meet: Mariama Dampha." The next day, Mariama came over to the house and they met. I didn’t listen in but when she was leaving, I asked “How was it?” Mariama replied “It was very interesting. And it turns out I met Mike before.” What? “Yes, ten years ago he would visit my house when Blair was living there.”
Fast forward to last week, when Mariama shared this letter with us:
* * * * *
I think of GambiaRising as a DIY non-profit. It takes so many people pulling together to do what we are managing to do. Essentially, our "business" is opportunity. We provide a way for people to work together to give young Gambians the opportunity to get the education that will in turn give them more opportunities in their lives.
It took so many people in The Gambia and the U.S. to give Mariama the chance to create this opportunity for herself. I know we haven't heard the last of her; in fact, I hope many of you will be able to meet her in the next two years.
And I want to thank everyone who is a part of GambiaRising. We're doing this together.
Go Mariama!!
Mike
McConnell
Managing Trustee
GambiaRising
www.gambiarising.org/
1500 Park Ave Apt PH503
Emeryville, CA 94608-3578
