By Yero S. Bah
A high school dropout who started going to the beach in Senegambia as bumster in the year 2000, Matarr Jadama recalled financial constraints prevented him from completing his education as he hailed from a poor family background.
Due to this financial hardships, Mr. Jadama decided to join the bumster lifestyle at the famous Senegambia beach by first becoming a cleaner at Badala Beach {Park Hotel}, Palm Beach {Hotel}, and Lemon Creek {Hotel Resort} before becoming a “beach-boy” during which he struggled for years.
He recounted that life as bumster at the Gambian beaches “is challenging”, requiring real struggles and perseverance in order to survive the situation. He said the tourism military personnel (Tourism Security Unit-TSU) stationed at the Tourism Development Area (TDA) used to beat them up mercilessly, describing their [alleged] actions as “barbaric and inhumane” in those days.
But as Jadama indicated, he could not continue with such embarrassment, reasoning that it’s so humiliating to be beaten up by the security forces at the beaches for just looking for a living. As a result, Jadama quitted and created the Gambia Local Tour [Tourist] Guide to formalize and legalize his tourism adventure. “I knew been a bumster was not for me.”
The Gambia Local Tour is a social media page that Jadama runs to attract potential customers who are mostly European tourists, for a guide across the country for free; but he gets some tips from the clients he shows around, to earn a living. He informed this medium that, since the creation of his Local Tour Guide five years ago, his life has changed for the better; ”I have seen some great improvements”.
After doing a diploma course in Computer literacy and marketing, Jadama said he now gets correspondence from European tourists, asking for his services, before they actually come to the Gambia for tourism.
The bumster-turned-tour guide said the Gambia has some fantastic tourist attraction sites, but insinuates that the sites are poorly managed and some of the sites are even neglected. He cited places like Juffureh and Jangjangbureh as sites that could have been used to market the Gambia to the outside world, vouching that “The Kunta Kinteh story alone can market the Gambia as it hits the entire world.”
Jadama bemoed that the Juffureh Island is even threatened by the rising sea levels, and claimed that there is nothing to offer to tourists in those historical sites, compared to places like Goree Island in Senegal.
The local tour guide continued that, one tourist even claimed that his father used to contribute towards the Roots Homecoming Festival, but the said tourist was surprised when he visited Juffureh and found “nothing attractive” at the museum in Juffureh.
[It could be recalled that, the event aimed: to bring together Africans and the people of African descent to commemorate the forced enslavement of Africans in the Atlantic Slave Trade system and to celebrate the richness and diversity of Gambian and African culture as a prelude to the establishment of a Diaspora Heritage Centre at Juffureh.]
The former bumster noted that before the coronavirus outbreak business was better; he, however, lamented that as at now, “Living [earning a living] is a problem for me, I got friends who supposed to come but coronavirus has stopped everything.”
As Jadama posited, the best way to improve tourism sector in the Gambia is through the promotion of cultures, traditions as well as put up better tourism infrastructures. He noted that tourists visit the Gambia mainly because of the admiring cultures and traditions, and also the historical sites that Gambians have.
The local Tour Guide’s vision, as he informed Mansa Banko Online, is to create a fully-fledged Tour Guide company that would employ as many Gambian youths as possible. He intimated that youths of the Gambia can stay in the country, but only if opportunities are created for them.
Jadama concluded with the observation that most of the tourists now visiting the Gambia, are old tourists who just fell in love the country.
