We have recently completed the Madina Salaam village census for 2008, which has been conducted every two years since 2004. The aim of the census is to gather data on village growth, as well as to explore the rates of births and deaths in the village and to monitor things like school attendance and the occupations of the compound owners. In addition, other volunteers have previously been able to create a map of Madina Salaam, showing the locations and names of the owners of each of the compounds in the village. This was a big accomplishment and has given the residents of Madina Salaam a sense of pride in their village, as only a few villages in the Gambia have maps and most do not know the number of people living in them. WYCE staff hope to display the map in the Information Centre so all residents can see it and understand why the census is conducted here. In addition, we are hoping to take pictures of the residents of each compound, so that these can also be displayed in the village.
I was told that when the census began many people in the village where resistant to the idea of giving out information of the people living in their compounds, as they did not understand why they were being asked to report the names, ages and educational backgrounds of the residents. In my time working on the census I did not encounter any resistance from the local people, which suggests to me that the VDC and WYCE staff have done a good job explaining the census process to Madina residents, and is another sign that they have begun to feel a sense of pride in having maps and other statistical information about their village.
Gathering the census data was a long and involved process, but one that I really enjoyed. It took almost a month, with myself and three other volunteers working on it. We would head out in the mornings with Malang Camara, WYCE Lodge Manager, as translator and walk from compound to compound around all of Madina Salaam. In each compound we would sit down with the compound owner and get the names, ages, educational backgrounds and familial relationships of all of the people living in the compound. This is made easier for us because we take the 2006 census report with us, so for most of the compounds we only have to compare who is living there now with those that were living there two years ago. In some cases this would take only a few minutes, but at other compounds in which upwards of 40 people were living, we could be there for an hour.
After finally getting the information we needed from all the compounds, I set about to enter all the data into a spreadsheet so that we could draw conclusions from the raw data. Although I still have a lot of figures and tables to put together, the census itself is complete and we now have a final count of the people currently living in Madina Salaam, as follows:
Mandinka |
874 residents |
Fula |
188 residents |
Wolof |
171 residents |
Balanta |
124 residents |
Serre & Jola |
22 residents |
Total |
1,379 residents in Madina Salaam |
This total number of residents shows just how quickly the village is growing; it is about a 20% increase from the 2006 population of 1,113 residents, although white people living here have not been included in the census (I have been told it is because they are generally unresponsive to being questioned for the census). It is also clear that school attendance is up and infant mortality rates are down, although these numbers I have yet to calculate fully.
It was a fascinating process to learn how this information is gathered and to gain insight into how people in Madina Salaam, and the Gambia, live. I found it especially interesting that, similar to Western cultures, many of the women here do not want to report their actual ages; we would have women clearly in their 40s telling us that they were 25. Learning about all the complicated family relationships and how the people take in less fortunate relatives was very enlightening for me and I feel that it really added to my experience here and my understanding of the Gambian people. I would love to return in 2010 to help with census again at that time and see how much things have changed in two years.
Sharon Richter - (WYCE Volunteer)
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