Updated
May 11, 2001

Gambia Tourist Support
About this Site

May 2001. Our first year target was exceeded.
We are now hoping to increase the number of visiting members from 50 to 80 parties, so around 150 people from now till April 2002.
Our new on the road office and restaurant in Kololi should dramatically increase the number of drop in tourists, which we hope will further increase membership.

May 2001 Update -
For general news about GTS see our News Pages

Visits to the site continue to increase, (200+ a week) maybe these are new visitors or old faithfuls returning to see what's new.
With over 350 pages and 750 images it is now one of the largest sites devoted to the Gambia. Feed back from visitors is excellent but the search engines continue to list us pages down the results when searching for Gambia.

Astute readers will have realised that we are having a major problem with Lamin who we trusted so totally with our resources. I don't totally regret the trust, but his demands for money to transfer the Brufut compound, that he bought for us and the repayment or return of the car, now that he has decided to cease being a GTS partner looks depressingly like turning into a court case against him - not the outcome I had expected from our offer of help to him and his family, but unfortunately an experience all too often encountered.

Hopefully apart from reporting the legal process, it will not affect the site or the newly registered GTS - Gambia Tourist Support & Charitable Works in the Gambia or our operation from our new premises at the Dardeema Restaurant in Kololi.

Offers of help to impove our ratings on the search engines have come to nothing and we are now thinking about some targetted advertising to increase tourist awareness of the site. A bit of me still thinks 'just let it grow organically' but on the Gambia side more and more people are relying on GTS for an income they can earn and that means getting more members and visitors to the new GTS centre in Kololi.

Any ideas . . . . . or advice will be very gratefully accepted
email me please: GambiaGTS@lineone.net

February 2001 Update -
The number of hits on the site has increased significantly since Christmas and the nimber of Members has risen as well. Offering Member accomodation has made a difference, but we are starting to pick up membes from site visitors who have dipped into the site from springlast year and now friends of members are starting to join for holidays they are planning as a result of the good feedback they have received.

We have had our disasters - but reported them and really hope that people are not put of by our honesty over these issues.

Our new links with Bird Safari Camp are very exciting, because it offers us the ability to spread our very individual approach to tourist services to a wider audience. BUT it should be stressed that GTS is not BSC and BSC is not GTS and neither should be judged in comparison with the other - we actually offer quite different products, but hope that the visitors to Gambia will benefit greatly from the association.

This page is more about site than news - and we are delighted that for whatever reason the site is getting very favourable comments from the guests who sign but regret that our ranking is still so low.

Mark from BSC has offered his help to see why. We look forward to reporting even better figures by January next year, 2002.

November 2000 Update - I have neglected this page for some months, partly because of the lack of time over the summer and partly because GTS Kololi and GTS UK go to sleep during the rainy season as few tourists are around and no members were visiting until November 2000.

Njundu visited the UK over the summer months, Lamin confirmed that he had purchased a compound in Brufut. Helen my wife decided to apply for teaching jobs in Inner London, got one, accepted it, so we put the house up for sale and have moved into a small flat in central London with India and Owen. Adam got a job in a hotel in York and Toby got his degree in 'Social Policy' from Manchester University.

We bought a 20 foot container to fill with items donated from many sources and raised just over £300 towards the cost of sending it to The Gambia - this leaves a shortfall of over £2000, but will provide a wide range of the materials that we will need for the compound in Brufut and acted as a depository for all our posessions gathered over 25 years of married life. It left the UK in October and should arrive during November.

I paid a surprise visit to Lamin - Foday knew I was going, partly to see the new compound and arrange for the container's arrival but also to agree GTS operational issues and draw up a partnership agreement between Lamin, Foday and myself.

Our aim is to have 100 visiting members between January and December 2001 (50 couples - averaging 2 couples a week during the dry season)

Again we agreed we did not have the money to advertise apart from using the NET but agreed that we should encourage visiting members to be active in encouraging their friends to visit Gambia and to remind them to tell people about GTS.

We now have the car, the motor bike, the family compound to let in Manjai as well as the shop in Kololi and the compound in Brufut. The organisation in Kololi has altered, with Foday taking full charge of the money and the shop which we all agreed had to pay for itself or would have to go. The option to rent a shop from Judy Harvey, Lamin's emotional partner was ruled out until we saw if the telecentre could be made to pay.

The Brufut compound is more than excellent and work has progressed at such an incredible pace that we hope to run some small events there before the end of the current season in May 2001.

Gill a friend in Exeter and ex TV person hopes to setup a similar enterprise in Moroco and will help us get a TV travel show spot during autumn 2001, we expect the Kololi structure to be robust enough and developed enough to cope with greater GTS member numbers by Jan 2002.

Some updating of the site went on in late October, but the move to London and all that that involves has reduced the sort of activity that I would really like to be making.

Finally, there are major changes at work, the consultancy report has resulted in much of the top management going and at present new appointments are being considered. I still feel that there are big changes to be made before the organisation can move forwards. Maybe the plans for Gambia will need to be moved forwards, there is a part of me that wishes this greatly, we shall see.

Early June 2000 Update - May had its ups and downs as far as the site was concerned and also as far as the GTS operation. Worst news is our failure to be listed by any search engines except Alta Vista. The links from other Gambian sites are now bringing visitors and new members.
I have applied to be a Google editor.
I have totally reworked the front page and added a site search hosted by Atomz.com and a guest book hosted by Freepolls.com
I regularly spend hours adding, improving or amending sections and including more graphics.
Lineone have now increased my webspace to 50Mb, which considering I have still used less than 3 gives me loads of future scope.
In conjunction with Quip - A telephony company - all calls to Lineone are TOTALLY FREE, providing you spend £5 a month on normal UK or International calls using Quip and pay a one off £20 for a Quip connection box.

To end for this time - Still no news on the compound and with the house now in the full swing of being sold we need a location for a container load of stuff to be housed safely. Lamin is on the case - but in Gambia when it comes to things like this it is either instant or painfully slow or very costly!!

Early May 2000 Update - I don't want to dwell on the April riots, but it has been a factor that has caused us many thoughts and doubts. On the other hand America and London also had riots and demonstrations, quite different and with no loss of life but it puts things in perspective to remember that 80 people a day are killed in America due to gun violence.
Still no news about the land, that has also caused doubts and fears of a more personal nature.
The site has developed well, we are getting more enquiries and in addition to support donations and we have visiting members during May.
Alta Vista now lists us if you search for gambia & tourist and we hope that the other engines will start to list us soon under just the gambia search. I hope it is just a question of time.
I continue to request that other sites list us among their links BUT few have done so - which is a shame.
What really helps are the unexpected ups - early May we had a fabulous contact offering GTS members a BIG discount on holiday insurance, it will save them more than their membership fee.
The other big change is that Helen has a new teaching job, this will mean that we will have to sell the house in Whitchurch - Shropshire. Gulp!! As the kids leave it is too big anyway, but it also clears the decks for the GTS project.
On trying to open a Clubs/Societies/Charity account with NatWest all the form filling etc we were told it had to be a business account but that would be free for 18 months - so back to the drawing board on that one. I was actually rather annoyed as it cost us valuable hours reading all the forms etc, I felt we had been led along - Very under impressed.
However after a few phone calls The Halifax - came up with their Treasurers Account, so hopefully that will be up and running shortly, enabling cheques to be made to Gambia Tourist Support Fund, rather than our personal names. Much Better - Well Done Halifax

Early APRIL 2000 Update - Most of the last month has been adding pages and trying to improve the site, we included the Gambian National Anthem on the Recent History page of The Gambia section and continue to add more pictures. I have been surprised that we still have 8.5 Mg of our 10 Mg allocation by Lineone and most pages still load as fast if not faster than other sites I have visited.
I have sent a lot of emails to other Gambia sites, adding them to my other sites list and asking them to add us. Thanks and a BIG SHOUT to those that have but most haven't. I have also registered with the larger search engines, so I hope that soon a search for Gambia will include GTS.
People have emailed to say they like the SiteMap so I have included a link to it from each of the major section areas. I have not really come up with a suitable way of showing what is new on the site or what has been updated. I am working on a new and updated link screen from the home page but it is not ideal.

March 2000 Update - With GTS registered in the Gambia by Lamin, we started to go public with the site. We contacted other Gambia sites, agreeing to include links to them, if they would include us as well. I sent a cheeky email to every contact I could think of, with the site address and a plea to pass it on like a chain letter.

Today we registered the domain www.GambiaTouristSupport.com with a link to the longer more difficult Lineone address, the only cost was with the actual registration organisation of $70 for two years.

November 1999. - This site has been under the mental process of construction since our first Gambia visit, but it actually took shape very quickly once the computer tools and skills were gathered together. My current ISP is 'Lineone' and I tried first with their editors, but in the end used Word 97 and let MS do the work in HTML.

The motivation for all the hard work is the firm belief that it will make a difference to the lives of the young people in The Gambia, who welcomed us as if we were part of their family.
If you visit - I am sure you will receive the same welcome.

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