Greetings from Kabafita Lower Basic School. How is everyone in England? We hope you are all well. We are in the middle of the dry season and every where is very dry and dusty. It will not rain again until April.

The bananas are just coming in to season here. You can see the bananas are green but when we pick them and leave them for some days they turn yellow and are ready to be eat.

On February 18 th The Gambia celebrated 50 years of Independence. We were once part of The British Empire and Commonwealth. Portuguese settlers first came to this area of West Africa in the 1500s. And they introduced peanuts from South America. Peanuts are now our main export

Under the Tudors and the Stuarts the British and The French fought over who should control this part of Africa. The French formed the country called Senegal which surrounds The Gambia. French is spoken there.

But the British wanted to control the River Gambia because it was an important trading route and was used a lot in the slave trade So The Gambia is a long thin country 20 kilometres north and south of the river. The British run the country as a colony up to 1965.

But now we are independent country and we have our own Government and our own currency the dalasi. We also have our own flag, stamps and national anthem.

Here is the Gambian flag. The blue represents the river. The green the fertile farm land and forests and the red the sunny climate here.

And here are the words to our national anthem and we are going to sing them to you Click speaker to hear us sing the National Anthem.

On February 18 th there were big celebrations at The National stadium. Even our president was there. Each school sent 20 children and two teachers to take part in the big march.

We have only had two presidents since we gain independence in Sir Dawda Kairaba Jawara was our first Prime Minister. He is the man on the right. He became the first President when we became a Republic in The man on our left is our President now: His Excellency Professor Alhaji Dr. Yahya Jammeh. He came to power in a coup called The July 22 nd revolution twenty years ago and he has ruled the country ever since.

Our current President has done much to try to develop our country and tells us what to do to make The Gambia strong. He has many important messages for us.

The mobile phone companies like Comium and Africell sponsor many bill boards celebrating Independence

We hoped you enjoyed learning about The Gambia. We say bye for now. Next time we are going to tell you all about African drums and african drumming. Bye