Gadlinks for Wednesday 9.23.09


I’ve been away from home for two months (9 weeks, to be exact)! Today, I made the journey home, and it feels oh so good to be going home for the fall. For this reason alone, you’ll be reading a collection of homeward bound Gadlinks today. I hope you enjoy these selections!

‘Til tomorrow, have a great evening!

More Gadlinks HERE.

There’s no one as Irish as Barack Obama

President-elect Barack Obama is truly multicultural. His heritage list has added up during this year’s electoral race: Kenyan, Indonesian, Hawaiian, and Kansas’ian? Now it turns out that, like any good American mutt, Obama is Irish, too.

According to a search undertaken by Ancestry.co.uk, Obama’s maternal roots can be traced to the village of Monegal in Ireland’s County Offaly. Apparently the future President’s great-grandfather was a shoemaker from the village who eventually emigrated to New York.

A musical group from the village, Hardy Drew and the Nancy Boys, has even written a song for the occasion.



The chorus of the song says: O’Leary, O’Reilly, O’Hare and O’Hara / There’s no one as Irish as Barack O’Bama…
and the lyrics go on to suggest that Obama is as Irish bacon and cabbage and call for the President-elect to get his jig on doing Riverdance.

During the recent election hubbub, the villagers of Monegal have claimed Obama as their own and invited him to come and visit the village, with hopes that the President-elect’s search for his Irish roots will also boost tourism to the quiet town.

30 years after Alex Haley’s Roots, Juffureh is still a travel destination

It’s been 30 years since Alex Haley’s Roots became a cultural touchstone in the United States. For those of you too young to remember, this book chronicles the life of Haley’s ancestor Kunta Kenteh who was captured in The Gambia and sold into slavery. The book was a blockbuster and the TV miniseries made LaVar Burton a known actor. Nowadays, many know Burton as Lt. Geordi LaForge from the Star Trek TV series and Roots has moved out of the radar of popular culture.

The recent NPR story about the 30th year anniversary got me thinking about Juffureh, the Gambian town where Kunta Kinteh lived. When Roots came out, Juffureh was put on the map as a tourist place to visit. Haley’s distant relatives spoke to those who came to this small village for a look-see in combination with a visit to nearby James Island where Africans were herded onto ships for the grim journey across the Atlantic.

Several years after Roots influenced American consciousness, I headed to The Gambia myself as a Peace Corps Volunteer. I never made it to Juffreh for whatever reason, probably because, on free weekends, I visited volunteers who were posted in other towns. Juffureh, however is still a tourist destination. Gambia Tours and Travel Ltd. offers a day trip to Juffureh where visitors travel up the Gambia River for the tour that looks like something I would really like to take. Haley’s relatives still talk with visitors. It would be interesting to see how the last 30 years have impacted them.

I have been to Goree Island off the coast of Dakar, Senegal which was also a large slave trading port. Goree Island is a stunning contrast to what humans can do-lovely architecture with a Portuguese influence on one hand– and utter cruelty and devastation on the other. What I like about these tours is that they show both.

Word for the Travel Wise (08/26/06)

After analyzing our Gambia country category up to this point and realizing there isn’t much here aside from Neil’s entry on sex tourism for women I thought now would be a nice time to maybe share some activities all tourists might be interested in checking out. The Gambia is the smallest country in Africa if I’m not mistaken and the most popular attraction amongst tourists is the Roots” excursion. Based off the historic epic of slave trade and freedom by Alex Haley visitors take a 15 minute walk to the village of Juffureh, explore the slave museum and later take a boat trip over to the former slave fortress of James Island.

Today’s word is a Mandinka word used in The Gambia:

jelum – how much

The Mandinka language is a Mandé lang spoken by approximately 1.2 million Mandinka people in Mali, Senegal, The Gambia, and Guinea-Bissau, however it is the main language the Gambia. Learning this one online is going to be a toughie. Wiki has a couple of words listed otherwise you’ll want to swing this Mandinka.org site which could be helpful, but didn’t seem like the friendliest language learning tool. Good luck!