On Friday morning (January 11) Devizes MP Claire Perry is flying to The Gambia for a week-long visit to the village of Gunjur which has been linked with Marlborough for over thirty years. Going with her is her thirteen year-old daughter, Eliza. They will live in a family compound in the village.
Mrs Perry first promised to visit Gunjur when she met the Marlborough Brandt Group (MBG) while she was still a Parliamentary candidate. 
One of MBG’s founders and now its Director, Dr Nick Maurice, is already in Gunjur – his forty-fifth visit to the country. He will be showing Mrs Perry and Eliza what the Group have achieved, its plans for the future and how the link has affected both Gunjur and Marlborough.
Soon after MBG was founded in 1981, the Group inaugurated the link with Gunjur which is in the south of the country, a mile from the sea and although generally called a village is home to about twenty-five thousand people. They have no running water and no electricity beyond a few generators.
Over the years about fourteen hundred people from Gunjur and Marlborough have been on exchange visits. One of those who came on an MBG exchange and studied at Swindon College, Madi Jatta, has just been made head of Gambia’s civil service, and another ‘MBG graduate’, Bolong Touray, is headmaster of the country’s largest primary school.
While she’s on what is a ‘private visit’, Mrs Perry will formally open Gunjur’s new market. The construction of this building was the project undertaken by the group of St John’s and Marlborough College students who spent a month in Gunjur last summer under MBG’s auspices.
So it was very appropriate that when Mrs Perry and Eliza went to MBG’s Manton offices last week to be briefed, they met St John’s student Jess Shields. She was one of the summer visit group who built most of the market – and she was able to tell Eliza what to expect in Gunjur.
At the briefing were representatives from the Gambian community in Bristol – two of whom, Lamin Manjang and Malang Dabo, came originally from Gunjur. They told Mrs Perry about the village’s history and its religious communities. Gunjur is very largely a Muslim community.
Nick Maurice told Mrs Perry he was delighted she had made the time to go to Gunjur – at which point she laughed and added ‘finally’. He was especially glad she was taking Eliza and that she would, as a Governor of St John’s Academy, hear some of MBG’s proposals for future contacts between Marlborough’s international baccalaureate students and the village.
While she’s in Gunjur, Mrs Perry and Eliza will meet Lilli Loveday who’s from Marlborough and now lives in The Gambia. She’s working with a an American charity on education and women’s rights – a topic Mrs Perry has said she is very keen to find out about in Gunjur.
Mrs Perry said she had decided to make the visit when she realised how important the relationship between Marlborough and Gunjur has been to both communities. She says she’s glad to give her daughter “the chance to experience a completely different way of life” and it would be good to give her time “off the exam treadmill”.
Far from dreading the visit, Eliza said she was excited and thought she was very lucky to be making the trip: “It will be specially interesting to experience life without running water.”
Also at the briefing was a BBC Television News reporter from Bristol and his report is scheduled to go out in BBC Points West (6.30pm – BBC1) on Friday, January 11.
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