Scrabble in Africa

With temperatures fluttering around zero all day its time to digitise more photos from the past. 
I came across this one.
 
We were on holiday in Gambia visiting my friend Rosemary Long, former Women’s editor of the Glasgow Evening Times, now married to Ray, a local lad.
 
One day he made a surprise request. His local village wanted to know if the two visiting toubabs, or “white faces” would play scrabble. 
 
So we set off and in due course reached the village on the outskirts of Banjul, and we sat under a baobab tree away from the sweltering heat and the whole village gathered to watch this match.
 
M is something of a Scrabble expert and I am an average player.  My fear was that the game would end in a humiliating defeat for our host’s friends 
especially when I saw the battered state of the board and the big broken down dictionary with chunks missing. 
 
But they played a tight, tactical game and to this day we still haven’t figured out exactly what that strategy was. All I remember is that we were resoundingly beaten (and no they were not cheating).
 
Later Ray explained scrabble is a game the whole village play, and yes they had pushed forward their two champions to challenge the visiting toubabs or “ white faces”.
 
Go to extra for some light relief