"Roots" Village

Juffureh

entrance to Juffureh

According to Alex Haley's novel Roots, the Gambia River provided one of the clues that helped him trace his American family history back to Africa. The words "Kamby Bolongo" were among the few words that his family had passed down from generation to generation; he discovered that a bolongo was a "moving water" or "river" in the Mandinka language, so he concluded that the phrase probably referred to the Gambia River. His theory was confirmed when he traveled to Juffure, The Gambia, on the north bank of the river, and found that their oral family histories complemented his own. The Mandinka language does not have a /g/ phoneme, so the river is therefore pronounced "Kambiya" rather than "Gambia".

Text from

boats at anchor high and dry at low tide

for navigation on the Gambia river