Eliza wrote:-
"I found that life in the rural villages, although equally poverty-stricken, had a certain dignity and stability to it, and I saw many rather poor folk but they looked (to my eyes) reasonably happy."

I am sure that Eliza would confirm that the sense of real community in the rural Sene-Gambian villages has to be experienced to be believed.
We were visiting and staying the night in a friend's family compound in a remote North Bank village in The Gambia earlier this year. We took a sack of rice with us, piled on the roof - along with the goats & chickens - of the beaten-up old minibuses that are the only form of public transport in that part. We bought the rest of the food for our stay in the nearby town market and the women of the compound cooked and served a right royal feast and we were served in the proper West Afican way with the food on one huge dish which everyone sat round to eat - though to cater for our European sensibilities we were supplied with a spoon each rather than eating with our hands like the Africans were. Tasty titbits were moved over in the direction of us, the guests, to savour.
When the compound-master had ensured that we were all absolutely stuffed, he gathered up the huge dish which still had a lot of food on it and explained that he was taking it to the next compound because he didn't think that they had had a lot to eat lately.
Imagine that happening anywhere over here!

Just writing this makes me long to be out there again, but I won't be going until February. I cannot bear to think of this way of life being destroyed by religious fundementalists.