Though thousands of miles and an ocean apart, a meeting in West Africa brought two cities together.
Lurann Thomas, vice mayor of Greenville, took a 14 day trip to West Africa in April.
Mayor Talib Bensoudan of Gambia, West Africa a long with Vice Mayor Lurann Thomas and Vice Mayor Musa Bah of Gambia, West Africa held a meeting on April 23 in Gambia, West Africa to discuss forming a partnership with the City of Greenville.
“Two of the many goals we have for the partnership is one, bringing native people of West Africa to the 42nd Annual Mississippi Blues and Heritage Festival,” Thomas said. “The second goal is to do a culture and art piece with the students of Greenville to bring an educational awareness from the motherland.”
Ida Gaye, a native of Gambia, attended the trip with Thomas as her interpreter.
“In those two weeks, I gained so much knowledge of their culture because I attended various events to learn more about the culture and also I visited the schools in each city,” Thomas said.
During the Greenville City Council meeting Tuesday, Thomas spoke about the meeting.
“To visit a third world county – my what a remarkable trip,” she said. “The journey was unbelievable. I will never forget it as long as I lived.”
Thomas said the partnership formed “has been wonderful.”
“I spoke with the mayor there and he is very interested in forming a partnership and MACE,” Thomas said.
According to the organization, Mississippi Action for Community Education, Inc. (MACE) is a non-profit, minority rural development organization created by community leaders in 1967.
“The organization was created to stimulate physical, social and economic development in the rural Mississippi Delta. Very early in its history, MACE learned that beyond the problems of race and poverty, there exists in southern, rural communities the broader, structural problem of underdevelopment; that for genuine community development to occur, the prerequisite human and organizational capacities must first be developed, the basic community social and political structures must first be created,” MACE explains on its website.
MACE is the organizer of the Mississippi Blues and Heritage Festival.
Thomas told council members she met “an extraordinary young man” who she hopes to find a scholarship.
“His mother was my interpreter and he wants to attend college in the United States,” Thomas said. “It was a wonderful trip to have been received in such an awesome manner.”
