GAMWRITERS

 I have never met D.P. Gamble but have exchanged a few sporadic correspondences in the 1970s and 80s--- and also purchased a few of his compilations of material on colonial and pre-colonial Gambia. He was undoubtedly one of the best anthropologists to work on the Gambia--- and preserved a vast reservoir of the Gambia's cultural memory in published and unpublished monographs. He was always curious, even when we last communicated, about clarifying local anthropological concepts with local Gambians. At one point, I received a query from him asking me about the "deniankye;" such was the extent of Gamble's cultural curiosity. He had the anthropologist's best instinct---going beyond the "surface" culture of peoples--- and trying to understand the "cultural software" that made them tick. Gamble understood Gambians in a way that no outsider could. He studied Gambian languages, preserved Gambian oral and written traditions, and spent extended periods, studying the social anthropology of Gambian villages (eg., his work on Kerewan). What the ordinary Gambian took for granted, Gamble probed deeper to give us comparative insights. My friend, Prof. Sulayman Nyang, consistently told me Gamble was someone whom the Gambian government should have honored with a state recognition; unfortunately, it would perhaps be done someday posthumously. May his rich scholarship, which Gambia will forever be grateful for, be transformed into a great peace for his soul to rest on.

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The message about the death of Professor David P. Gamble arrives while I am away from home, and it casts a shadow over my travels.  I can add little to what others have already said about Professor Gamble besides reinforcing his model as a serious and generous scholar.  When I was in San Francisco for a history conference a number of years ago, my historian friend Peter Mark and I made an homage to Professor Gamble's to pay our respects to the pathfinder and elder of all of our professional work.  He fixed us dinner, showed us his work, and was as affable and kind as a person could want.  Then, afterward, he stayed in touch (mostly by typed correspondence), complemented me on my work, sent me updates of his detailed Gambia bibliographies, and joined with me in our criticism of Alex Haley's corruption of Gambia's deep, rich history.  Perhaps the most important qualities he left us all are those of openness and sharing.  I believe that everything Professor Gamble collected or found scholarly use of in The Gambia he deposited in one or another Gambian repository--the National Archives or one of the NCAC offices--and as so many of you have attested, he was eager to share everything he had.  He pointed the way for those of us who collected oral traditions in The Gambia to make our materials available for all who might follow--a rare quality for historians, I might add, who have shown a tendency to regard materials they recorded as their own, private archive--and he remained the best model for scholarly openness through his entire life.  I am humbled to write alongside those who knew Professor Gamble better than I, but I would be remiss if I did not write to add how very important this man was to several generations of anthropologists and historians who followed.  He was elder, alkalo, kanda, and mansa for modern Gambian studies.  I agree with others that he should receive state recognition.  Some day, indeed, he will. . . Inshallah.