Braintree and Witham Times, Thursday, September 2, 1993 

Youngster goes to help in The Gambia

TWO years after an immigration row, an orphan from the Gambia is back in his homeland helping an Essex-based effort to send medical aid there.

Gosfield schoolboy Sisawo Jobarteh, now 17, was at the centre of a fierce battle. by his guardian, Witham businessman Simon Wezel, when immigration officials banned him as he tried to return to the UK in August 1991.

Now the teenager, who eventually won the right to stay in the UK for private education, has returned to the Gambia for four weeks to help Clacton man Terry Palmer find a home for 35 hospital beds, his first trip there since the controversy.

And Mr Wezel, managing director of East Way Industrial Estate firm

Continental Thomas Boers, is keeping his fingers crossed there will be no immigration hitches when he returns via Gatwick to resume schooling at Gosfield.

" It should go smoothly but then on the other hand I am not sure," said Mr Wezel.

" He is worried and I am worried. There shouldn't be any problem because he has got a visa for this country. He is entered into a fee-paying school, the fees have been paid and there should be no problem whatsoever," he added.

During his holiday Sisawo has managed to find clinics in desperate need of the 35 beds, donated by a hospital in Kettering.

Mr Palmer, of Kings Road, author of a travel guide to The Gambia, will

be arranging for their transport with a container of medical aid destined
for the African country in November.

" He has spoken to the chief medical officers in several provinces and basically all the beds are allocated and transport is being arranged. He got all that done," explained Mr Wezel.

When the youngster returns in September he will go back to Gosfield School for his fmal year before sitting GCSE exams.

Sisawo, a former pupil at Thurstable School in Tiptree, was threatened with deportation and spent a year in " exile ' in Holland in 1991 and 1992 after immigration officials claimed he was really 20 years old after a mix up with his passport.