Mrs Pauline Taylor, a 63 year old British National, presently residing in the Gambia, said that she had been coming to the Gambia for many years before she got married to a Gambian man, who was 43, name withheld. According to her, they had applied for a visa for 6 months but the husband was turned-down. Mrs Tailor made the decision to come over and live with her husband.

In an interview with Women’s weekly, Mrs Pauline accounted how her husband dashed her hope of finding a new life in the Gambia, turning away from her.

However, before she had arrived in the Gambia, her husband had made it very clear that he didn’t want her here. And his reason was, “people would inform her that he was a family man”. She revealed that when she arrived in the country, she bought him a taxi but he was always reluctant  to take her out, either to the shop or to the bank. She noted that he was used to calling  his brother, who was also a taxi driver, to come and pick her so that they make money out of her, even though her husband was a taxi driver and that  she had bought him a taxi.

Pauline narrated that "During Christmas, I stayed at a hotel with my husband, the cost of which stay I paid for. And one day I noticed that a 100pound sterling was missing in my wallet.  At that time he was howling at me to buy him a compound, a car and to give him money, which suggestion I refused. When I asked him about the lost money, he denied knowing about it. But when he went into the bathroom, I found the 100pound in his wallet.”

Mrs Taylor went on to say that the howling for a compound, car and money still continued; not only from her husband but also the family members. It went up to a situation when she couldn’t take it anymore. So she decided to move to a motel without telling her husband. After a continuous telephone calls which she did not answer to, came a text on her mobile phone, which read “you know Gambia is a small country, give yourself up or leave the country today, we are looking for you”.

Still on the push and pull, Mrs Taylor said that the next thing she heard was a knock on her door, a man from the High Court issued her with divorce papers. According to her, since then there has been no contact with the man again and the divorce hearing is on Monday the 14 of April, 2008 at the high court in Banjul.”I will contest the divorce because while he is still married to me, he is not free to take another wife. Not after obtaining money, like he has done, from me.  In the five years of knowing him, I spent 21 thousand pounds“, she concluded.