Gillian Gibbons: Choosing a life of adventure was the best decision I ever made

Aug 20 2008 by Emma Pinch, Liverpool Daily Post

Despite jail, the threat of 40 lashes and a baying mob calling for her execution, ‘Teddy-bear teacher’ Gillian Gibbons tells Emma Pinch she has no regrets

HOME has been a number of places for Gillian Gibbons over the past year. It’s been a comfortable house in Aigburth, a school apartment in Khartoum, personalised with wall hangings from the local market – and, for a terrifying five days, it was a filthy, rat-infested prison cell.

Now she lives in an apartment near Beijing, still suffering the occasional nightmare but feeling she’s largely succeeded in putting the past behind her.

She’s currently on a fleeting visit to see friends and family in Liverpool. Her uniform of choice is a frank smile, a mass of springy brown curls and a practical pair of sandals. It’s hard to imag- ine a less likely-looking felon.

“I’m of the opinion that bad things can happen to you anywhere,” says 54-year-old Gillian, philosophically. “There were two things I always wanted to do since I was little, one was teach and the other was travel, but, when I was 18, gap years weren’t invented. Like many people my age, I looked in envy at young people setting off to see the world with a Rough Guide in one hand and their parents’ credit card in the other.

“People say ‘life is too short’, but in my family it became sadly true. My sister-in-law died in her forties and my brother died in his fifties. When my marriage broke up, I was faced with a stark decision.

“I could spend the remainder of my life surrounded by memories and regrets of what might have been or I could change my life radically. The sensible person in me thought about job security and my pension. The adventurous person thought of new horizons and challenges, exotic locations and a new beginning.

“Even allowing for what happened next, it was the best decision I ever made.”

What happened next brought the spotlight of the world’s media onto the former Dovecot primary school teacher.

After being placed at the Unity School, in Sudan, she found herself facing 40 lashes after being accused of insulting Islam’s prophet – because she let schoolchildren call a teddy bear Mohammed.

“It’s hard to describe how I felt about what happened,” she recalls. “Mostly I was terrified. Often I cried and occasionally I indulged in the 'Why me? What have I done to deserve this?’”

One of the worst things for Gillian was having no idea what was going on. “Even on the day I went to court, no-one told me where we were going.I lost half a stone and my hair started to fall out.

“In addition, prison is so mind- bogglingly boring. I swore I would never say I was bored again after suffering hour after hour with nothing to do, nothing to look at, Šor anyone to talk to.”

On November 29 last year, Gillian was finally put on trial at the Khartoum North Criminal Court. In the event she was spared flogging, but sentenced to 15 days in custody after being convicted of insulting Islam.

Even after the trial, events were incredibly traumatic.

She was worried about her family, “the mob” and being taken to the women’s prison. She says people didn’t realise that being ripped away from her home – which she wasn’t allowed to go back to – her job, her friends and especially her class, felt like a huge loss.

In Merseyside, her letterbox was crammed with missives from all over the world bearing the words: 'The Teddy Bear Teacher, Liverpool’.

“People would shake my hand or hug me in the streets,” she recalls. “After a while, I decided it was time to put the past behind me and even though I still have the occasional nightmare, I have largely achieved this.ŠIt could have been a lot worse. There are a few people in Sudan who I will find it difficult to forgive, but one cannot hold a whole nation or religion responsible for the actions of a few who, I believe, used me for their own ends.”

Incredibly, she was planning her new foreign sojourn while still behind bars in Africa.

“I had discussed it in prison with the British consulate,” she says. “I joked that I should go to China because no-one had heard of me there. I was worried that my notoriety would prevent me from getting a job. This ended up being true. I was offered a job in Thailand which was then vetoed by the Governors of the school.”

So China did end up being her new home, and this summer during the school holidays she set out again on a month’s trip spanning the entire breadth of the country. During her solo travels, she writes blogs for friends “so that I didn’t feel I was by myself” and to share some of the wonder at the strange world around her.

She knows to expect the unexpected and the value of a sturdy sense of humour.

Says Gillian: “I remember lying in bed in Sudan, trying to sleep, watching the ceiling fan go round.” (There wasn’t much to do in the evenings, she explains). ‘This is the maddest thing you have ever done,’ I mused to myself. Then I added, ‘This is the maddest thing anyone could have done,’ and then I started to laugh.”

emma.pinch@dailypost.co.uk

Extract from Gillian’s Chinese travel blog >>>