Already for a couple of years, I was thinking of a New Year night in a bath suit, but I wanted to stay at home for Christmas, so there were only eight days left from my daughter’s winter holiday to spend it somewhere where the sun was shining, but still not too far away, the limit was not farther than six hours flying. This was the main criterion when I started to look for a warm land in December.Soooo – The Gambia. I knew almost nothing about this country, only the geographical location and that it is an Islamic country. Thanks to google and a travel book, I declared myself prepared for Gambia adventure. We landed in Banjul, the capital of The Gambia (although not the biggest city), after exactly six hours flying from Amsterdam. We flew over the Sahara Desert, which seen from the airplane is just mind-blowing. I was looking at what seemed to be sand dunes, sometimes bright red, sometimes golden and I was just thinking: „This world is such a wonder!”
I still find it unrealistic that on the same day you can have your morning coffee sitting comfortably in your Leen Bakker armchair, ignoring the only two degrees outside, and in the evening to have dinner on the restaurant’s terrace in the warmth or thirty degrees. The miracle of the modern world doesn’t stop amazing me, this fascinating world and its humans which created the possibility to wake up in Europe and go to sleep in Africa!
Although on the official sites in Romania I have found the information that the visa can only be taken from the Gambia Embassy in Paris, after several investigations I discovered that you can get the visa at the passport control points at Banjul Airport and it is charge fee.
Our accommodation was Palma Rima, a resort with bungalows and a small hotel, located in Kololi. The resort is classified as four stars, but in fact it is actually three stars, easily compared with the Romanian hotels built on Ceaușescu’s golden years and sort of painted with a bit of lime and some light grey towels which once were white. Luckily the swimming pool was very clean, according to their site it seems to be the largest swimming pool in the Gambia!?!! The truth is I was not bothered at all by the accommodation, anyway, we did not see the room much, only when we woke up and went to sleep 🙂
The first day was an easy day, walking along the Atlantic Ocean and swimming in the biggest swimming pool of Gambia 😉 Later that evening, we planned the following days, having no intention to spend eight days on the edge of the pool, even if the biggest one!
The plan for the second day was several villages from the southwest Gambia, towards Senegal border, the city of Serekunda, Allahein River by a traditional boat pirogue (kind of a larger, long canoe made of wood; an authentic pirogue boat is hollowed out of the trunk of one single tree), the beach of Kartong and the fishing village of Tanji. Enough for a day, right? The first stop was on the side of the road for an impromptu breakfast with bread, butter and jam, chewed at the same time as staring intensely at a termite mound over two meters high. I was chewing my breakfast and having a whole inner talk: “Holly molly, how in the name of whatsoever can such small creatures create such big things? That means teamwork, boy! How she , the termite queen, organizes all the work process and the fertilization process and the multiplication process of the tribe. I don’t think it is actually called a tribe, I think it’s a termite colony, anyway, good job queen, the locals are right, you’re the real boss lady!”
That’s how I found out that the taller the mound is, the deeper is built underground. The social life of termites is very simple and well organized on three social classes: workers, soldiers and fertile termites (queen and kings). Termites have one or more queens and several fertile males called kings. The queen is the “head of state.” Termites eat dead plants and wood pulp. At maturity, the queen can lay up to 40,000 eggs a day – you can close your wide-open mouth now 🙂
After the awesome breakfast along the termite road, we went further to Serekunda, the largest urban center in the Gambia, consisting of nine villages with a population of about 390,000. The name means “the house of Sayer’s family – Sayer kunda”, Sayerr Jobe being the founder of this city in the ninth century.
Serekunda is crowded, with a wide open market up to the road, people walking on the street among cars and taxis that drive anyway sometimes on the left, sometimes on the right side of the road. If you want to feel the tumultuous urban life in The Gambia, this is the perfect place to be! Cars are constantly honking, music is extremely loud everywhere, people dressed in colorful clothes, women carrying children hanging on their backs and full baskets on their heads, carriages strolling at you, an indescribable crowd, goods lying directly on the ground in the copper dust, food cooked out on the streets, second-hand clothes straight from the pile on the floor, fish, rice, Maggie cubes, bags of water, and more! Serekunda is a city you will not forget easily.
Next stop: a school for children between 4 and 10 years old. The school looks deplorable, dirty and old. The current system is based on the one established by British during imperialism. The Gambia has a university center only since 1999. The literacy rate for women is only 47%.
Even if it was holiday period for schools, the teacher gathered the children especially for our visit. The children are incredibly friendly, they hold your hand and look at you curiously. If you are blond, you become the attraction of the village. They know that tourists give them sweets and pencils and as soon as they see you they run shouting on the streets toubab, toubab (which means foreigner, tourist, man with money). If you have a bag of sweets in your hand, you are simply invaded by all the children of the village happy to have a candy in their hand. I left the school yard thinking about how many things those children lack and how many stuff children in developed countries have and do not use shortly after it was bought!
With these thoughts I went to the next place: the animals market (cows and goats) and the butcher along the road … (how else?) At thirty-five degrees, halves of cows, pieces of goats, and other lizards hung on rusty hooks (probably to flavor the meat), buzzing with flies, glistening purple in the sun. A delicacy! Oh, not to forget to mention the eagles waiting for prey. I would definitely become a vegetarian if I would live in The Gambia. I refuse to think where the meat at the hotel restaurant menu came from.
From the animals market we went to the Allehein River where a pirogue boat was waiting to take us along the river that separates Gambia from Senegal, to the restaurant on Kartong beach where we were to have lunch. On the way I photographed all the baobabs, an old childhood obsession, in basic school I was fascinated by these trees (along with the sequoia). Some baobabs can be over 1,000 years old and over 7 meters tall! The inside of the baobab fruit is edible, and the locals mix it with water, milk and sugar. All their drinks are overly sweet.
At the arriving on the beach from the border with Senegal, we were greeted with traditional Gambian food (the same one we received the rest of the holiday wherever we went): rice, couscous, fish meatballs, domoda (a peanut butter sauce), yassa (fried chicken with onions), a kind of beef stew, chicken or catfish/barracuda. The food is very delicious! After lunch we went swimming in the Atlantic and read lazy in the sun (the ones who can not swim).
The last stop was the fishing village of Tanji. In Tanji the smell of fish (especially fish that has been lying in the sun for a while, a little rotten) and water blown by the wind filled our nostrils. We have visited the place where the most consumed fish in the Gambia, the bonga fish, is smoked. Beautifully arranged with the tails up, the fish were kept smoking for several days. Well, if you see that the dump is next to the place where the fish is smoked, you’re not really hungry anymore 🙂
We skip some details and reach the shore of the village exactly at the time when the boats were unloading the catches of the day. An indescribable bustle (just like the smell that reigned everywhere). Pirogue boats, people up to their waists in the water with bowls on their heads that were filled with fish straight from the boat, women selling fish where they could, children clinging to those women, tourists among them, music, ocean waves and other background noise. Another unforgettable visual experience, and mostly olfactory. People were bargaining (you have to bargain for anything you buy in The Gambia, it’s kind of national sport) for catfish, barracuda, turbot …
This was the last place visited on the third day in Gambia. At the end of the trip, I thanked the guide and the driver and give them a tip of 200 dalasi each. Dalasi is the currency of Gambia. 1 euro = 50 dalasi (December 2016). They were truly worth the tip. An average salary in The Gambia is about 2,000 dalasi (40 euros !!!)
People are really friendly, wherever you go you are greeted with how are you, hello, where are you from, what’s your name, and they call the European women boss lady 🙂 I’ll write about that in the second part.
