Quick overview of what I've beeen up to since I got bored of writing this last time. So I spent a day chilling out here, think I was pretty exhausted, walked all along the beach, turns out to be not so nice when you get into the fishing part. On my return I bumped into an Aussie and a Brit who changed the course of things to come... Keith and Tamara (assign the nationalities yourselves, not hard) were volunteers in St Louis, my planned next port of call, but had come to Dakar to visit before Tamara flew out and Keith went to a festival in a (mini) desert. We went out to see the legenedary musician Suleyman Faye, 60 in Jan and going strong and attempted to do a motorbike tour of Dakar, but the guides never turned up. So we spent a pleasant afternoon wandering around the pretty island of Goree just off the coast of Dakar instead. And then I spent an unpleasant evening throwing up. But I figure one evening of that after ten weeks of travel, well, I was due it. Glad I've not had anything worse. Still, many thanks to Tamara and Keith who kept me company and well supplied with water, coke and toilet rolls!
One of the projects run by the organisation they were working with was working in a Talibé centre. The Talibés are young boys, I think probably from about 5 years up to being teenagers, who are in religious training from the Marabouts (local religious leaders). They live in Doras, houses together where the Marabouts supposedly look after them. The kids are always out on the streets hassling people for money, or going into houses asking for clothes. None of this is for them, it goes to the Marabouts. The work the volunteers were mainly doing was providing first aid for these kids. There were stories of them having huge infected wounds, and nobody had done anything. I find the whole thing pretty hard to get my head around. The kids don't go to school but they can sing prayer calls and recite parts of the Koran. They are always dressed in shabby old ill-fitting clothes.
Whilst we were waiting for the ferry to Gorée, we had a drink of (flat) coke in a cafe, and one of these kids came over, with his tell-tale yellow bucket, asking for money. Not wanting to send him off with cash for the marabout, Tamara gave him her coke. He looked uncertain, clearly knew this wasn't allowed, but eventually took it and hid uncerneath the next table. The proprietor came out, and before we could stop him, had shouted at the boy, who left the coke and ran off. We tried to invite him back, but he looked to scared and humilitated to come back. The proprietor seemed annoyed with us, explained the situation with the marabouts (yes, we know, that's why we gave him something to drink), implied that we were ignorant tourists and claimed it was all the parents fault. Perhaps, but why should that mean you bully this boy? We paid for our drinks and left without finishing.
The next day, feeling (somewhat) recovered from my episode, I jumped on the desert festival bandwaggon - quite literally - and headed to Lompoul. It is a strange small desert where, from the top of the highest dune, you can see the surrounding non-desert land. We stayed in a tent village and ate delicious meals in a beautiful Mauritanian style tent. I felt incredibly colonial and wouldn't have been surprised to see Poirot popping up to solve the troubles of the khaki-clad, bush-hat wearing colonial types. The music was like nothing I have ever seen, the only way I can think to describe it is "mysterious". But it was fantasic to see a guy dressed in full desert robes and Tuareg scarf, standing in front of a traditionally costumed guy - feathers and all - playing an electric guitar. Fortunately it was a cloudy day so it was not too hot during the day and not too cold at night.
I continued onto St Louis, as originally planned, on the Sunday. I stayed in a ridiculous hotel, with a pool and pretty much nobody there, hot water and my own little beachside hut. I really had expected to rough it a bit here. St Louis itself is beautiful, full of pastel coloured buildings, like someone dumped a bit of the med into Africa. It stinks of fish, but that is a pretty common occurrence here. I hung out with the volunteers that Keith and Tamara had worked with and it was really nice to be part of a community. From St Louis I took trips to the reserve de Gomboul where I held tortoises and chased warthogs, and to the parc national de la langue de barbarie - a pirogue ride between the mainland and the spit that comes around from the other side of the island of St Louis.
From St Louis I planned to break up the journey to Gambia (although I reckon it might have been possible in one day, just) by stopping in the town of Thies, which boasts an apparently world famous tapestry factory. And not much else. It was Muslim new year when I arrived, however, and everything, including the tapestry factory was shut. I got an early night and an early start the next day and arrived in Banjul by 2pm. I had been told the Gambian customs officers were pretty... thorough, shall we say, and so I was pleasantly surprised when at the border the customs guy just stared. "Do you need to see in my bag?" I asked. "Whats in it?" was his response, and when I said jsut clothes and normal things, he nodded me onto the next office where they served me tea and asked me to stay for Christmas. But it was after the ferry trip to banjul that they really kicked in. Hot, sweaty, tired, so close to my hotel, I had to stop and empty EVERYTHING from my bag. They wanted explanations of every drug and medicine I had with me. I will forever be haunted by the memory of having to explain the purpose of Canasten through mime.
Eventually, however, I did reach the world's most depressing hotel, low ceilings, dim lights, holes in the walls and swarming, I do mean swarming, with mosquitoes. I lit a whole packet of mosquito coils (I think thats 10) and nearly choked myself. I spent the afternoon wandering around Banjul, which is possibly the nicest capital city ever. Its about a quarter of the size of lincoln, and has a terribly English feel about it, not hindered by the cricket pitch in the centre. Take out the insane vehicules and you'd have a rather warm, coastal version on Midsomer. On a hint from the guidebook I visited the Royal Victoria Teaching Hospital, where you can do a tour. Highly uncomfortable experience. I was impressed by the range of facilities; everything from a CT scanner to a physiotherapy ward to a blood bank. But I wouldn't want to be treated there. The blood bank has no staff, and a coca-cola fridge to keep the blood in, the sterilising unit was closed, the guy mopping the floor of the surgical theatre had left the doors wide open, one of the two people working in the path lab had gloves on - but they were filthy, the x-rays were developed hanging outside pegged to a washing line and the radioloogist was wearing a suit which suggested he was preparing for nuclear war, the doors to the morgue were broken and you could see the tables, but thankfully no bodies as it was a Friday afternoon, so all the staff were at the Mosque.
After visiting the national museum's entertaining displays of colonial photographs and watching a guy make silver-plated rings I headed off to the tourist coast. I took the public transport which was like a nicer, cleaner, more comfortable version of the ghanaian tro-tros. And cost one hundreth of the price of a private taxi. I cannot comprehend this. Stopped to ask a Gambian lady for directions, turns out she had lived in Leeds. Lovely. Walked the last leg of the journey from the cash machine to the hotel ( I treated myself to something in the Lonely Planet's "midrange") and a guy pulled up alongside me to offer me a lift because he doesn't like "to see women suffer". Poor young Toubab lady, obviously can't manage her own backpack. No thank you, I'm enjoying seeing everything. But, as usual, he didn't listen to what I wanted and cerb-crawled, insisting, until I told him he'd cause an accident. The traffic laws, well, they seem to exist in Gambia, and be enforced, I like it. If you're in the passenger seat of a taxi without wearing a seatbelt the police will stop you and fine you over 100 pounds.
Having chased him away two ladies called to me from across the road. They were very pleased with me. They had walked for miles from the big market back towards their place of work and had asked the guy for a lift, and he had apparently said that he didn't take passengers. He did however, park up down the road and chase me to chat to me, which gave me an opportunity to yell at him about his racial discrimination in only taking white girls and not Gambian girls in his car, and for lying to them.
The hotel I stayed in is run by an English couple totally committed to responsible tourism, they are currently building an eco-lodge and learning centre in a little village in the south of the coastal strip. The village has apparently become the first in the world to impliment their own tourist code. This threw me into a world of expats and other Europeans trying to make a positive impact in Gambia. I met a fabulous Dutch couple, Ellen and Fred who have been working on and off in the Gambia and Fred is currently working on an efficient and hygenic solar powered mango dryer. Anyone who can understand Dutch should check out their website:
http://www.stichtinggambiaproject.nl/
They recommended visiting the Gambia is Good farming project which is trying to encourage well planned crop planting and otherenvironmentally sensible techniques so that, for example, farmers inland can benefit from Gambia's tourist industry by producing the crops that the hotels want to buy in - e.g. cherry tomatoes. Dan, one of the top guys at the farm, kindly gave me a lift on his bike to the Kim Kombo distillery down the road which grows the majority of their own crops they use to make the liquers, gets you tiddly and then sells you fantastic selections of their delicious wares!
This was the day I really began to see the depth of Gambian generoisty; perhaps I jut hit lucky on this day, alternatively, there is more of it in Gambia than in any other of the West African countries I have visited. And there's plenty of it there. I bumped into a guy on the way to the bus stop who put me on the right bus and made a big deal out of ensuring that the driver took me to the right place. Dan, at the farm, went out of his way to take me to the distillery, waited there for me then took me to the bus stop. When I got off the bus I asked for directions and a guy told me I needed to get a taxi to where I wanted to go. I thought he was just trying to make money out of the Toubab so I told him I didn't have much money, I'd rather walk, could he please just give me directions. He practically shoved me in a taxi and gave the money for the ride to the driver, refusing my attempts to give him the amount back. The driver then went beyond his usual route to ensure I got the next connection. When I arrived at the last stop and was taking the short walk back to the hotel a guy sidled up alongside me. I put on my usual, its-dark-and-I'm-on-my-own pace and face but he was persistent and told me that if I came by to his cafe the next day he would give me a coffee for free. When I arrived back at the hotel I was informed that there was a package waiting for me. This was from Vera. I had bought a Sandwhich frim Vera in the street and we had got chatting as she's from Ghana. She took me to her church, made me a dress (and then went home and adjusted it because I'm "not like the skinny English girls", I am, apparently "a good, fat girl".) fed me lunch and then, having excused myself with a headache, turned up the next day at the hotel with food for me to make sure I was ok. She had been there again that day and had this time left me a dinner of fish and fried yam, clothes she had made for me and my parents, two pairs of shoes and a wall hanging. When I tried to give her a gift before I left the Gambia, she tried to pay for it.
Other activities included spending an afternoon walking along deserted beaches and scrambling over rocks to get to the next town, visiting a monkey park with a lovely dutch couple and getting a guided tour round the botanical gardens. The tour was all very.... nice, until the guide was showing me the medicinal gardens and stopped at one particular tree. "This one is good for curing AIDS". He announced. "For what?" I said, thinking I must have misheard, this was an intelligent guy. "AIDS." "AIDS?" I tried to reconfirm. "Yes, AIDS." In response to my progessively less and less gentle explanation that AIDS cannot, as yet, be cured he told me that the news about the tree had been told to them by their president.
Dear Mr President of Gambia, all your people seem to love you. I can't think why when you say things like this which can only harm them, and when you make your personal beef with the Senegalese president public by mouthing off at him in the papers and nearly causing some serious security probems.
I happened to be leaving Gambia the same day as Fred and Ellen, and our end destinations in Senegal were about 20km apart. So aftersome uncertainty about the security of the situation, they offered me a ride inthe back of their pickup. Only it had no back doors. But actually it was more comfortable than a sept-place taxi (yes, it may have 7 seats, but this bears no relation to the number of passngers that will be in it), and probably safer than most ofthe buses that have their doors hanging open and people hanging out ofthe back. Was quite significantly dusty though.
Eventually I arrived at the little town of Toubab-Dialo on Senegal's "Little Coast". It was undeniably beautiful, but my feeling on arrival were that I was not, as the guidebook had said, staying in a backpacker's haven, but a family resort, and that was not somewhere I wanted to be for Christmas. I tried to find a church to visit on Christmas day - but there were none, only several mosques. But in my search I stumbled across a lovely Gambian girl, Edwina, whose mother, who she was visiting for the holidays, owns a beach restaurant and rents a few rooms. If anybody ever wants to visit the Petit Cote I would thoroughly recommend Chez Baby, right on the beach, with some of the nicest and cheapest rooms in town, and excellent food - which she insisted on feeding me, every day, in vast quantities.
Eventually Edwina and I discovered a midnight service out on the main road and decided to head up to it. We arrived there and met a wonderfully kind missionary lady from Brazil, Ana, and her 7 year old totally multilingual daughter, Emily. The power went out for the service, but that kind of added to the Christmas atmosphere, although that's very different from any midnight mass I've ever been to!
I spent the next few days hanging out with Edwina on the beach, eating Tiemboudienne - the Senegalese fish and rice dish - served by Baby (her mother) and getting to know the inhabitants of the small village, so much so that when the power went off one afternoon and all the guys made the most by going to play football on the beach I was left babysitting. fortunately kids here are MUCH better behaved than English kids so I just read my book whilst they sat quiettly. Tehy seemed happy enough.
From The Little Coast I headed back to spend a few days chilling out on Gorée again. The harbour, being enclosed is great for swimming, with none of the huge waves and strong currents that the open beaches had, and the water was surprisingly clear. From there I headed back to Yoff, where I wrote my last entry. I have spent two days literally wiating to come home, passing the time on a gorgeous beach, and Yesterday I visited Dakar, including the crazy huge monument that has cost an insane amopunt of money, upset the majority muslim population by having a majorioty naked lady, and upset everyone else, by just not being that nice. As the lady in the hostel said, "it has no soul". That and from a female perspective I find it repugnant. if the monument represents the resurgence of Africa, then with women and children in the role the monument puts them, its not going to be resurging anytime soon.
So now I am hopefully a few hours away from home, desperately looking forward to it! Although this has been fantastic, unforgettable, rollercoaster that has zoomed past, its made me realise something that I would have vehemently denied before - England is home, and I'm a home bird.
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