Weekends

The Gambian Atlantic coast is dotted with fishing villages, including this place called Gunjur.  Here, fishermen pull their boats onto the sand and their catch is carted away to markets around Serrekunda and Banjul, or is preserved in smokehouses. Sometimes at weekends I journey with friends to stay in a lodge or a tent on the beach, somewhere along this enchanting southern stretch of coast, just before The Gambia runs into the Cassamance region of Senegal. It is a pleasure to brave the burning sun and swim in the warm shallow water, which teems with marine life. These delightful quiet havens are a well-kept secret because fortunately most package tourists are mindless herd animals and they stick to the northern beaches near their hotels. But it only takes a short trip by local transport to find virtually deserted beaches, to spend a day in the shade of a palm tree, or a night sleeping beneath the stars. Here on Gunjur beach, vultures were devouring the remains of some unfortunate sea creature, and crabs scurried across the sand. A whale was washed up near here recently, and this weekend I visited a lodge where they had two enormous vertebrae from the whale.

     

When I volunteered to work in Africa I did not foresee the opportunities I would get to relax on the beach at weekends; this has come as an unexpected luxury. It is sometimes a relief and always a joy to catch some moments alone or with friends, to unwind from the minor frustrations of living here, to contemplate diversity and to stare at the encircling sky. Sometimes it makes me feel close to friends in the UK, knowing that the ocean in which I am swimming is the same North Atlantic as laps around your shores, though here the water is warm enough to enjoy all year round. However, it is not always safe to swim here; there are strong currents and tides, and weird things in the water that bite and sting. People drown off these shores every year. This month a boat capsized heading to Eid celebrations in Senegal, and seven lost their lives.

   

On Saturday I stood on the beach at Kartong in the far South of this country watching the sun set, and I imagined the places where the sun would visit next, behind the horizon. If you were to travel due West in the direction I was facing, the next land you encounter would be tiny Barbados and then Nicaragua, and then the mighty Pacific opens up before you, thousands of miles without sight of land until eventually you would pass through The Philippines (a place that I hope to visit one day). Then you would cross Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Myanmar, the Indian Ocean and southern India, then Yemen and the Red Sea, before finally arriving back in Africa. (Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan, Chad, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali, Senegal and The Gambia).  

The Gambia is one of the more densely populated countries in Africa, especially in the Kombos (the suburbs of the capital where I live, and to which urban migration has added tens of thousands in recent years). However, there are still places to escape and to walk, to sit and think, or to watch the amazing birdlife. The pictures below are from a Friday afternoon walk (we get Friday afternoons off, as most men go to the mosque at 2pm) in Bakau, at the northern tip of the peninsular on which I live (see Satellite Photos and Maps). We squelched along paths through very muddy rice fields, and kept a close watch on the clouds that built up, threatening to dump more rain on us (this was in September; the rain has finished now and there will be no more until May or June). Beyond the rice fields we skirted round an area of vegetable gardens where women grow cassava, aubergine and maize. Near the end of our walk we heard a sound from a well. There are many such wells, used to irrigate the vegetable plots during the long dry season. Initially I thought there was a child down the well but on investigation it turned out to be a very frightened cat. Only the head of the cat could be seen above the brown murky water (my apologies; I did not have the presence of mind to take a photograph at this point). I am not really a cat devotee – to me their presence contributes very little (though I am fairly sure I have consumed cat out here, served as ‘chicken’ but that is a different story). Nonetheless this animal did seem rather distressed and having engaged with it in eye contact, I was unable to back away. Lying on my stomach and stretching down I was not far above the water level. The cat did the rest, leaping up from its watery predicament and clasping onto me with claws and teeth. I knelt up, threw the cat into the undergrowth and inspected the damage – several scratches and bite marks on my hand and arm. The final picture here is me having a rabies jab as a result.