This may be a long blog post. We have returned to the world where there is internet as opposed to the world where there are many places called internet cafes, with lots of computers, where people look at you in surprise when you ask to use the internet. We have done the following things...
After obtaining our visas etc etc we went to Tanjeh, the Gambia's largest fishing village, just down the coast from the main tourist strip. We managed our first successful haggling over a room, although they seemed surprised that we thought a discount should be forthcoming after they told us there was no electricity in low-season. The Tanjeh highlight was meeting a family who showed us around the village and invited us to their compound for the afternoon then gave us lunch. They were brilliant. They asked us for precisely nothing. A relief after so many people jump in straight away with "buy me a football" " buy me a school bag" "he needs some money for medicine".
There will now follow a brief rant, feel free to skip over the next paragraph if you would rather just read about what we have done and so on. Local people and especially children would not jump in asking for stuff and pestering you, often for a long time, if other tourists weren't responding to these requests. It seems that most people turn up at each place with bundles of sweets and pens for the children or they quickly succumb to buying them things from the local market. This has created a culture of asking whether they really need these things or not. I know it is rewarding to give to people who have less than you but very few tourists are meeting any of the real poor, if a village is by the coast or near a major route the residents have the means to make a lot more money than those in remote areas that tourists never see. It also seems incredibly patronising to assume that as a foreigner you turn up like some benevolent visiting dignitory and bestow gifts on the worthy poor. One of the most frustrating things is that as soon as you spend any real time with these people the majority cease to ask for things but enjoy finding out about you in the same way you do them, surely a more useful way to interact with a country you have come to visit? Clearly those of us that are fortunate enough to be wealthy do need to think about how we can help those less fortunate but this is not it and, in actual fact, it has the potential to be quite harmful. Rant over.
Other Tanjeh interestingness includes meeting two boys on a school trip to the beach who had been born in the UK but had been sent back to the Gambia after poor behaviour in school in London! Interesting to see this punishment carried out after sitting through so many parent's evenings where this action was threatened. Watching wrestling practice on the beach. Shish those men are hot! (Ross). And an abundance of hand-holding children. 45% of the population in the Gambia is under 14. Children do rule here a little. I think anything out of the ordinary excites them as they do not have toys or tvs to amuse themselves and they are expected to work when they are not in school. When we appear on a street first every child will wave and call "hello toubab" then a brave one will run up to shake hands then another will hold your hand then there are six on each hand. In places this has developed to children kissing Anneliese's hands (felt like I was the pope) and even one girl who seemed intent on grabbing my breasts, still not sure what this was about.
After Tanjeh we went to Sanyang, a beautiful beach where we spent two days swimming and reading and feeling great until the place's charm was lost when a jellyfish stung Anneliese's foot and it swelled to resemble a homeless person's, with an infection who you move away from on the tube.
From here we went to Tendaba, a camp on the River Gambia about half way along the country. We did an excellent early morning boat trip to a wetland reserve and saw many many birds and crabs and small slimy lizardy things. We met another excellent family with another huge brood of children who we entertained for an hour by taking jumping photos and plaiting Anneliese's hair.
Woop woop! Hippo!! Up and down, up and down, his head poked from the water. We were planning on staying another day to further explore the area but cut this short after our second night at the camp. Anneliese was woken up again by scratching... "Ross there are rats on the bed" then "is that you on my foot?". Torch on it turns out it was a massive rat, on my foot. Vindicated that there had been rats in the bed all along I was a little joyous but this emotion was quickly replaced with despair at the fact that a massive rat had decided it was ok to sit on my foot. Despair meant abandoning sleep for a nighttime vigil shining our torches into the thatched roof and beams to put any more of the blighters off entering the bed. We kept this up for a couple of hours until the sun started to rise and fell asleep just in time for the start of the monkey show. The realisation there really had been rats in the bed shed new light on a conversation from earlier in the night... half asleep Ross grumpily said to Anneliese "can you stop doing that to my foot please?" "I'm not doing anything to your foot" at which point Ross woke up to be confused by Anneliese's next statement of "do you think it was a rat on your foot?" "what?" thinking, what the bloody hell is she talking about? Anneliese thinking, I still don't want to appear hysterical about these rats, dropped the topic.
From Georgetown yesterday we made the very arduous journey back towards the coast, only 250km it took us 14 hours due to waiting and very slow driving. We were entertained by a Gambian man's acrobatics and Ross managed to astound an entire bus station with some basic card tricks. We are now in Serekunda, Gambia's commercial hub.
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