En Vacance: A Sene-Gambian Adventure



Ndiaga Ndiaye

I decided to spend my fall break traveling around the Gambia and the delta region of Senegal. We started out early Friday morning on what turned out to be quite the adventure. To get to the Gambia you have several options for transportation. Most commonly people take what is called a sept place which are very old and beat-up station wagons with a bench seat added in the back so their are seven seats for passengers. Unfortunately we were a group of 10 so on our way to the Gare Routière Pompiers where we pick up the cars we decided to split up, 7 in one and 3 plus anyone else at the gare going to the border. However all that went out the window when we got to the gare and were immediately surrounded by a mob of drivers. The gare is a huge parking lot filled with hundreds of sept places and Ndiaga Ndiaye minivans going all over Senegal. Normally you just pay a small fee for a spot in the car but for a large group of toubabs it is impossible to find out how much it is and where they are going. After much negotiating, yelling and marriage proposals we ended up in a small bus to ourselves.

  



Driving on the wrong side of the road, typical





 




Kaolack





At the border we filled out some information about our travel plans in what looked like guest books at a wedding, showed our passports to a chatty Gambian official and we were in the Gambia. After refueling with some mboq, corn cobs grilled on coals on the side of the road, we caught the Gambian equivalent of a ndiaga ndiaye, a gelli-gelli to Banjul to catch a ferry across the Gambia River. The ferry ride, which cost the equivalent of 30 cents, had an interesting mix of passengers. There was a huge truck filled with brahman cows and a man in a hammock suspended over it, a military truck with hundreds of Gambian soldiers and various cars and individual passengers. The rest of the trip went smoothly, after the ferry our hotel in Bakau was only a short gelli-gelli ride away.

The two days that we spent in Bakau were a nice relaxing break for the hectic energy of Dakar. Vendors are less pushy, there is less pollution and every month the Gambia has clean up days and everyone picks up trash on the street. Tourist season in the Gambia doesn't start until October 15th so we were some of the only toubabs there and therefore attracted a lot of attention from out of work tour guides. While this was frustrating we did meet some very nice people at the highlight of my time in Bakau, the monkey park! Liz and I were lead around a reserve by a very funny guide named... We saw lots of monkeys, termite mounds and palm trees during our 8 km hike in the park. On our way our the women collecting money was worried that we would be given a bad price for our taxi back to our hotel so she decided to come with us to negotiate. We talked with her about our studies in Dakar and our host families and she invited us to her house for dinner next time we are in the Gambia to compare family dinners in Senegal and the Gambia, so hopefully someday we can take her up on her offer.

The next stop on our trip was a camp in Sekuta close to the abuko nature reserve. The camp, run by a couple from Germany, was the nicest place that I have stayed in the Gambia or Senegal, it was clean, had running water and electricity! What a treat...

Hyenas



While we were in Sekuta we stopped by the Abuko nature reserve to see some wildlife. While we didn't see as many monkeys as at the monkey park, it was a nice walk and a great break for our poor polluted lungs. They do have an animal orphanage at the park where we saw baboons, monkeys and hyenas in enclosures. Hyenas are so much bigger than I was expecting! I guess when I saw them on TV they were always near lions who are huge and make hyenas look like small dogs, well they are not the size of small dogs, they weigh between 90 and 190 pounds.

After our nice walk through the park, our guide asked us if we wanted to try palm wine. Thinking this would be a fun thing to try and a Gambian cultural experience, we said yes, but we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into.



To be continued...