Gambia is a thin slip of a country that clings tenaciously to the river that not only bisects it but provides much of its appeal as a destination, writes LAURENCE MACKIN
CHILDREN FLING themselves off a ramshackle wooden quayside, slapping the sluggish water with shrieks of laughter. Across the way, an overloaded rusty ferry, teeming with people, is belching its way heavily across the river.
The sun is setting and for the first time today, the dry heat is bearable; Georgetown is roused from its daytime slumber, and on its quayside, the putting of outboards is drowned out by the noise of a small town stretching its limbs in the relative cool of the Gambian evening.
As our rickety boat floats out from the bank, a last few items are thrown on board, a final few passengers fold themselves onto benches, and the children do their best to attract the departing audience’s attention. Within minutes, the town has slipped back into the jungle. The trees shiver overhead as baboons leap from leaf to branch; the outboard drones a warning to the paddling hippos, whose periscopic eyes and twinkling ears watch from a lazy distance.
Welcome to the heart of the Gambia; tangles of trees on baked red-earth islands, surrounded by the slow, purposeful power of the Gambia river. This is allegedly the same country as the “Smiling Coast” the Gambian tourist authorities are at pains to promote to planeloads of mainly British package-holidaymakers; 250km upriver, though, it feels like a different world.
To get here is something of a minor adventure. We hurtle along a blacktop road in a rickety Mitsubishi minibus that frequently attempts to expire, but the driver, Kamara, refuses to give up its greasy ghost. Without warning, the road turns to red dust, grooved by ancient, hulking trucks. Kamara’s foot remains welded to the floor. A roasting wind batters its way in the windows, dense with dust and heat. The only relief is when the van shunts to a grinding halt and we scamper to the spindly shadow of a baobab tree as Kamara pours water down the engine’s parched throat. Before long, we are again on our way, tearing a route away from the Gambian coast and into this tiny African country’s river-run heart.
For most tourists, Gambia is a winter-sun stalwart; direct flights from the UK clock in under the six-hour mark for a price that will usually only get you as far south as Spain. But perhaps the best thing to do when you arrive in Banjul, the nation’s capital, next to the coastal towns of Fajara, Bakau, Kotu and Kololi, is leave. The beaches are long and lazy, but the hassle is horrendous.
A few hours after arriving, we are walking on the beach and are constantly accosted. I calmly explain to one overly friendly local that I would really rather spend time alone with my wife. “No problem,” he genially insists, unsheathing a trademark smiling-coast grin. “You go ahead, I’ll just walk behind you.” Which he does. About five metres behind us. For 45 minutes.
We all play our parts (us, the grinning gormless tourists trying desperately not to offend; he, our new best friend desperate to ensure we have the perfect holiday by buying something from him). We eventually crack and buy a sure-fire locally-produced mosquito repellent from him; it turns out to be Vicks Vaporub, and this is not mosquito season.
Gambia is a thin slip of a country, surrounded like a vice by Senegal. It clings tenaciously to the Gambia river that bisects it, and our first stop on our upriver trip took us to the Footsteps Eco Lodge in Gunjur. Although not on the beachfront, the sea is a 30-minute walk away. We hear the low boom of the surf before we see the water’s ragged edge, on an enormous stretch of beach on which our only company is the sand, the waves and a softly mooing smattering of cows.
The following day we climb into our stalwart Mitsubishi and take off to the wilder parts of the Gambia. We are headed for Bird Safari Camp, a roughly 10-hour trip involving several vans, two boats, and a huge amount of Afro-reggae music. Tearing through the open raw countryside, we have little for company, save heat, a scattering of villages, frequent police checkpoints that wave us on from the shelter of the shade, and the eerie sentinels of baobab trees.
After two hours we climb on to the first waterborne leg of our journey, from Bintang to Kerewan. From here, we take another veteran van to Kuntaur, for the final, slow pirogue trip to the Bird Safari Camp aboard the Lady Hippo. After four hours in the trusty tin-box van, it is terrific to savour the ice-cold beer and salty food on board. The daylight fades to the chatter of animals and birds, as a metallic sun bounces its last heat off the water. We sit on mattresses on the open-top deck, sipping beer while in the water below us, slow sucking noises betrays the hippopotamuses moving unseen in the dark water. Mahogany trees thick with leaves dip down to the green water; overhead the leaves rustle as monkeys and baboons leap from branch tobranch, keeping lazy pace with the boat. This is a salutary experience to be treasured.
Bird Safari Camp is a rough-hewn haven of wildlife, situated on MacCarthy Island. Guests have a choice of tents or lodges, around a cool, open building with a shallow green pool. The camp is a charming work in progress, and if the accommodation sounds somewhat spartan, it seems luxurious buried in the thick of the African bush. Each morning a cacophony of birdsong wakes the camp. Gambia is home to more than 500 species and throughout the day they burst from the trees, leaving streaks of fiery plumage in their colourful wake.
Days here are spent in nearby Georgetown, studying the wildlife and thousands of bird species, or wandering around the mango groves. A watchman takes potshots at monkeys, who steal the mangoes from the trees, take one bite and toss them wastefully aside. He gives us a gun-metal-green pile, waving away any notions of payment. They are almost worth the trip on their own. We cut into the deep, gorgeous flesh, sucking the juice and chewing the succulent fruit that floods the mouth and throat with a delicate sweetness.
A slow hour’s walk away is the village of Georgetown, which has an infamous place in history, and is the heart of the historical slave trade. Walking around the village attracts a curious knot of bored children, softly mocking with cries of “toubab” (literally white stranger), and breaking into shrieks of laughter whenever they draw a response. A caretaker shows us around a crumbling warehouse that we are told was the main place of business for the slave trade, the shackles still on the walls from when slaves were huddled in their hundreds and loaded like cattle on to ships in the adjacent harbour.
Slavery was not the white man’s invention, we are calmly told. It was something African tribal chiefs had long practised before the first Europeans came here. We later find out that although this warehouse is falling apart, it is much too recent to be an original slavehouse; the donation, though, was worth it for the history lesson alone.
That evening in Bird Safari camp, we eat by candlelight as a group of local musicians strike up tunes on drums and kora. In-between flailing his way through traditional Gambian songs and Malian-flavoured tracks, one local kora player explains how he is planning to move to Switzerland, where he has a new wife. He shows me his latest album cover, a picture of him and his other four wives. I wonder if they are going too.
Around a fire, drumming quickly takes percussive precedence over the conversation and soon all the staff at Bird Safari Camp are shuffling, kicking, raising their voices in the red dust, making us feel clumsy and inadequate. It would feel like a bit of a cliche, were it not so enjoyable.
The tail end of our journey brings us to the highlight of the trip, a stay at the Chimpanzee Rehabilitation Trust. Established in 1968 by Stella Brewer (the author of The Forest Dwellers, something of a handbook for conservationists of all hues), the trust is a remarkable project that has seen three islands in the Gambia river populated with more than 80 chimps (Gambia does not have chimpanzees as a native species, though its conditions are ideal). The island colonies help to keep poachers at bay and prevent any interference with native species; the chimpanzees are in turn utterly wild creatures.
The few interventions made by the trust’s staff involve daily feeding, as the islands’ ecosystems do not have enough food to sustain the burgeoning population. The chimps’ societies evolve at their own natural pace, with alpha males guarding their dominant position, while the younger chimps plot their aggressive coups. We see one chimp who had spent months planning just such a move, canvassing support from the female chimps, the real power behind the throne. A few weeks previously, he made his move, and when the veteran alpha-male swiftly and violently put him in his place, his female “allies” were the first to join in his punishment beating. Even weeks later, he was still moping around the fringes of the chimp society, suffering the humiliating taunts of the entire pack.
The landscape around this camp is rolling, dusty red hillsides, wreathed in resilient trees, with villages few and far between. A weaving track brings us to the village of Sambel Kunda, where Stella Brewer also set up the Gambia Horse and Donkey Trust. This tackles poverty in a number of creative ways, with animals cared for and fed by the centre, and then leased to locals during the farming season. Brewer believed passionately that wildlife conservation on its own isn’t enough, and people living in the vicinity must benefit from the conservation effort if it is to be fully supported and sustainable. The centre is also responsible for an enormous amount of work in the area with the local school and medical centre.
Stella Brewer died in early 2008, but we were lucky enough to meet her sister, Heather Armstrong, who has been working on the various projects for many years. Sitting in the luxury of the Chimpanzee Rehabilitation Trust’s lodge while she calmly explains the terrific amount of work the organisation manages is an inspiring and humbling experience.
We walk to the highest point of the area around the Chimpanzee Trust, called Elephant Hill. It was here, in 1913, that the last elephant in Gambia was reputedly shot. Below us, the river fills the landscape, an island nicknamed “Little Africa”, owing to its shape, one of several punctuation marks in its expanse. The fields below are protected by hippopotamus defences; these enormous creatures are happy enough to wallow in the water during the blistering day, but at night, they come out of the water to eat crops and stretch their stumpy legs, crushing everything nonchalantly in their wake.
While cruising on the river, a clutch of maybe a dozen hippos, old and young, watch from an indifferent distance, the comical shape of their eyes ears and nose only breaking the surface. Suddenly one rears up almost vertically, and opens his jaws, a melodramatic and utterly astonishing balletic movement. I ask the pilot if a hippo could sink a boat. “If he wanted”, is the amused reply.
Upcountry in the Gambia, a world away from the tourist traps of the coastline, a hippo can do anything, “if he wanted”.
Where to stay and when to go
Where to stay
- Footsteps Eco Lodge. Gunjur, www.footstepsgambia. com, 00-44-1329-247730.
Footsteps is a lodge with the ecology foremost in mind – think solar panels, composting toilets, freshly-cooked
Gambian cuisine and an utterly deserted beach a 30-minute walk away.
- Safari Garden Hotel. Off Atlantic Road, Fajara, 00-220-449-5887, www.safarigarden.com. This is a cheap and cheerful option close to the beach at Fajara, with a pleasant pool area and excellent food.
- Sandele Eco-Retreat. Kartong, 00-220-449-5887, www.sandele.com. A luxurious resort on an utterly peaceful stretch of coastline, Sandele offers yoga classes, forest hikes and terrific food in a setting that adheres to the highest ethical and ecological standards.
- Bird Safari Camp. MacCarthy Island, 00-44-121-288-4100, www.hiddengambia.co.uk. Deep at the heart of the country, Bird Safari Camp gives you a chance to appreciate the variety of wildlife and is a great base for exploring the area around Georgetown. Birdwatchers will be in heaven.
What to do
- Abuko Nature Reserve. Banjul. This compact reserve is a great way to spend a few hours getting a flavour of what the wider Gambian countryside has to offer. There is also a somewhat tired animal orphanage, with monkeys, birds and land turtles.
- The Wassau Stone Circles (Wassau, Kuntaur, 20km from Janjanbureh) are the last remnant of a civilisation about which next to nothing is known. While the scale of the site is unlikely to overwhelm you, there is a tangible atmosphere among the ancient sentinels, especially during dawn or dusk.
- The southwestern coast is the place to go if you want to find a deserted stretch of coastline; Sanyang beach is a more popular, livelier affair, with beach bars and a fishing village.
- Chimpanzee Rehabilitation Trust. Baboon Islands, 00-44-1372-372561, www.chimprehab.com. On stilted platforms high on the hills, comfortable, romantic safari tents give stunning views over the Gambian river, perhaps best appreciated from the outdoor showers. The boat trips to see the chimpanzees are unforgettable.
When to go
- The peak dry season in the Gambia is from roughly mid October to mid-June, with November to January the most popular months. Daytime temperatures hover around the upper 20s and mid-30s.
- Hidden Gambia (www.hiddengambia.co.uk) organises upcountry guided tours, including stays along the coastline, in Bird Safari Camp and stop-offs in the Chimpanzee Rehabilitation Trust. Week-long itineraries start from £475 (€548), with two-week trips from £695 (€802), excluding flights.
Go there
There are no direct flights to Banjul from Ireland. Thomas Cook (flythomascook.com ), Gambia Flights (gambia flights.co.uk) and Airflights (airflights.co.uk) have flights from a number of UK cities.