Man On The Run

Back in Kololi I made myself at home at Aisa’s guesthouse once more, went to my local bar and met up with Diego. Here we also met Claire, a Dutch girl and it was nice to hang out with tourists around my own age, quite the rarity in these parts. I had decided I would only stay two nights as I really had to keep moving because my future visas had already started to be valid. On our second night, we were barhopping when Claire realised her wallet was gone, we reacted quickly and went back to the previous bar where one guy had been particularly affectious. We found him, and then chaos ensued as a large group of people gathered around. One of the barmen appeared to be holding the purse under his shirt, but he didn’t want to hand it over until the police were at the scene, there was a lot of pushing and yelling and finally the police arrived, slapping the young thief, who claimed he had found the wallet, then dragging him into a bathroom for interrogation. It was clear he had stolen it, but I couldn’t help but feel for the kid, although part of me also felt he did deserve some punishment. Claire and Diego went to the police station, whilst I waited at a bar with Alpha, a young French guy who was living and working in The Gambia. Eventually the others returned and though it was late we decided we needed to keep the night going and have a good final night, which we did. When I woke up the following morning, I had decided to head towards the southern border with Senegal. There was a strange fog in the air, which I later found out to be The Harmattan Haze, not actually fog but a large sand cloud which the winds had brought from The Sahara, leaving the sky in a greyish brown mist of dust, blocking out the sun and creating a very dry heat. This weather phenomenon is common at this time of year, and covered large parts of West Africa for about a week. I got a series of different vehicles, sadly saying farewell to The Gambia and finally reaching the Senegalese town of Ziguinchor. This is the capital of The Casamance region, but it wasn’t a very nice town, very dirty and with the Harmattan sky it felt even duller, so after one night I decided to head towards the coast and got to Cap Skirring. Here I found a cheap guest house, but although it was a very nice beach it felt pointless spending time here without being able to see the sun, so after just two nights I kept on moving.

According to my guidebook and the online maps I could find I would have to go back to Ziguinchor for the border post at Sao Domingos, but it felt unnecessary seeing as I was very close to the Guinea Bissauan border. After consulting some people I found out it was possible to cross over just south, but it wasn’t going to be an easy journey. Concerned for my safety and the availability of local transport, my guesthouse arranged for one of their staff, Sili, to drive me on his motorcycle to Varela on the other side of the border. I am happy they did, as we saw almost nobody on the road, it was a tough drive and I had get off and walk large portions of it when the sand got too deep to maneuver the bike.

At one point we had to cross a river, and we simply lifted the bike onto a pirogue and kept on driving on the other side. It was somewhere around this point I realised why this border crossing wasn’t mentioned anywhere, at no point was I asked for my passport and I understood I had now entered into Guinea Bissau illegally, had I known it was this simple I may not have bothered with arranging the visa. All jokes aside, I knew I would have to look into resolving this issue at a later stage in the country. We reached the tiny village of Varela, I paid Sili a very reasonable fee, especially considering he now had to drive all the way back to Cap Skirring.

Up A Lazy River

One morning I finally managed to make it out of Kololi, after spending over a week relaxing by the beach. I had to go back through Banjul and once more get the chaotic ferry to Barra where I could get a seat on a minibus and finally get to Juffureh. This tiny village shot to fame after American author Alex Haley traced his ancestry back to here, and wrote the novel “Roots” which was made into a hugely popular television series. I arrived late in the afternoon when no more tourists were around and found a cheap and basic guesthouse. That day nursery schools from around the area happened to be having their annual sports-day, and I was lucky to catch the last few hours of the adorable event. The following morning I managed to get a cheap pirogue ride out to Kunta Kinteh Island.

Situated in the middle of the Gambia River this used to be called St James Island, and was another sad testament to the European slave trade, with a crumbling fort and some baobab trees all that was left to show for it. I also visited the small museum in town and played a highly competitive game of football with the village children, leaving my bare feet in blisters. After two nights of getting to know the community I decided to keep moving and got up before the crack of dawn to catch a minibus, once more back to Barra where I could get another one to Janjanbureh. With it’s strategic location in the centre of the country on McCarthy island, this town which used to be called George Town, was once planned to be the country’s capital, but the river was too shallow to accommodate the larger ships that started being constructed and the plans were scrapped. Now it’s a very sleepy town without much to see, but I met the captain of one of the river boats, and as he already had a tour group coming the next day, he let me join for a fraction of the price.

There is something oddly romantic about travelling on a river, the peacefulness takes over. No sound except the birds on the shore and the gentle hum of the engine as you glide slowly through the waters, rivers really are one of favourite environments wherever I am in the world. My main reason for joining this whole day excursion was to see Baboon Island, which despite it’s name is famous for being home to another primate, my favourite animal, the chimpanzee. The chimps on the islands have been rescued by The Chimpanzee Rehabilitation Project which started in 1978, and now more than a hundred of the apes live here. No humans are allowed on the islands (including staff) but they do still rely on being fed, so you can usually see them come out to the shoreline. Just as we were cruising by, and we could hear some noises in the bushes, disaster struck. There was only one other boat on the river, but our captain (who may or may not have been smoking a lot of marijuana that day) somehow didn’t see him, we were headed for a full on collision but at the last second the other boat managed to just steer clear, we narrowly avoided their hull but did hit their small boat which was being towed behind. The rope towing it snapped off and the smaller boat started sinking, some of the guys managed to grab hold of the rope and just about keep the boat from sinking completely. Finally they managed to flip it over and empty it, and strangely no damage seemed to have been done to either of the vehicles, although there was a lot of screaming and unhappy people on both sides.

I was sure this commotion would have scared all the animals away, but once we got back on track, a couple of curious chimps had come to see what was going on, which was a great sight. On the way back home, we also saw some hippos as the sun was setting and it was a great ending to a very good day out. The following morning I had planned on travelling south to Senegal, but when I heard Diego, a Belgian guy I met in Palmarin, was in Kololi, I decided to flip a coin and it landed on me travelling the south bank and returning to the beach once more.

Life's A Beach

First of all I’d like to apologise as I’m pretty sure I’ve used this title before and also because it has been a while since my last post, but there really hasn’t been much to write home about.
From Dakar’s main bus terminal I got in a “sept place” which drove me for a couple of hours to Mbour where I could find a taxi to take me to the neighbouring town of Saly. This was a nice relaxed beach-town where I spent a couple of days just doing what you do in a beach-town, in other words not very much. However it largely caters to retired French people and families and although it wasn’t expensive it was pricier than I would prefer. So after a couple of days I kept moving south and after a combination of minibuses and taxis I reached the even tinier town of Palmarin. Here I found a beautiful cheap lodge and spent a few nights in a shared tent, going on a pirogue (motorised wooden canoe) cruise through the mangroves and just wandered the endlessly empty Atlantic beach. After a few days of doing this I decided to keep moving and through a couple of “sept places” I reached the Gambian border in Karang. It was nice to be greeted in English after spending time in Francophone Africa, which has been nice but although I can understand a lot of French, it is nowhere near good enough to have proper conversations with people. After getting my passport stamped I got a minibus to the town of Barra where I could get a ferry across The Gambia River and arrived in the capital city of Banjul. The Gambia is the smallest country by size in mainland Africa and Banjul is the smallest capital with its population of around thirty thousand people. I quickly noticed it may also be the capital with most frequent power cuts and most mosquitoes per capita in any capital I have been, though I can’t verify these “facts.” There really wasn’t much to do or see here so the following day I moved to the beach town of Bakao.

Bakao was a nice quiet place, but the beach was rather ominous, a short rocky stretch of sand with stray dogs and vultures fighting over the garbage, so after two nights I moved to Kololi. Here I found a wonderful guesthouse owned by a Gambian woman named Aisa who used to live in Sweden, I was recommended this place by a friend back home who knows Aisa, and when she heard I was from Sweden, she quickly arranged a room for me at a very good price. The beach here is great, weather has been incredible and beers are cheap, so that is my current situation, not much is really happening as I kind of got stuck here, it has been a great place to just relax and get a bit of a holiday from my holiday, but I know that I will have to keep moving on soon.

Senegaleasy Does It

Saint-Louis really was a refreshing break after some hectic travel in Mauritania and it felt good to have reached Sub Saharan Africa. Founded by the French in 1659 this was the first French colony in Africa and it still retains much of its old colonial charm. Situated on a narrow strip of land in the middle of the Senegal River, we crossed over the old steel bridge “Pont Faidherbe” designed by Gustav Eiffel and arguably the city’s most iconic landmark, to reach the small old town. We spent some days just breathing in the quiet ambience, cute streets and crumbling French architecture taking us back in time to a foregone era of colonialism. After these chilled out days, we were introduced to a new form of transportation, one I think I will be seeing a lot of in the near future. Known simply as a bush taxi or in Francophone West Africa a “Sept Place” it is an old Peugot station wagon, where the boot has been converted and three more seats have been put in, giving it seven passenger seats. We found out the hard way, that these rear seats are slightly higher up and therefor mean you will have to sit with a slightly tilted head and crooked neck for the entire trip, in this case roughly five hours before we reached the Senegalese capital of Dakar.

The contrast was pretty obvious on arrival, gone was the silence and the chaos met us straight away, but I liked it. We found a cheap hostel in the S.C.A.T. Urbam neighborhood and this was to be my home for some time. I knew I would need to be sorting out some future visas, an annoying fact about West Africa, but I guess I have always been spoilt on past trips with my Swedish passport. I arranged my travel permits for three countries, Guinea Bissau, Guinea and Sierra Leone, something that took up a lot of my time, but when I wasn’t running between embassies, banks and internet cafés I did see a lot of this big city which is built up of a bunch of different neighbourhoods on a peninsula and during my nine days I managed to see most of them.

One day we paid a visit to the nearby and tiny island of Gorée. There are no paved roads or motorised vehicles here and it offers some much appreciated silence. However the tranquility comes with a somber history as this was once one of the epicentres of the European slave trade. Ruled by the Portuguese, The Dutch, The English and finally the French, it was sad to think how many lives had been sold from these old houses and dungeons before taking the traitorous trip across the Atlantic Ocean.

Another interesting sight to see was the recently erected Monument Of African Renaissance. This giant bronze statue (the tallest in Africa at 49 metres) has come with a lot of controversy though, it was built by a North Korean company who have specialised in supplying African countries with communist like monuments, the financing of it has come under scrutiny. Also the statue depicts a man, woman and child and much debate has come about the appropriateness of the woman’s clothing seeing as Senegal is a more than 95% Islamic country. After my time in the metropolis, which saw saying farewell to Tre and also included my first real nights out drinking of this trip (and more shockingly a couple of accompanying, terrible hangovers) I decided to keep heading south for some beach life.