| Submitted by: David Pugh, United States |
| Submission Date: 27 November 2007 |
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I’d lost my Rastafarian wristband, one night at Gatwick Airport and it had gone! My son, Sam had tied it in place the previous day, I’d told him that it would stay on until I returned and he could untie it for me. I looked at my wristwatch on my left arm, at least that was still there and it told me I had ten minutes before boarding began. The watch was a present from my father, some thirty-four years earlier and had been all around the world with me. It had survived my electrocution, during a monsoon downpour in Lucknow, which had seen me hurled into the sewer fed, flooded streets, the watch had taken about five weeks to dry out properly but it never stopped working. I had been “given” the Rasta bracelet in Jamaica, some years earlier by Bongoman, a beach bum in Negril, who bore an uncanny resemblance to my Gambian friend, Lucas, who I was flying off to meet. I’d thought at the time that Lucas could easily end up like this Jamaican if he could no longer keep up his arduous job as a palm wine tapper. I hated the thought of my friend having to hassle tourists for small change, so together we’d dreamed up the plan that he could become a tour guide to his homeland, Guinea-Bissau.
There is no backpacking culture in the Gambia, as it’s one of the easiest and cheapest gateways into West Africa, it should be an obvious starting point for eager gap year students on their way to Timbuktu and many other equally fascinating destinations. The plan was that Lucas could take me by local transport down to his home village, Cassalol, to meet his brothers and see how they lived their isolated rural lives. We needed to do the trip in about four days, as that would be the maximum time your average tourist would want to spend away from their pre-paid beach resort hotel. I volunteered myself to be a Guinea(-Bissau) pig and to road test the trip.
I’d written to Lucas, to tell him not to meet me at Yundum airport as I’d arranged with Lamin Badjie at his Kadjendo guesthouse to pick me up, take me to his place via the ATM machine on Westfield Junction, Serekunda. On arrival I was met by a security policeman, with my name on a sheet of A4, who escorted me through Customs and Immigration, with the promise that my friend was waiting. Lucas is a personal friend of the head of airport security, so he couldn’t resist showing off his important contact. I asked him if he’d had my message about Lamin Badjie, “Yes, I have just been talking to him. He knows you are here!” “I’ll take you to him.” he continued. Okay, I thought but this is a bit of a complicated way to do things, how had Lucas got here? I soon found out, when I was introduced to Moudu, our driver to the Kadjendo but what about Mr. Badjie, I could see his minibus in the airport car park? Lucas assured me that I shouldn’t worry about him, as Mr. Badjie wasn’t a very nice man. What’s more, Moudu would charge me the same amount of money to take me to the Kadjendo and that I should just sit back and start enjoying my holiday. Needless to say I was in a rather tense mood on arrival at the Kadjendo, particularly after having to pay Moudu 400 Dalasi for the ride down; the ATM machine was only paying out hundred Dalasi notes and of course Moudu had no change. I made my apologies to Lamin Badjie, assuring him that I’d pay the 350 Dalasi agreed for the airport pickup. The transfer had cost me 750 Dalasi, the official tourist taxi only charges a 400 fixed rate fee for the same trip; not a good start.
After a welcome shower I walked down to Lucas Jatta’s “office”, the palm grove opposite Kotu police station and met up with Akoli, Lucas’ nephew and demonstrated the use of the IBM Thinkpad, I brought with me to give to George, Lucas’ nineteen year old son. As Akoli didn’t know what a floppy disc was I thought I might be wasting the new battery I’d bought for the laptop and shut it down. I thought I’d have the chance to meet up with George on my return from Guinea-Bissau and iron out any problems he might be having with the machine; this was not to be. Lucas had finished his afternoon shift, up his trees, and after bucket showering, outlined his plan for our trip. This was to get me to pay Moudu 3000 Dalasi a day for use of his four-wheel drive, plus his hotel expenses. I’d agreed to pay Lucas 1000 Dalasi a day for four days, as a compensation for taking time of his work; though in reality Lucas would be very lucky if he made 1000 Dalasi, about £25, for a whole seven days of palm wine selling. The plan was to show him the possibility of an alternate way to make some money, some wealthy package tourist may well be able to pay £100 a day for guide and driver but this tourist was going to travel African style.
If we were to take bush taxi to Bissau, Lucas suggested we set off next morning, as soon as I’d picked up a Guinean visa. Lucas particularly wanted me to see the capital city of his homeland, before visiting his ancestral village, which seemed a good plan to me; a chance to find out more about the country’s culture. No one I’d spoken to had heard of Guinea-Bissau and even the Foreign Office website said, “Few British tourists visit here”.
As Britain doesn’t even have a Guinea-Bissau consulate, I was prepared for some delay in just getting a visa sorted; so leaving a day early seemed a wise plan. As it turned out it only took about three-quarters of an hour to hand in my completed form, along with one passport photo and a 250 Dalasi fee. The wait seemed even shorter as Lucas had brought a fresh litre of palm wine for breakfast, which he insisted we finish before taking a taxi from the consulate building, in Fajara, to the bush taxi stand in Serrakunda, the first of many bus stops that we’d visit in the next few days.
Leg one was easy, there are a continuous stream of mini-buses plying the route between Serrakunda and Brikama, a crossroads town on the north-south Senegal route. At Brikama we had a longer wait to fill a car to Ziguinchor, the main city of the Casamance region of Senegal and our first border crossing. I was a little apprehensive about border crossings, the Lonely Planet had talked about extra visa fees, though EU nationals don’t need a visa to visit Senegal but most worryingly was someone asking to see a Yellow Fever vaccination certificate, which would scupper any plans of a casual Gambian based tourist crossing West African borders. Having heard some horror stories of tourists receiving forced vaccinations and ten days incubation in a local clinic, I had shelled out £40 for the injection and paperwork but decided to keep it hidden. I think we had about eight immigration and customs checks on the way there and back but no official asked to see any vaccination certificate. I’m not sure why it’s so important to have one, it’s not as if it were a contagious disease but The Gambia, Senegal and Guinea-Bissau all lie in designated Yellow Fever risk areas.
We decided to spend the night in Ziguinchor as I was keen to sample Senegalese night life and asked Lucas if he knew a cheap hotel. He didn’t but he was keen to find one, so he could change into his finery and hit the town. Fortunately I had a Lonely Planet, Senegal and the Gambia guide book with me; there isn’t one for Guinea-Bissau, you’d have to rely on the very thin section of the very fat West African guide. LP recommended the Hotel Touriste, a double room with mosquito nets, towels, a fan, shower and western style toilet for under £12. Lucas donned his fetching Che Guevara matching ensemble, a very incongruous choice for someone as pro-American as he; Lucas had drunk four litres of palm wine when he heard the news of the invasion of Iraq. I don’t share his opinions on this subject but as he is a Christian in a Moslem dominated country, he would have a different outlook on life to me. I dressed in a Hawaiian shirt to try and compliment my friend’s attire and we set off to look at the Casamance River that we’d just crossed to get here. “Where to then, Lucas?” I asked, “Wait!” was his reply and he went looking for someone who could speak Jola. He returned with a small boy who could show us a local bar for a few coins, with 940 West African Francs to the pound, you can end up with a lot of small coins. We found the rather smart, if quiet bar, just as the sky opened, tipping the last of the summer’s monsoon onto the tin roof and flooding the mud street outside. We ordered two Gazelle beers and I consulted the Lonely Planet, hoping that Lucas would be a more informed guide when we got to Bissau. He asked me to read out the LP guide to Ziguanchor night life, this bar seemed too quiet and only served bread rolls. Lucas liked the sound of Le Kassa, to quote the LP, “Most inviting of local-style places – a spacious restaurant-cum-bar, with a fairly wide menu and frequent live shows”. Looking at it’s location on the town map and being a bit better at negotiating urban streets than Lucas, I told him to wait a moment, ducked out the front door, into the rain and was back in seconds, to announce that we were already at Le Kassa. We decided to try Le Palmier, down by the river, very cheap and even though we were the only diners, we had what turned out to be the best meal of the journey; a plate of the freshest Langoustines, for just over a pound. We never did find any of the famed Senegalese night life, so turned in early to make a good start on the next leg.
At 6am we opened up Le Palmier; Lonely Planet did say it was a twenty-four hour establishment and had the dish of the previous day, cold rice and pork, along with a personal escort to the bus stand by the owner. I only had 10,000 Franc notes, dispensed from the last ATM machine in Senegal; there are none in Guinea-Bissau, be warned. Le Palmier’s owner had no money of any sort in his till or his pocket, so he waited until I got some change from the bush taxi to Sao Domingos, the Guinea-Bissau border crossing town, which I was soon to know very well.
We passed through Guinean customs and immigration with no problem, other than Lucas had neglected to tell me that he would have to pay entry and exit fees on his ECWOS identity card at every checkpoint in Senegal and Guinea-Bissau. No matter, the bush taxi we took from Sao Domigos had a very large hole in the floor, through which I could admire the surprisingly well metalled road, as good as those in Senegal. The roads in the Gambia mostly comprise of small rings of tarmac, surrounding large craters. I’d been jostled so much on the road out of Brikama that my torch had slipped out of my pocket and spiritually joined itself with my Jamaican wristband. The road ended at a ferry crossing the Rio Cacheu, where I was greeted by the remarkable sight of buses with roof racks crammed with live pigs and goats, making an almighty din. In fact, one of the tell tale signs that you are indeed in Guinea-Bissau are the number of domestic pigs crossing the well maintained roads, you know you are now in a Christian country. Lucas had started taking delight in pointing out the number of Catholic and Evangelical churches to be seen and just the occasional mosque. He’d really like to move back here!
A piggy bus took us to the outskirts of Bissau, here we took a local taxi to the hotel Lucas had been recommended by an official from the consulate office in Fajara. I thought this could be expensive but the taxi ride cost me dearly; the driver insisted that I needn’t put my rucksack in the boot but sit it next to me, despite him picking up other passengers.
While wrestling the bag out of the narrow back door I caught my left wrist on the door trim, slicing my watch in half, sending the winder into the gutter. I was speechless and a tear came to my eye as my long term travelling companion and a very direct link to my dad, who had died in 2000AD, went into terminal decline. I managed later to tape it back together, it still worked but with no means to wind it, I just had to wait for it to slowly die.
The Hotel Ta-Mar did indeed turn out to be quite expensive; we were the only guests and had the choice of the four rooms. The prices ranged from CFA25,000 to 30,000 to 35,000, all with air-conditioning, fridge and TV which only worked intermittently due to power cuts and power cables too short to reach working sockets. |
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| Copyright © - "David Pugh" |
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