RoRC Report from the Gambia: hot, chaotic and full of love
by Roving Rear Commodores Susanne and Lars Hellman 15 Dec 2021 03:56 UTC
We arrived in the Gambian capital Banjul in mid-May. The purpose was, among other things, to deliver medicines as a charity.
The Covid pandemic had made it basically impossible to deliver anything via regular mail. The medicine was from OCC port officer Augustin Martin in Gran Canaria whose daughter is working as a pharmacist. When the medicine by European standards are overdue there's normally nothing wrong with it and the doctors in e.g. the Gambia with very limited resources are more than happy to receive it. Augustin had been in contact with the Gambia local OCC port officer Samba Sey for many years and developed a relationship with a local clinic specialized in diabetes.
The original plan was then to perhaps stay another week or so and head up the river Gambia for a few days. However, it turned out that we quickly fell in love with Gambia and its people. We sailed 160 nautical miles up the river and stayed for six weeks. Gambia quickly became one of our highlights on our ongoing circumnavigation and we still dream about going back every now and then.
Banjul
It is the beginning of the rainy season, but the weather is still sunny and dry. We anchored outside a town district named "Half Die" after a cholera epidemic that ravaged a long time ago. We hoped it would not be as bad as it sounded. The guidebook says that once you have walked through this area and cleared in and survived, you have gone through the worst.
As it was a holiday due to the celebration of Ramadan, the actual clearance process took three days. We enlisted a local guy named Muhamed Keita as an agent to guide us through customs, immigration, the revenue department, health authorities and finally the port authority. English is the official language, but the Gambia also has 14 different native languages that are used more frequently than English. Many, especially older women, have not gone to school and they do not speak English at all. Our "agent" Mohamed speaks Wolof and with the help of him and some "coffee money" (approx. USD 4), every now and then, we manage to navigate through the bureaucracy and finally received permission to stay in the country for a month including permission to sail up the river.
We can now finally start enjoying this new town, but we soon realize that we had never seen a dirtier and uglier city. There is rubbish everywhere, a layer of brown sand covers everything, the houses are dilapidated and some areas look more like a war zone than anything else, but the people are shining like the sun and greeting us happily. All the children rush forward with a smile and shout "toubab, toubab". Toubab means that the person is from Europe or a foreigner in general and is white. If an adult uses this term it can be seen as an insult, but for the children, it is only someone who is fair-skinned. The children want to hold your hand, feel your white skin and your strange soft blond hair.
Some of the children wonder if we have a little candy for them, but if you say no, they are just as happy anyway. You soon notice that there is great poverty but, despite that, you are met by big smiles and hospitality and those who have nothing else can still offer their homemade food to a stranger. You're not a stranger for long though. Soon you are family, brother and sister. It is no wonder that the country is called "the smiling coast of Africa". In the Gambia the majority are Muslims, but there are also Christians and other religious communities, but there is no conflict between them. Mosques and churches are located in the same areas and marriages between people with different beliefs are common. There is a sense of great respect, regardless of skin color, religion or tribal affiliation. "Gambia No problem" and" Gambia No Stress" are common phrases. Once when we attended a church service in Banjul and being the only white people present, I suddenly got the opportunity to hold a small five-month-old baby. The mother saw that I waved to the little one and she simply and conveniently handed her over to me when it was time for prayer. I wonder if something similar could happen elsewhere in the world.
We realized quickly that Africa is very different compared to everything else we have experienced. After many years of communicating on social media with Samba Sey we finally met him and eventually get the opportunity to deliver the medicine to the clinic and meet with Doctor Gaye. After this Samba took us to his humble home and to see some of his family and relatives where we are invited for lunch.
The River Gambia
With a paper nautical chart from 1946, we leave Banjul to go up the river. The river is big and wide at the beginning and for Sea Wind with a draft of 1.8 metres there's no problem with the depth. There are many creeks along the river where you can anchor, but the inlets are often shallow so you have to keep your head cool and try to find the deeper central channel to enter. Once inside the creek, it gets deep again and you are surrounded by the vegetation and the sounds of the jungle. Lots of colourful birds sing their serenades, the frogs quack and the monkeys chatter while you are at anchor in the middle of the jungle. In the evenings we sometimes arranged a mosquito net over the cockpit but it was not as infested with insects as we had expected. After the rainy season, it gets terrible though so we counted ourselves lucky with our timing. Nevertheless, we tried to protect ourselves against malaria with the prophylaxis Malarone. If you read the list of side effects, you hardly dare to put it in your mouth, but again we were lucky and felt no side effects except a little stomach pain, but it could also have been the new bacterial flora we were exposed to.
Further up the river, it gets really hot during the day and there is hardly any wind. When it's time to put the anchor down it's often between 35-38 degrees Celsius inside the boat and our wind scoop does no good as it is completely windless so we were really missing one or two electric fans.
To get on to the most beautiful and wildest part of the river, you have to pass under a bridge which is not on the chart. Our mast is 16 metres and we passed without problems at low tide. The tidal difference is bout 1-1.5 metres. Some sources claim the bridge is 17 m high and others 20 m. We know now for a fact now that you do get under at low tide if your mast is 21 m (s/v Horizon). There is also a power cable, but it is even higher so if you can pass the bridge, you are okay.
Now the real adventure begins! Small islands such as Papa Island, Elephant Island and Baboon Island are beautifully nestled in dense mangroves and jungle and now the water becomes more and more brackish the further up the river you go. There are lots of small villages, animals and nature to explore with the dinghy when you have anchored. You have to show consideration and be very careful when approaching wild animals such as hippos which are considered to be one of the most dangerous, territorial and aggressive animals on the planet.
Baboon Island is a nature reserve where there are baboons, chimpanzees and hippos and you can anchor just outside the reserve. Somewhat unaware of that you were not allowed to go around in your own dinghy in the reserve we went around and had close up experiences of the hippos' breathing and grunting. A whole family of hippos was lying and enjoying themselves in the water at sunset. Late in the night we woke up as the boat was rocking. It was a hippopotamus that happened to step on our anchor chain. The local fishermen get out on the river in small dugout canoes and when you sit in the cockpit at sunset and listen to all the sounds of the jungle, suddenly they may come gliding singing a song in the local language while setting a fishing net or a line with hooks. He's looking so happy and content as he sets off into the sunset to catch food for his family. It is like a beautiful painting in perfect harmony with both nature
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This article has been provided by the courtesy of Ocean Cruising Club.