17th May - Fansu's Beach

The “daily” blog has rather gone to pot this time, but there’s a reason for that which will become clear.

We broke camp early, with a view to getting as far as possible on 15th, ideally into Gambia. Our drive through the lush Guinean mountains continued, and finally we reached the plain to the north of the country and Koundara. We spent most of our remaining Guinean Francs on petrol, but had about a pound left over, so set out to go wild at the market.

The market is a vital part of Guinean life, where most of the population make what little they can to get by. People will grow a handful of gourds or squashes, some chillis or peanuts, and walk with them for many miles to the local market, where they’ll sell for a pittance. This meant it was actually quite hard to spend our pound. We bought some of the little fried donut things they call gateaux, which aren’t as sweet as they sound but are quite pleasant, and you see them everywhere. We bought some bananas, and Nicki looked at some new flip-flops, but they didn’t go up to her size. Finally we saw a woman selling peanuts, so I asked to buy three tin-fulls of them, which is quite a lot. You’re expected to provide your own container, but somebody magicked up a plastic bag for us. Next to the peanut woman was an old crone with no teeth and, judging by her appearance, quite a few communicable diseases. I shook hands with her and said hello, and just at that moment our nuts became ready. The old lady chose that exact moment to sneeze vigorously into our peanuts!

We walked back to the truck and gave the pox-ridden peanuts to some children who were nearby (hopefully their immune systems are better equipped to cope with them than ours). A man started talking to me in English and explained he was a Liberian refugee who had tried to cross the Mediterranean, and the boat had sunk, and he’d survived, but not all of them had. They’d been picked up by Moroccans, who had then deported them, so he was going back to Liberia. He was finding it hard in Guinea, because he didn’t speak French, and transport is expensive there. He asked for some money and I gave him all the rest of our Guinean currency. I’m not sure whether his story was true, but it could well have been.

From Koundara we drove north to the border. Exiting Guinea was not problematic, but it still takes time to have your papers stamped, passport examined, get the carnet de passage sorted, and so on. When we entered Senegal, I decided to ask the customs officer if he would sort out our carnet de passage, as it had been wrongly stamped twice in Senegal previously (once because customs forgot to stamp it, and once because we’d left Senegal through the national park, without clearing customs at all). I explained to him what had happened, taxing my French, and told him what I wanted to do to sort it out. I had to run through it two or three times, but he seemed inclined to give me the couple of extra stamps I needed to sort it out. But just as he had his stamp in his hand, another customs officer came through, and we had to go through it all again! In total it probably took 40 minutes, but he kindly stamped what I wanted him to stamp, which meant our carnet was once more legitimate and valid.

So, back in Senegal, we headed straight back to the Gambia border. The roads in Senegal were much better than in Guinea, even when unpaved, so we sped up considerably. Overtaking lorries was a bit tricky, because they throw up huge clouds of dust, stretching miles back, so you can’t easily see past them. I had to wait for the wind to gust the dust out of the way before I could put my foot down and get past, with some tooting of the horn to avoid being run off the road at the crucial moment.

At the Gambia border we had to go through all the border formalities once more, and by this time it was getting a little tiring, although we know the routine well by now. At the borders Nicki kept getting plagued with local children, who would stand by the door and say “Give me a pen! Give me your phone!” They haven’t all learned to ask nicely yet, although that said, some of the Guinean children had thanked us profusely for some empty water bottles we’d given them.

Into Gambia again and we drove to Bassé Sante Su to change some money, get our visa stamped, buy petrol and get an ice cream. The visa was put on hold, because the chap at the immigration office with the key to the safe with the stamp in was asleep, and they didn’t want to wake him up. We parked outside the bank, but the guard moved us on, so we found parking elsewhere and I went back to the bank opposite and changed some travellers’ cheques. Then we filled up with petrol, but disaster! The ice cream machine wasn’t yet switched on. Nicki pleaded with the man to turn it on, and we’d have bought enough ice cream to probably pay for the machine for a week, but to no avail. We went and got our stamp (the immigration boss had finally woken up) and left Bassé without ice cream.

It was getting towards sundown, so we decided to carry on driving until the sun set. When it set, we decided to carry on driving as the road was good. Then when the road deteriorated, we decided to carry on driving anyway, and stop when we felt like it. The road on the south of the Gambia River is notoriously bad, but compared to any of the Guinean roads it wasn’t too bad. You’d have problems without a 4wd though. The main problem is potholes, which are a foot or more deep and anything up to a couple of metres across. Some of them would make a nice ornamental pond. You can’t drive round all of them, because there are just too many, so you have to try to pick the best route and take it very gently through the deepest ones. Often it’s best to drive off the tarmac and onto the dusty verge for a while.

As the night progressed, we passed through various police, customs, immigration and army checkpoints, and we had to stop at all of them. The officials varied from very friendly people glad to have somebody to talk to, to dedicated crimestoppers who took their jobs very seriously. One chap did a very thorough check of the truck, including meticulously checking inside an old crisp packet which I’d chucked in the bin, with his torch. On the bright side, he turned up a bag of peanuts which went missing a while ago. Some of the army guys were clearly bored out of their minds, stuck at a remote checkpoint in the middle of nowhere all night. Several of the officials asked if we’d give them the truck (“No, it’s our house!”) and many asked for our contact details, so I gave them my email address. It’s difficult to know what they actually want us to do; some want to have a friend in England to write to, and I think others somehow think we will be valuable contacts and will be able to pull strings for them. (Out of interest, we’ve had at least a dozen serious enquiries about buying the truck by now.) Nobody was concerned about us driving at night, which was encouraging.

As the night went on, we carried on driving, as it was quite nice to drive in the cool. We saw orange lights glimmering in the trees; we wondered what they were, until one bounded across the road in front of us – monkeys’ eyes. Cats’ eyes were generally green or orange, donkeys green, goats green, dogs yellow. Quite a few of the animals had bedded down for the night in the middle of the road, and although the dogs and goats usually moved, the donkeys were staying put.

As the night wore on, a clonking noise from somewhere under Nicki gradually got louder. I suspected the anti-roll bar had crept again, so I parked up at about 2am; sure enough, it was rubbing against the bump stop again. It took about 20 minutes to sort out, and I used jubilee clips which will hopefully discourage it from going again, but I’m not that optimistic. Better roads will probably make more of a difference. However, the knocking continued, and on further inspection it’s the steering arm ball joints. I have spares, fortunately, so will take a look at them tomorrow.

We saw a couple of other 4x4s and the occasional truck, but the roads here are quiet overnight. In one village at about 3am there were a lot of people milling around in the road; we then passed a compound with lights and music, presumably it was a wedding ceremony or other party. From about 4:30am, we started to see people up and about, hitching up their donkey carts or waiting for the earliest bush taxis to take them to the market. We also hit a bat, which glanced off the windscreen and hit again right in front of Nicki’s face. She reports it was large, brown and somewhat surprised. I think it survived, although it must have been a bit dazed.

The road from Bassé back to Fansu’s beach at Tujering was something around 300km long, but although we left Bassé around half six in the evening, because of the state of the road we didn’t arrive at the beach until 12 hours later, when it was starting to get light. By this time we’d been on the move for 24 hours, which was a bit of a marathon, but at the time it made sense to press on as we weren’t feeling too bad and didn’t really want to stop. Peanuts, bananas, crisps and biscuits kept things ticking over.

We felt quite elated to be driving along the beach to the little restaurant again. We also felt pretty filthy, so we stripped off and ran into the warm dawn sea to clean up a bit before going to bed. We slept until mid-afternoon, when we decided it was high time to clean up the truck! The dust was getting ridiculous, with absolutely everything, everywhere being caked in it. The method we used was Nicki sat inside, took stuff out of cupboards and passed it to me; I brushed, wiped or wet-wiped it clean and piled it up, while she cleaned the dust out of the cupboard; then it all went back in and we moved onto the next item. It took 3 hours of yesterday, plus 5 hours of today, to finish the whole truck, and during this time every last single item was removed from the truck and cleaned. A Dyson would have made life easier, but Nicki’s done a pretty fantastic job and it’s a much nicer place to live in now! From here on, the roads shouldn’t be too bad, so we should be able to keep it in much better condition.

Last night, after a dinner of fish & chips, and garlic bread that blew your head off, we sat around a fire at the beach with the teachers, Tony and some of Fansu’s friends. The conversation at one point got onto local beliefs, and took a turn I didn’t really feel very comfortable about. When we were last here, we were woken one morning by a shrieking and clapping sound, which both Nicki and I thought was a particularly irritating bird. We later found out it was a Concuron (also known as a Corcoran I think?) This is a man who comes down to the beach to ceremonially clean it before the boys who have been circumcised come to the beach to clean their wounds in the sea (ouch!) He’s dressed up in traditional costume and runs up and down the beach making a strange shrieking noise, and clapping something wooden together to make a sharp sound. This all happens first thing in the morning, so it’s not done for the benefit of an audience, it’s part of the traditional belief system. One of Fansu’s friends was talking about another Concuron from a different town who can fly from place to place, and can also give you something to eat which will give you the ability to fly too. (Obvious parallels here with the shamans of Amazonian and Pacific cultures.) One of the teachers thought this was a joke, so was laughing and making derogatory references about Father Christmas, which I thought was a little insensitive; after it became clear that this was a local tradition and belief shared by all the Africans here, she kept quiet.

Today we spent most of the day cleaning, after which we went to post the latest round of blogs at the web café – frustrating as the connection kept dropping out at crucial moments. On the way back to the beach we stopped at the village well to fill up our jerry cans. Here they have a hand-pumped well which also filters the water as it pumps. As we drove back along the beach in the setting sun, Nicki said “Oooh! There’s a crab!” But not for long, because we drove over it. Luckily there are lots of other crabs.

Nicki’s elbow continues to cause grief, partly because she bangs it on something about 8 times a day. It’s swollen up compared to the other one, but I’m not sure there’s much we can do about it here unless it gets worse.

We’ve just had a lovely dinner of calamari, hand-cooked by Fansu over the fire as usual, and we’re about to decamp back to the fire in the sand.