18th May - Fansu's Beach

We ended up having a bit of a session last night, with Tony, Fansu, a couple of Fansu's other friends, and Nora, the German woman who came here on holiday and married a Gambian.   We sat round the fire and played drums right into the night.  So this morning wasn't one of our early starts.

 

Nora's solar electricity was playing up, so we all went round in Tony's Toyota to take a look at it.   She has a huge compound, nicely set up with trees and bushes she's planted.  She is in the middle of building a new house there, which she's designed herself and looks as if it will be lovely, if it's ever completed.   She's used African architectural ideas, such as having the roof not attached to the tops of the walls, to let the air through.  At the same time, some rooms are sealed and mouse-proofed to protect her valuables.

 

Tony and I looked at the solar electric setup and realised part of the circuitry had been damaged.   We took it apart and I soldered up the connections using Tony's soldering iron, and we were pleased to see it all worked fine.  Then we turned our attentions to Nora's little wind generator, at the top of a pole.   It's not worked properly for years.  The pole was about 30' high, so the challenge was, how to get to it.  The ladder we had wasn't long enough, so we came up with the idea that Tony would drive his Toyota through the compound, and we'd put the ladder on the roof.

 

Unfortunately, in the process of inching around the plants and other hazards in the compound, Tony ran over the plastic pipe from Nora's well to her water tank and split it!   Disaster!  Water poured everywhere, and Nora, who sometimes finds things hard going anyway, was distraught.  Oopsy.

 

Nora's partner drove me down to the beach to collect my special plumbing tape, and we taped up the joint and put a jubilee clip round it.   Alas, when we turned the pump on later, it didn't hold, so it'll need a local plumber to come and fix it, which will be easy, but he'll probably need to order the right parts in, so it could take some time.

 

Meanwhile we backed Tony's truck up to the generator pole, put the ladder on top of the truck, and I went up the ladder to look at the generator.   We were going to remove it, but one of the bolts sheared as I undid it whilst perched precariously on the bendy bamboo ladder on the roof of the truck leaning against a thin metal pole some height above the ground, so we decided to leave it be, so as not to do any more damage, to me or the fan.   Nora's going to try to get hold of a diode, so the turbine acts as a generator and not a fan, and I'll wire it in to her solar power system at some future point and see if it works at all.

 

So we left Nora with solar power at last, but unfortunately with no water.  We returned to the beach, where lunch was ready;   Fansu's entourage cook a big bowl of rice, fish and vegetables every day, and Nicki and I are now regarded as part of the furniture, so we're invited along as well, even though I don't think they're charging us anything for lunch.   We all sit around the bowl with a spoon each and help ourselves.  It's very communal and friendly.  Afterwards we sat around, read and drummed a bit;   several people have been teaching me little bits of drumming, which is really great, although I'm damned if I can remember the rhythms afterwards, sadly.

 

Tony, Nicki and I headed off to the Web Café, then returned to dinner, which was fish in foil – marinated with vegetables and a really tasty sauce – along with Fansu's legendary garlic bread, which the teachers maintain is the best part of visiting Gambia.   Later on, Fansu left to spend the evening with his wife, and the three of us remaining cooked up a tin of rice pudding and ate it with some delicious honey that a local person had sold me earlier.   Then we sat around the fire and chatted.

 

Whilst we were away, we missed Fansu's wedding, but I was surprised to learn that Fansu did too.   He was working at the beach, and sent an emissary to the mosque who communicated with the Imam, and took back to Fansu the Imam's comments and prayers.  It seems odd to not be at your own wedding, but it's nothing out of the ordinary.   Tony told us about the wedding proposal:  Fansu sent a representative (a friend or brother, I'm not sure which) to Fatu, his bride-to-be, with a bag full of cola beans.   She signified her approval by taking one bean and returning the rest of the bag.  He then sent the bag of beans to her father, who did the same, and on round the rest of the family, each of whom took one bean and sent the rest back.   This signifies that the whole family is in approval of the wedding.  You have to be fairly well off to be married here, to bear the cost of the wedding, the upkeep of the family and the compound.   Fansu's little restaurant on the beach is very successful, and he's very highly regarded locally.

 

Tony taught me to make Gambian tea whilst we sat around the fire.  I used bissap, a sweet flower which tastes a bit like Ribena, but they generally use green tea.   You fire up some coals, clean two shot glasses and the teapot, clean some bissap, and put the bissap in the pot on the coals with some water.  When it's boiling, you tip out some of the liquid into a shot glass half full of sugar, and mix it back into the pot a few times.  Then you pour a glass of tea, and pour it into the other glass from a great height, then back into the first glass, on and on.   (In the process, I spilled tea everywhere, of course – it's harder than it looks.)  After a while, you return the tea to the pot, add some mint (which you also wash first), then put the pot back on the coals.   When it's boiled again, you go through the same ritual of pouring it into one cup, then to the other, and backwards and forwards again for some time.   Then you return the tea to the pot, rinse the outside of the glasses whilst being careful not to destroy the foam that is inside them, pour two small measures of tea into the glasses and serve.

 

Once all that's done, the pot goes on the coals again, and you go through the whole process two more times, doing six lots of mixing in total and producing three pairs of glasses of tea!   The whole thing takes upwards of an hour, and the idea is that whilst all this is going on, you have plenty of time to pass the time of day with whoever you're making the tea for.   I have to say, as nice as the tea is, I'm not sure I could really be bothered with doing this habitually.  You end up covered in tea, you burn your hands on the pot and the glasses, and at the end of the lengthy ceremony you hardly get much tea anyway!