21st May - Fansu's Beach

On 19^th Nicki awoke feeling a bit grim.  She felt hot and cold, and a bit sick, and very tired, so stayed in bed for most of the day.   We did briefly wonder if it could be malaria, as Nicki always gets bitten (luckily for me, as it means I get overlooked by the mosquitoes), but the symptoms didn't seem to match.

 

The ball joints on the steering drag link of the truck were a little worn, so I decided to replace them.   Annoyingly, I brought one right hand threaded ball joint and one left hand threaded one, and for this job I needed two right hand threaded ones, so I could only replace one of them.   As they're not disastrous, it didn't matter too much, and in an emergency I could nick one of the ones of the anti-roll bar anyway.  This is a 30 minute job.   At least, it is if you can get the damn ball joint off the end of the drag link.

 

With help from Tony, as well as Khalifa, who happened to be around, I got the drag link off, and tried to remove the ball joint.   The nut wouldn't budge.  So we all had a go.  No joy.  Then we got the vice out to hold the ball joint more securely.   Nothing.  Then we decided the vice needed to be mounted more firmly on the truck.  So we drilled some holes in the truck.   Nada.  I used the blow torch to heat up the joint.  Nichts.  In the end we got the ball joint in the vice, with the vice bolted to the truck, and all three of us tried to turn the nut with a spanner.   At this point, I noticed we were turning the nut the wrong way…  It wasn't a captive nut, it was a lock nut.  Doh!

 

Once we started turning the nut the right way, it was pretty easy.  However, the half hour job took something over 2 hours.

 

The rear transfer box seems to have moved up on its mount, and the prop shaft driving it has been rubbing on the cross member, meaning if we use 6wd, the prop shaft makes an unpleasant noise as it rubs.   The only reason this should happen is if the chassis bends (unlikely, but not impossible on the Guinean roads we used), or if the main gearbox drops down.   Tony and I had a look underneath and noticed one of the two rubber mounts for the gearbox was mashed up.  Blast, that means a new rubber mount, and it's not a great idea to use the truck before the job is done.

 

Nicki had slept through all our hammering, banging and drilling, against all odds, but by the evening was feeling a bit more perky and partook of a little dinner.   After dinner, Tony, Nicki and I sat around chatting for quite a while.

 

We awoke tired the next morning, but we had an appointment:  we were going to pick the teachers up and go to the Abuko nature reserve near Serekunda.   We breakfasted before we left;  coffee, baguettes and honey, plus the marmite we brought with us.  It's all very pleasant and relaxed, as long as the little red ants haven't got to the baguettes.   We're used to Boos, the cat, being all over us at breakfast, but Tony and I have been rubbing kerosene into her ears and around her eyes to get rid of the little flies that latch on very firmly all round her face, so she tends to avoid us a bit now.

 

I rang the garage at Fajarah to see if they had a gearbox mount;  they did.   So after we'd picked up the teachers, we went along to get a couple.  I also bought some more one-shot grease (1 pack);  the whole lot came to €50, which seems a bit steep, but I suppose I'm paying for shipping from the UK in with the price.

 

The nature reserve was well set up;  a guide talked us through the uses and traditions around various trees and plants as we walked through the forest, then we went to a couple of hides near water holes to watch the animals and birds.   They get some pretty hefty pythons here, but you have to arrive early in the morning to see the snakes.  We did see a monitor lizard, a goshawk, some deer and plenty of monkeys of different types, including a type of rare colobus.   Then we went to an enclosure where we saw hyenas, which are pretty nasty pieces of work, and were surrounded by a huge flock of vultures.  We also saw some monkeys which are being rehabilitated, having been kept in captivity or been orphaned.   They used to have a lion, but it died.

 

We got back mid-afternoon, having driven through a very lively Serekunda and stopped to buy some crates of drink for the restaurant.   (We also found some goodies such as crisps and sweets so stocked up a bit.)  I decided to have a look at fitting the gearbox mount, and Tony gallantly helped.

 

According to the manual, you just jack up the gearbox a bit, pop the old mount out, and put the new one in.   Well, you can guess what happened:  firstly we couldn't get one of the nuts off the old mount, then we couldn't get the mount out.  We had to remove a bracket which was very firmly bolted to the side of the gearbox to get at it in the end.   The old mount had sheared totally in half, which explains why the gearbox wasn't quite sitting right.  By the time we got the new mount in, and bolted everything back together, it took about 3 hours, which is about par for the course!   Ideally you should change both mounts at once, but we really couldn't be doing with that, so at least now I have a spare if another one fails.  I also noticed the wire I used to wire up the exhaust in Niokolo-Koba had given up, so another job to do!

 

Dinner was butterfish, which was absolutely delicious, probably the best yet.  The teachers were around as well, but they left before we'd started up a fire to toast the marshmallows we'd bought earlier.   Nicki and I made rice pudding for everybody, using some lovely milk Fansu had bought fresh from the cow, but by the time we'd finished, there were only about 5 of us left.   Well, we enjoyed it, anyway.

 

This morning, Nicki went with Tony to Serekunda, Tony to stock up on things for the restaurant, Nicki to buy some new flip-flops, although they also got me a rather fetching shirt.   I stayed to mess around with the truck.  I tied up the exhaust again using some more wire, then got the jack out to look for a clonking noise which has been around for a couple of weeks.   When I put the jack away, the locker hinge gave way.  They're mild steel hinges, so rust very easily, which is why I bought plenty of spare hinge.   They're easy enough to replace (you just drill out the rivets, cut a new length of hinge, and rivet it all back together again), but I managed to break two drill bits in the process, which was annoying.

 

Then Khalifa and I went up to Senegambia, the touristy bit of Gambia up the coast from here, so I could change some more money, and fill up with fuel at the same time.   We saw quite a few westerners there, of course, so I couldn't resist calling "Toubab!" out the window to them!  On the way back, Khalifa took me to his family compound and to see his house.   He also showed me various photos, plus his high-school certificates and endorsements.  We got back to the beach at the same time as Nicki and Tony.

 

This afternoon's exciting idea was to pick up all the kids from Fansu's family compound and bring them down to the beach for a few hours.   Even though they only live a mile or so away from the beach, they don't generally come down here for some reason, so we thought it would be a nice excursion for them.   Nicki bought some beach buckets and a football in preparation.  Tony and I picked up 13 kids in his Land Cruiser, all related to Fansu (as far as we know, although we might have ended up with some extras), and brought them back to the beach.   The little boy from the compound next door was most disappointed to be turned away.

 

One of the youngest children, little Yousuffa, had never seen the sea before, so was wide-eyed when he got out of the truck!   All the children were wearing their best clothes, but that wasn't a problem as they quickly stripped off down to their pants and joined us in the sea.   The teachers were here as well, so between us we could just about cope with all the children, although I kept doing head counts to make sure we'd not lost any!  The children had a whale of a time;   they kept wanting to be carried into the sea, and if you've ever spent a day carrying around a couple of children around, one on each hip, you'll know it's quite exhausting!   The kids were not used to the sea at all, so clung to us like limpets.  We made sand castles and sand animals, played a bit of football, and all in all I think the kids had a really good time.   None of them had ever made a sand castle before, but they cottoned on pretty quickly.

 

Two other teenage girls from the compound wandered along later and joined in the fun as well, but they got a bit boisterous, and some of the little ones were in a bit of danger of being trampled at one point!   Nicki and Tony had a late lunch, and had a bit left over, but the children made short work of polishing off the left-overs.  It was nice to see how well they all played together;   one girl was given a chip at the kitchen, so brought it back, carefully split it into three pieces, and shared it with her two cousins.

 

We took a group photo, and before they went, I printed a copy out so each of the children could have one.   Trying to get them all to look at the camera at the same time was almost impossible, and then the camera battery gave out at the crucial moment, so I had to print 3 different photos to try to give each child one where they could be seen.   By the end of the afternoon, the children were knackered, and so were we.  We dropped them back at the compound, and on the way back Tony and I filled up all the restaurant's jerry cans with water at the well.

 

Nicki worked out that we really need to be leaving Gambia around Wednesday.  It'll be really sad to leave, because after being here for a couple of weeks, it sort of feels like home!   We know lots of people here, we know our way around, we're used to the daily life like pumping water at the well and buying bread from the little shop, and we've been so welcomed here that it's like having a home from home.   We both hope we'll be able to come back in the future.  I can understand why several people we met on the way down were so fascinated with Gambia ;  it's hard to explain, but the country is so hospitable and welcoming that you quickly feel like you're among good friends.