6th May - Farafenni

Crikey. It’s hot. Nicki and I are sitting here in minimal clothing and have sweat running off us. The laptop is so hot I have to put something between it and my legs so it doesn’t burn me. Nicki’s just realised that Mali is going to be even hotter. We’re going to miss Timbuktu out on the basis that it’d be a heat nightmare. Today it was 45° in the cab. In Timbuktu it would be about ten degrees hotter. That’s not nice.

We did go to the market yesterday on the way to the web café. We bought a drum, which Saikou carefully chose for us. The price the salesman named was 950 Dalasi (about £20), but before we could say anything, Saikou dived in and spoke to him in Mandinka. The price immediately came down to 650 Dalasi. In the end we paid 600. It’s a nice drum.

We also bought: deodorant, which the stallholder had to go and find specially for us, and was quite expensive as it’s not common out here (the Africans seem to wash very frequently, and are of course used to the heat anyway); some peanuts, as Gambia makes something like 85% of its foreign export capital from peanuts; a sarong for Nicki; a doormat for the truck, to limit the amount of sand we track in and out; and 2 bananas. We dropped Saikou off at his compound, said goodbye, and headed back to the beach, stopping at the web café on the way to post the blog. We also printed out a photo from each country so far, on our little printer, to brighten up the wall of the truck. Dinner was swordfish.

Fansu has a little cat at the restaurant, which is very friendly, and tries to climb all over you as you eat. The trouble is, it’s pretty flea-ridden, so we kept shooing it away. But it wasn’t put off in the slightest. I suggested to Tony that we could throw it in the sea, to get rid of the bugs, but he said “They’ve already tried that, it doesn’t work!” It’s a great ratter, apparently, so earns its keep, and Fansu took it to the vet to find out how to get rid of the bugs. Nicki was very amused to find the cat’s name is “Boos”, which is apparently what Georgia calls their cat, Lulu. The restaurant also has a wildcat population, which ate the chickens, plus a monitor lizard which drops by from time to time.

Just before bed, I went to the sea to answer the call of nature, checking that nobody was around. After a while I felt a presence behind me, and turned to find two large cattle standing there in the moonlight. They were quite surprised to see me too. Tony says they head north along the beach every evening, but he doesn’t know where they are coming from or going to.

We had an earlyish start and breakfasted with Fansu and Tony before leaving the beach, stopping at the village well on the way to fill up a jerry can with water. I hope we will be able to go back one day, as it really is a special experience.

We headed north up the coast to visit the crocodile pool near Bakau. The Lonely Planet lived up to its usual promise by being woefully inadequate to navigate by, so we zigzagged through the dust streets of the town asking as we went. We got there at the same time as a Gambian school visit. The crocodile pools have a fairly interesting museum, but the main exhibit is a pool, funnily enough, full of crocodiles. The crocs can come and go from the pool as they want, and they stay very still most of the time, so you have to check you’re not about to tread on one. They were about 4-7’ long, so a close encounter would be inadvisable. Guides will tell you which ones you can touch and which you can’t. It’s an odd experience, touching an animal that you know could give you a lot of grief if it put its mind to it. The staff feed them only on fish, presumably on the basis that they won’t get a taste for meat! We took lots of photos, naturally.

We then went back to Banjul, to get in the ferry queue. We arrived heading in the wrong direction, so had to do a loop to join the queue, but there were too many taxis in the way for me to turn. One of them had to be manhandled out of the way by bystanders. Nicki bought the ticket, whilst I got annoyed with a guy who was trying to direct me where to wait, but kept getting irate when I didn’t do what he wanted, because I could see the queue was moving and he wouldn’t listen to what I was saying. This time we only waited for about 20 minutes to board, and by the time they’d shuffled us all around, we were first on the ferry. I sat on the roof for most of the crossing, and ate lunch. It was a much more amenable journey than last time.

We disembarked at Barra, after drifting around for an age waiting for the ferry in front to move out of the way. We headed north, to intercept a road which was shown on our Russian digital maps, to Farafenni. We passed the police checkpoint we went through three times last week, and after a while realised we’d missed the turning, so turned round and asked directions. We didn’t know it, but they’ve built a new road, which was right back where we’d come from, so we went back about 7km, decided to get petrol, went back through the police checkpoint, got petrol, back through the police checkpoint… I have no idea what the police thought we were doing. Nicki does a good job of the navigating, but fate is against you when the major road you want doesn’t exist any more.

The road north of the river is great for the first half, where it’s tarmaced, then goes into washboarded dirt for a while, then deteriorates further into potholed dirt and sand. However, despite the Lonely Planet stating the opposite, it’s much better than the road south of the river, which is so bad that local people have mostly stopped using it altogether, including buses and taxis. Our road was quite quiet, which was just as well as every time something came in the other direction, it kicked up so much dust we couldn’t see much for a short time. I asked Nicki to get out and take a photo of the truck going past. Of course, she ended up in the dust storm as I sped by. But the photo is good! There were roadworks, so we kept being diverted off onto side tracks, for no obvious reason; on one we nearly got stuck in deep sand, so after that we ignored the diversions.

The landscape is greener than you might expect, although it’s nonetheless very dust-intensive. There are lots of trees, some of them as large as an English oak, but no grass; the only grass we’ve seen here is outside the new Sheraton resort they’re building at Brufut, under a hail of sprinklers. Baobab trees are very common, very sturdy, thick-trunked trees which at this time of year have little sprigs of green foliage right at the ends of their branches, but are otherwise bare. Mango trees are also abundant.

Fansu had told us to go and see his friend Salfo in Farafenni, and said we’d be able to stay in his compound. We found the compound easily, as it’s one of the first in the town. But Salfo wasn’t there – he’s gone away for the night, I’m not sure where. His brothers and nephews said we could stay just next door for the night. We sat in their compound for a while, and I was surprised to see they were giving a goat a blue rinse. I asked why, expecting it would be sheep dip, but they said they just liked the colour. Two of the sons or nephews took us into the town, to change some money; the bank was shut, but the supermarket changed our dollars instead, and actually gave us a better rate than the last bank we used. We then had a cold can of pop each, which helped prevent Nicki from passing out in the heat.

The town was quite peaceful, apart from a lot of chatter coming from the mosque area. People here seem relaxed. It’s not a cluttered town, and plenty of trees around give it quite a pleasant feel. As with most towns, all the roads are dust tracks, and goats abound, with donkeys scattered around too, and the odd cow with horns. Some horses were being used to pull small carts. The small children often call out “toubab” as we pass, which means “white man” in Mandinka. We’re thinking of learning the word for “black man” so we can say it back to them. We noticed most people here wear traditional colourful dress, rather than the more westernised clothes people tend to wear at the coast.

Nicki’s just had a cold shower at the front of the truck, which has cooled her down somewhat, although she had to wait until dark and shower in her bikini.