Pip pip, tally ho

Goodness me, the travels just keep rolling, and my blogging doesn't keep up. At the moment I've just settled in Guinea after an epic bush taxi adventure - but put that story in the queue, 'cause it's time to talk Gambia.

You'd be hard-pressed to find a sillier colonial construct than Gambia - pardon me, "The Gambia", the definite article added in a wierd collision of nascent nationalism and colonial English. Article or not, it's a pretty silly set of lines on the map, with a border that lays the whole country out as the 20 kms or so of land to either side of the first 450 kms-ish of the Gambia river.

Looking for rational delineations between Gambia and Senegal? You won't find them. The ethnic mix, climate, agriculture, and linguistic composition of the area does shift as you head further south, but the gradual overlapping of these things has nothing to do with the colonial borders themselves. Gambia was simply the corner of the coast that the English nabbed for themselves as a slaving, then as an anti-slaving outpost and trading port.

Crossing into the Gambia is a fine illustration of all this silliness. Hop out of your bush taxi, take 5 minutes for passport stamping, and you're on your way. The landscape looks the same, the people still speak the same local languages, but a lot of other things instantly shift. Signs change from the cutesy-simple French of Senegal into pompously anachronistic colonial English. The architecture changes from the more decorative French colonial style to utitlitarian tin-roofed British. The shopkeepers switch from Lebanese to Indian.

It's amazing how consistent the symbolic language of colonial powers was. Walking around in Banjul, the old capital where I was staying to do some visa runs, was an odd experience for me. The atmosphere of the city owes much more to Kampala or Nakuru (in Kenya) than it does to Dakar. At times, you could be forgiven for thinking yourself in India, or indeed in any English tropical colony.

It was oddly comforting. I realized on a moment's reflection just how much of my last big trip - a 14 month odyssey before university - was spent in the Anglophone sphere, and how adjusted I had become to the little visual and aural details that go along with it. Not all of these are nice; getting into Gambia brought with it a great increase in official stuffiness and snarkiness, which seems to have a more jocular tone in French. I got lectured by a couple cops and soldiers while I was there (it's also a fairly repressive government - witness all the posters wishing a 'Most Happy Birthday to His Excellence El Hajj Mohammed Jammeh!") which gives a bit of extra grist to the annoying-cop mill.

Gambia, in any case, is a weird little place. There are parts of it I loved: Banjul was a fine little city full of old Krio architecture brought there from Sierra Leone in the 1800s. There are a couple exquisite little nature reserves you can walk around. I spent a few days at a phenomenal village ecotourism project along the river, where I learned to cook some local food (to the amusement of the kitchen ladies) and hung out at the school in between bouts of hammocking. I went farther upriver to another gorgeous lodge, not quite so community-integrated, but worth it for having your own little house on stilts in the mangroves, with a balcony to jump off the river to swim in. Swimming at night was magic - the river is full of little bioluminescent beasties that look like sparks underwater. When you swim, an explosion of light surrounds every movement, and the sparks get caught in the hairs on your arms and legs, giving your body a halo. Magic.

A brief venture into the anglosphere is also practical. I loaded up on English books again - though with my absurd reading speed, they're all now finished. By the time I get home, I'll probably have the entire 19th century canon dealt with. Oi. Local newspapers in English were fun, and it was nice to have chats with locals without struggling in French - though I found, as is often the case, that rote-learned English doesn't lend itself to understanding questions from a foreigner. This is less of a problem for me in French, as I simplify in my own head just to get the ideas out!

There was also a decidedly unseemly side to Gambia. Alongside the numerous snarky cops, you find everything you normally would in a place that depends on the Winter influx of resort tourists. 30 minutes in a minibus brings you to the resort strip, land of pizzas, british pubs, prostitution, and hustling just like you find in a thousand other places around the world. Surreal. Even in the low season, there were groups of tourists about making merry. I won out, with a big gaggle of young belgians picking me out as a starving backpacker and treating me to beer and pizza. I didn't mind - cheese conquers all. But I couldn't help but breath a bit of a sigh of relief that after the meal, I could jump back into an overcrowded minibus, to crack beers with African traders in my sleazy port hotel. Four star holdidays aren't my thing, and the atmosphere of disconnection that follows them sometimes pervades Gambia, even upcountry. You can't pass through a village without kids chasing you screaming "Toubab!" and demanding pens and candy. Nothing too shocking, except for the fact that in Senegal, it didn't really happen.

(Incendentally, I did however meet, in Senegal a week later, my evil nemisis - a couple of middle-aged French tourists with a guide, wandering the Casamance for 10 days handing out pens and candy to any child that could toddle. To all readers: do me, and every other solo traveller a favour, and NEVER do this. After a few such visitors, the relationship between local kids and foreigners is mangled beyond recognition, nevermind what it does to create longer-term dependant mindsets. Urrr.)

So that, in a nutshell, was the Gambia. After 10 days, with newly minted visas for Sierra Leone and Guinea in my passport and a hankerin for some Francais in my heart, it was back into Senegal to explore the Casamance. That, though, is another story.
A bientot, mais amis
Josh