1: England
It was appropriate weather for making away to a land of sunshine. On the N141 motorway from our home in France to the airport at Limoges the sky above was the colour of lead, the bitumen below shimmered in a silver drizzle and the wipers clapped back and forth on the windscreen in a dismal rhythm.
N141 Motorway
At Bellegarde Airport
But once in the
air, our aircraft turned sharply west and climbed the sky, following the course of
the River Vienne to escape the storm before turning to the north to head for Britain. Sadly, nothing was
seen of the ground now until an hour had passed, and then the cloak of murk
turned to mist and the diminutive English coast stole faintly out from under the wing.
For
some moments the sun hung low in a crystal firmament, and at last sank below a line of black clouds, leaving a pink and yellow sky to the west overhung with a grand mass
of vapour trailing long streamers that resembled the stretched fingers of a great black hand. From time to time tiny clusters of lights twinkled distantly from far
below in places where the murk had thinned, but then the cloud banks shattered
into scraps of vapour that sailed over the Mersey River estuary, where the immense patchwork quilt of Liverpool shimmered on the dusky earth.
We landed at 5.45 pm.
Once more on solid ground, navigation was up to us, but I'd done a lot of research for the journey and knew
where I was going - or thought I did! The first thing to do was to reach
the Dolby Hotel where I'd booked a room for the night.
The 500 Arriva bus from the airport would serve nicely for the journey. Now I knew the route of the 500 because I'd found it on the company's website. We would have to get off at ‘
But everything
seemed to be spinning pretty nifty when I picked up an Arriva 500 bus timetable in the
airport terminal. Opening it eagerly, I scanned the list of stops: ‘Toxteth Parliament Street
The 500 bus at Liverpool airport
“Can you
drop us at the Dolby Hotel?” Judith asked the driver when we'd hobbled aboard
the 500, burdened with our backpacks and a heavy holdall containing the bulk of our
things.
“Just look
at the screen,” he said. “It tells you the stops.”
Thanks for nothing.
Spotting two vacant front seats,
I sat down spying a sign that listed the stops the bus would make. Toxteth Parliament Street Toxteth Parliament Street
Later, warmed and showered, we savoured a drink and a meal in the hotel restaurant, overlooking Queens Dock, where pink and orange reflections of dockside lights
shimmered on a smooth sheet of sombre water.
Queens Dock viewed from our hotel window
Our first challenge next
day was to find Lime Street Station. This should have been child's play,
since the station was only about a mile and a half away, and I had two
different plans of the CityLink bus route Sefton Street Upper Parliament Street
What to do? Time to parley with the Indians again. On our way out of the hotel, I asked a fellow fussing at the reception desk where we could catch a bus to Lime Street Station. He didn't have a clue. We were now reduced to guesswork. But it so happened that while pondering the problem earlier and gazing out of our hotel window at the scene pictured above, I spied a CityLink bus emerge from behind the pictured building and then turn towards the town, following the road bordering Queens Dock. No such route for the CityLink bus was indicated on either CityLink publication. But we would make for that road and look for a bus stop on it.
The air was frigid outside the hotel. The sun shone in the sky but a biting wind wafting in from the Mersey chilled the skin under our summer clothes, for
we could spare no space in our bags for winter ones. For sure, the
morning of our second day away from home was blessed with sunshine, but it was
the sun of northern Britain in January, and when we'd found a bus stop to wait by,
we turned our backs to the breeze
blowing in from the sea and hoped we'd not need to wait for long.
Luckily, a bus rolled up within ten minutes.
"Are
you going to Lime Street Station?" Judith asked the driver.
"Yes,"
was the reply, "but the long way round. You'd be better getting a bus going
in the opposite direction."
"How
long will we have to wait?"
"About
twenty minutes."
We crossed
the road now and walked towards the river until we found a bus stop where we
waited trembling with cold. But the bus unexpectedly turned up on time and after
scrabbling aboard encumbered with our luggage, we were finally en route for Lime Street Station.
Lime Street Station, LiverpoolHowever, we came to a stop at Queens Square
Lime Street Station
As we had some moments to spare, we plodded into a nearby café to warm ourselves with
coffee. But the coffee turned out to be lukewarm, and the place was innocent of any
heating. The cold seemed to be invading our very bones as we boarded the train, but
as the coach was frigid too, we huddled in our seats for warmth all the way to Manchester
We left the
sun behind with Liverpool and spent an hour gazing at the trackside strip of brush and scattered
rubbish that went streaming by, railed off from an often saturated olive landscape where substantial ponds of water had swelled, or contemplating a crowd of melancholy houses
crammed in a cul-de-sac. It might have
been a mildly engaging way to pass an hour, had our ears been spared a regular pelting of gratuitous warnings of approaching station stops. Is the nation
that invented the train now breeding a race incapable of deciding when to get
off one?
As our train approached its goal, a final announcement hinted at the road the country had
chosen to take. It warned passengers to report anything they saw that 'looked suspicious'. There was not a word about anything specific, like unattended bags
for example, and thus had no practical value whatsoever. Its sole purpose
seemed simply to arouse fear. Again, I mused upon the meaning of such
conduct for a nation once widely known for its composure.
Manchester Airport Train Station
On the station platform we were buffeted by a gang of dashing passengers who swarmed up
a grandiose ramp and vanished from site. Hampered with our bags again, we began
the slow ascent. At the top we were confronted with nothing but the door of a
lift, which we made use of to ascend to the commanding heights of Terminal 2.
Next I scoured the walls of Terminal 2 for a plan of the airport complex, within whose grounds our hotel
for the night, the Clayton, was supposed to be located. There was no plan of the grounds
anywhere to be found. Fortunately I spied the hotel's sign through a high window. It
was nearby.
Outside, we were obliged to plod a roundabout route in search of its entrance, tramping pavements seemingly serving as mere borders to busy roads, until we finally arrived at our
objective. I'd completely forgotten that this hotel operates a shuttle service
to and from Terminal 1, which is linked to Terminal 2 by an overhead walkway.
View from the lift of the Clayton Hotel, Manchester Airport
After signing in, we found our room on the second floor by means of the outside lift, and then dined on pizza in the hotel bar-restaurant.
We were in
bed by seven.
I awoke at 3.20 am , well before the wake-up call we'd
requested for four, and we boarded the shuttle-bus at five.
The shuttle-bus
Our plane
for Banjul Gambia Sahara desert.
It landed in Banjul at 2.30 pm.
2: The Gambia
Stepping on solid ground again I saw a couple of shuttle-buses at hand to ferry passengers roughly 100 metres to the airport terminal. The air was warm here. It was more than warm. It was hot. And this was January! It seemed I had finally found the summer sun I had always longed for in winter, and along with that the summer temperatures I'd been seeking in vain for many years.
Inside the terminal building a black chap in a visivest came straight at me aiming a little gadget right at my forehead. He was gone before I'd even had a chance to duck. A thermometer, word went round among the new arrivals, to check for Ebola.
On clearing passport control, we passengers advanced in twos and threes into the small luggage reception area, where we were straight away assailed by a mob of aides tagged with identification labels certifying their appointment as official guides. It was like being mobbed by a gang of bandits, since the assailants directly bent to the business of relieving the passengers of their luggage. In the hope, I suppose, of collecting a tip.
Well, we had no change for tips, so I firmly refused to surrender my case. Chaos reigned in the place now as travellers were herded towards the large scanning machine, while the official guides attempted to plunder their luggage.
Approaching the rollers of the machine, I crouched to seize the hanging straps of our big bag, but this was not an easy thing to do with a full rucksack on my back. However, when I bent to grab a strap, a black hand met mine. Okay, there was no harm in letting the fellow just lift the bag onto the rollers for me. But when he placed it there, it vanished rapidly into the machine. Rapidly, I unstrapped my rucksack from my back and stacked it on the rollers. Then, moving aside the devise, I saw that our big bag was missing from the rollers on the other side. Scouring the crowd for signs of it, I caught sight of a man making off with it towards the exit. I grabbed my rucksack from the rollers and dashed after him.
Well, I'd no sooner rescued my bag when I collided with another fellow who seemed just to materialise in the mob. I don't think he was an official guide, but how could you think anything at all in this throng of swarming bodies?
"Have you got any English change?" he asked, and held out a dusky palm where a fifty-pee piece glittered.
"No," I parried and shot off.
And then we were finally out of the door, free from functionaries and spongers. It only remained now to locate the Lemon Creek Hotel Resort in Bijilo, where I had booked a room for a week, and exchange our clammy winter cloths for summer ones and relax with a drink on our balcony. But would the shuttle-bus I had booked to convey us from the airport to our hotel truly turn up?
When anticipating the arrival of a shuttle-bus, I was thinking of something like the vehicle that had carried us from our hotel in Manchester to Terminal 2 early that morning.
Ha, ha - ha, ha!
On the forecourt outside people chatted animatedly under a clear sunny sky. right away my gaze was drawn by a young man supporting a sign reading: 'Colin Wingfield'. Clearly the shuttle had arrived. We advanced and introduced ourselves to Amadou, as his name turned out to be, who conducted us to the 'shuttlebus', just a plain car with a sticker reading 'For Sale' fixed to its rear window. He opened the hatch at the back, tossed in his sign and, inviting us to climb inside, wheeled his vehicle out of the carpark.
A great thing about the Gambia
'Taxi' to Hotel
In any case, it was clear that the car we were riding in actually belonged to Amadou and not to the hotel. However, since I had agreed by email with a hotel official called Jabbi to pay 19 euros for the service, I didn't know now who to pay, Amadou or Jabbi.
On arrival at the Lemon Creek, I asked Amadou how much we owed him. He said he didn't know.
"What you think." I thought he said.
I asked him to wait while we went into Reception to sort the matter out.
There, we were welcomed by a smiling young man and girl behind a counter. Exchanging pleasantries and names, I soon learned that the lad was the Jabbi who'd emailed me and the girl was called Nyanya. I asked Jabbi who I was to pay for the 'shuttle service', the driver or the hotel. The driver, he said.
"How much do I pay him?" I asked.
"Fifteen euros," was the reply.
Clearly price quotations in the country were somewhat fluid.
"Is he a friend of yours?" I joked.
"Yes, he is a friend," he said seriously.
My joke, founded on English prejudice was obviously lost on him. I learned during the following days that Gambians have lots of friends, as must surely be the case in any poor country, where people must help each other rather than see them essentially as competitors.
I was quite happy to pay Amadou fifteen euros, although that was likely more than Gambians would pay, and said that I would go out at once and pay him. But Jabbi wouldn't hear of it. He insisted we relax now, and pulled out a couple of chairs, while Nyanya, who had vanished a minute or two before, now returned with a salver supporting two bottles of Julbrew beer, glistening with condensation.
"But what about the driver?" I asked.
"Oh, he is around," said Jabbi, waving a hand at the window. "You can pay later."
But I wasn't comfortable keeping the driver waiting while we swigged beer, so after a couple of sips I got up and said resolutely, "I want to pay the driver."
At that, Jabbi strode to the door, opened it and shouted out something incomprehensible. A minute or two later Amadou's short form appeared through the window wandering over from the gate where a couple of security girls lounged on plastic chairs. I handed him fifteen euros and apologized for the delay, but he didn't seem to be aware of any. I realized later that I had probably failed to understand something about the cultural difference between these people and us. Amadou was happy to spend time gossiping with these girls because he probably had little else very pressing to do. The first thing I needed to learn about Africans was that they are not always busy, busy, busy, like Europeans are. On the contrary, they have a lot of time on their hands.
An ice-cold glass of JulebrewWhen we'd finished our beer - which I found quite to my taste - Nyanya showed us to a flat on the upper floor of one of the six accommodation blocks that comprised the complex.
The room and en suite bathroom were less than luxurious but perfectly adequate for us, and from the balcony we had a magnificent view of the attractive hotel gardens and the sea.
View from our balcony
We donned shorts and sandals then and descended to the bar by the swimming pool to enjoy another drink.
The Lemon Creek Hotel Pool
In the evening we dined at the hotel restaurant, open to the air, where an 'African Buffet' was served in the hearing of live music. The food, consisting of a choice of chicken, beef and fish, served with rice, was tasty enough, though lacking in the care and attention that mark Western meals.
But the live music, performed just outside in the darkness on a lawn, was astoundingly superb, because, contrary to any presentation of Western music I'd ever experienced for many, many, many years, it was devoid of any flashing lights to blind your eyes. In fact the spectacle lacked any lights of its own at all. You could just make out the singer dimly in a white African-style suit in the glow of a pavement lamp, while the other performers were veiled in darkness.
But most welcome of all: although the music was loud enough, there was no thousand-decibel sound to bust your eardrums.
Addiction to that particular brand of vocal contortionism, perversely popular in England, is little more than musical alcoholism. I remember that in my younger days Africans were seen as uncivilised. Such scorn is an example of what they call in psychology a projection, which is the ascription to others feelings, thoughts, or attitudes present in oneself.
But that's not all. The musicians were good, very good. So good, in fact, that people could not resist rising from their seats to descend to the lawn outside and dance. Even some of the restaurant staff could not prevent themselves from swaying their hips on their way out of the kitchen carrying trays. Once out on the lawn, you could make out the other members of the band. There was a keyboard player, a guitarist and a drummer, as well as the singer.
Dancing in the Dark
But the drummer was not playing a Western-style instrument with drumsticks. He played a djembe drum, which is played with the fingers and palms of the hands. As I listened, I was struck by the subtlety of this instrument in the hands of a master drummer. In Western pop music the primary function of the drummer is to keep time (Wikipedia), while 'the other melodic instruments, including voices, may present the harmonic/melodic portion of the material'. But this seems not to be the case with the djembe, which, to my ears at least, is played as a melodic instrument in its own right, interacting with the others to create the melody.
Despite the African influence, all the songs played were Western ones, including a rendering of 'Country Roads' that I warmed to, although this song, with its twangy instrumental sounds and nasally voice delivery, had always left me cold. All in all, the performance outclassed any Western one I've heard since the seventies when I gave up listening to pop music, and served as a measure, in my opinion, of the extent to which pop music has degenerated in the West. Pop music? What does that mean to me now? I think of a car roaring past with a heavy bomp! bomp! bomp! racket blasting from it's speakers and sending to Armageddon the piece of the street with the type of primitive beat one once associated in the West with Africans!
When the performance came to an end we retired to our room
and unfurled the mosquito net knotted over the bed and spread it out like a gauze tent. We tucked it in along the bottom and partially on the sides, and then Judith squirted it with a mosquito repellent spray. Now we climbed inside and she squirted the interior. The bed was large and comfortable, and although a single sheet was provided for cover you didn't need it because the night was warm.
Night under a mosquito net
I awoke next morning scratching the back of my left hand. Raising it to my eyes, I saw two small lumps side by side. I had been bitten, and Judith was a victim too. We emerged from our net curtain now and took the first of a course of malaria tablets we had brought along with us, and I hoped we were not too late. But then I reflected that millions of people thrive in the Gambia and elsewhere in Africa without recourse to any malaria tablets.
Today was the day when the hire car I had booked online several weeks ago was due to be delivered to our hotel. Since our accommodation block was situated some 250 metres from Reception, I took the precaution of presenting myself there and telling a colleague of Jabbi's, posted behind the counter now, that we were expecting the delivery of a hire car at ten o'clock, and that our room number was 66. He made a note of it.
And then we waited. And waited. We waited for several hours, in fact, but no one showed up with news of our hire car. But in truth I was not a lot bothered about that. In the flush of excitement that went into the planning of this trip, I decided that we would hire a car for four days and that we would make use of it to see something of the country. I planned to visit the beach at Fajara, for example, which was said to be picturesque and quiet, a feature that appealed to me since it would not be infested with 'bumsters', that is, young men attempting to extract money from tourists. We would also visit Banjul Kartong
However, the highlight of our holiday in the Gambia Gambia River . Formerly known as Georgetown
And then there was a feature of this far eastern landscape that did definitely attract me: the presence of 1000 great stone circles that history bears no record of.
These stone circles ostensibly consist of pillars between 1 and 2.5 meters high spread over an area 350km long and 100km wide. Researchers are not certain when these monuments were built, but the generally accepted range is between the third century B.C. and the sixteenth century AD.
Yes, I must confess these weighty pillars intrigued me, but I had now revised my ideas about all that. We were fatigued after our long journey, and it was more than enough for us now just to familiarize ourselves further with our hotel and the beach, which we had not yet even set foot upon. And since I had not been required to provide the car hire firm, Afriq Cars, with my credit card number - payment would be made on delivery of the car - I would not be at all disappointed if the car never turned up. If it did, I would have to honour the agreement.
In the afternoon we trudged down to the poolside bar again for a drink. At three in the afternoon we trudged up to Reception to get a key for the safe in our room and to have a peek at the car park for any sign of a hire care. On rounding the corner of the hotel restaurant, I spotted a gleaming white 4x4 parked by the gate.
"That has to be it," I said gloomily.
Nobody was in Reception, but just as we stepped up to the counter, the fellow we'd spoken to this morning came in from outside.
"Are you waiting for somebody to bring you a hire car?" he asked.
"Yes," I said warily.
"He's here," he said, nodding at the window.
I went outside somewhat crestfallen to see a fellow come ambling over from the gate.
"We ordered a car for ten o'clock this morning," I told him, fabricating a stern face.
"I was here," he replied, "but they told me you had gone to the beach."
"We never went to the beach," I said with some annoyance. "We have been waiting here for the car since ten o'clock ."
"I'm sorry," he said, as if that were the end of the matter. "And now I take you to the office."
Who's at whose convenience here? I wondered.
"We're not ready to go now, "I said. "Ten minutes."
"Okay."
We returned inside now to get a key for the safe in our room. Then I asked for a kettle, for there was none in our kitchen area, I told the receptionist, although cups and saucers had been provided.
"No kettle?" he squinted suspiciously.
"No kettle," I echoed.
"Okay," he said, "while you are gone, I go out and buy a new kettle. It will be here for you before five o'clock ."
We now returned to our room and dressed to go out.
When we turned the corner of the restaurant again, I saw that the white 4x4 had disappeared. What is going on? I wondered, as we stepped again into the office.
"The driver's gone," I announced to our friend at the counter.
"He's gone?" said our incredulous receptionist, slipping to the window and peering out.
"No, he's here," he countered.
We stepped outside again in time to see the driver pull up to the door in a blue 4x4. I was puzzled for a moment but then suddenly realized my mistake. I had got it fixed in my head that the white car we'd seen earlier was our hire car because it was quite a new model, whereas the few other cars in the car park were considerably older. But if this idea had been fixed in my head, it had been concreted into and tarmacked over in the brain of my other half.
"Where's the other car?" she shouted in at the driver through the passenger window.
"What other car? he questioned, perplexed.
I nudged her. "Ah... there isn't any other car," I whispered. "This is it."
"But where's the white car?" she persisted.
Much more of this and someone would have to send for the men in the white coats.
"We made a mistake," I said soothingly. "This is the car."
At that, she abandoned her fancy that we had been swindled out of a gleaming new white car, and climbed glumly into the back of this dreary old blue one.
The driver now drove us up the Senegambia Highway to the offices of Afriq Cars, just beyond the Senegambia Junction, the principal crossroads of sprawling Serrakunda, the dominant conurbation of the Gambia, where there are no paved roads, apart from this one, for the convenience of drivers and pedestrians, only sand tracks, and no streetlamps to light their way when darkness falls.
Offices? Did I say offices?
They existed only in my imagination, fed as it had been by several features of the fairly elaborate website that Afriq Cars had managed to sanctify itself with. While other car rental companies in the Gambia possessed no website at all, this one had photos on it of the models available and showed a photo of two smiling, attractive girls attired professionally and seemingly busy in what appeared to be a brightly-lit office, one sitting at a desk in front of a computer clapping a telephone receiver to her ear, and the other standing while writing on a sheet of paper positioned on top of what looked like a printer. The only other objects on the desk were a couple of display boxes containing leaflets. Hung on one of the cream-coloured walls was a poster featuring black text on a bright green background. It read:
Afriq Cars
We make travel easy
Fixed to a pale yellow wall was what looked like a board showing photos of cars.
Thus I was labouring under the illusion that we would be conducted to a modern block with a concrete forecourt in front accommodating a fleet of cars.
Well, we pulled off the road outside a block, all right, but it looked like an apartment block, arranged in a U-shape round a children's playground, with shops and dining places on the ground floor and a couple of floors with railings and balconies above. Our driver, whose name was Sabu we learned, parked in a sand lot adjacent to the road.
When we'd got out of the vehicle, he strode swiftly across the car park and fairly raced along a pavement where people sat at tables sipping coffee or soft drinks, while we struggled to keep up.
I was just rushing past a waiter holding out a menu to me, when our quarry shot into an entry of the block. When I dashed into it too he was just launching himself up a flight of stairs. I charged after him but when I got to the landing above it was empty. I paused. At each end, the railing of a balcony. Which way had he gone? While I tried to guess, a face peeked from behind a corner of the front wall. When I set off again the face vanished. What kind of kiddie's caper was this? When I turned the corner I saw Sabu standing by a door. When Judith and I finally overtook the fugitive, he ushered us into the tiny office, the gloomy office, the untidy and tiny office of Afriq Cars.
There were no girls there, no posters, no photo board, no leaflets and no cream and yellow walls. There was just a cluttered desk where a young man in a black shirt and trousers sat in the breeze of a large fan beside his computer. The office depicted on the web site of this business, with its bright tidy interior and its smiling attractive occupants had been a complete fabrication.
We introduced ourselves to the young man who told us his name was Aziz, and then I opened the offensive.
"We expected to have the car by 10 this morning," I said.
"The driver was told you had gone to the beach," he replied.
Now how did he get hold of that fable? I wondered. But not for very long. That would explain Sabu's mad dash to the office from the car. He wanted to get there before us. What had he been doing for five or six hours, and where? Whatever it was, I reasoned, the only way he could justify to his boss such a protracted absence was to tell him we were unavailable. This little episode reminded me of a little joke about time in this country. GMT is said to mean Gambia Maybe Time. Apparently Gambians are notorious for bad time-keeping.
"We never went to the beach. I left a message at Reception to say we were expecting delivery of a hire car. I told the receptionist our room number and we have been waiting all day long for it."
"Sorry," he muttered, as if to mollify us for the lack of any rational explanation for this fiasco.
"The time on the contract needs to be changed," I demanded, and it's too late to go anywhere now. We won't be going to Janjanbureh, so you need to deduct 1000 dalasi.
He didn't argue. He took up a pen and made some change to the contract. We paid the amount agreed and then all four of us descended to look at the car.
I indicated a couple of spots where the paint had been scratched and one where it had peeled off. Aziz made a note of them. Then he demonstrated how to open the boot. Inside, a massive muddy spare wheel dominated the space. He asked me if it was okay there or would we like it stored in its proper place below.
"In its proper place," I replied. After all, we'd need the boot space for our luggage.
Now he opened the driver's door to get the key in order to show us how to open the petrol tank hatch. It was not in the ignition.
"Did Sabu take it?" he asked. Who's in charge here? I wondered.
But I simply said, "Yes, I think he did."
But now Sabu returned from wherever it was that he'd absconded to with the key. He said he'd taken it to show us how to open the petrol tank hatch but failed to explain why this task required a disappearing act. Now he said he would meet us back at our hotel, where he would restore the spare wheel to its proper place, whereon he promptly buggered off again.
So I thanked Aziz and we set off back to our hotel in our newly, but far from new, hired car. However, when we got back, Sabu was nowhere to be seen. Taking seats outside Reception, we waited ten minutes. Then we got up and padded back to our room. I knew enough about Sabu now to predict that he would never turn up. I wonder if he told his boss that when he got to the hotel, he was told that we had gone to the beach?
On return to our flat, we saw that our new kettle had arrived. But it was a kettle that had long ago lost all its shine and was pitted with rust.
The grounds of our hotel served as a sanctuary for several types of wildlife, and it was alive with the chirp and twitter of birds. You saw them perching in the threes,
or posing by a wall,
or just simply sipping a drink.
But by far the most amusing creatures we saw hear were the monkeys. A whole troupe of them came scampering across the lawn one morning just as I stepped onto our balcony. They were everywhere at once, mock-fighting on the trunk of the large baobab tree that lay flat on the ground below, or flinging themselves into bordering shrubs and swinging in their fronds. Several even invaded the patios of empty flats below where there frivolity was out of sight. Fifteen minutes later they were gone. Presumably to seek adventures elsewhere.
As we had a decent view of the beach from our balcony, naturally we were tempted to get out there and walk, like some others were doing. But why a band would want to march along a beach, I've no idea.
Band on the Beach
However, as we learned later when we went for a walk out there, venturing north promptly made you prey to one of the many vendors selling fruit juice from the crude blue stalls that colonize the beach there.
Fruit juice vendors
Thus we turned and strolled south instead, arriving soon at a place where a small boat was moored on the shore and a party of people lingered around a batch of fish just cast upon the sand. It was, obviously enough, a fish market!
Fish Market
Well, you couldn't get fish any fresher than that!
It was hard to say which were the sellers and which the buyers here, but before long a young man struck up a conversation with me. However he never tried to sell me anything. These fish were selling themselves. His name was Mustafa, he told me, and he was here to buy fish for the restaurant he managed, he said, pointing to the south, in a nearby town. But it was too expensive that morning, he said, so he couldn't buy any. I was interested in some remarks he made about life in the country, and especially in his statement that the 'real Africa ' lay to the south of here.
The Beach south of Bijilo
And then, with a gesture of contempt towards the north, where all the hotels were located, he attempted to voice his feelings about it: "While that is..."
He had no words for it.
'Touristy' I offered, although a better word might have been 'fantastical', or possibly 'bizarre'. But I understood his disgust well enough. The traditional life of the people, his people, a centuries old life, was progressively being destroyed. All along that northern coast not so long ago there had been hundreds of fishing boats and hundreds of fishermen's dwellings, the modest property of a proud and independent people. Now there were just these outlandish hotels, where some of the land's former inhabitants might scrape an uncertain living as paid slaves in the service of overfed and ungrateful foreigners.
We were not long in The Gambia, only a week, but I like to think I had my eyes wide open and my brain engaged, to the extent that I learned a little something about life in that short week. Something, in this case, about the effect of imposing a Western style of society upon a people still living a traditional style of life. In contrast to the natural friendliness of Mustapha, just compare the alienated behaviour of Lamin.
Our meeting with Lamin happened as a consequence of our curiosity about the posh-looking property next door to the Lemon Creek, the Seafront Residences & Hotel by name. One afternoon we slipped into its precincts from the seafront and after a short survey of the place - visibly empty of guests - we entered its restaurant, also innocent of visitors, in search of a little liquid refreshment, and perhaps a snack if the price was not too crippling. We seated ourselves at a table just in front of the bar.
When the waiter appeared, I asked for a glass each of white wine and requested a menu. He fetched a menu from the bar and, placing it before us, went off to get the wine. Now, what to eat?... Happy days! They had pizza! You can't go wrong with pizza, can you? When our waiter returned with the wine, I ordered pizza. He then led us to a table in the dining area a few paces away. But when he'd taken our order, instead of dashing off to have it prepared, he began a long conversation with us. What were our names, he wanted to know. His name was Lamin, he said. We disclosed ours and then he wanted to know why we were here - in The Gambia, that is.
I don't think he really had an interest in our plans. The theme merely served as a prologue to his own plan for us, for he now proposed to conduct us to a primary school the next day. Now what his interest was in this primary school, I couldn't follow, for my mind was only half engaged. I was really wondering why this Lamin didn't just go and get us our meal! Considering the emptiness of the place, surely there would be time for long conversations while it was being prepared!
I tried to explain that we had our own program and our own priorities, but he would not let the matter drop. Eventually, however, I managed to convince him that we were not going anywhere with him next day. At last he went off in a huff to order our pizza, which failed to arrive for half an hour, and which he served with hardly a word, and then he disappeared again. During the time it took to consume the meal he never once appeared to ask if we'd enjoyed it.
When we'd finished eating and our wine glasses were empty, we fancied another glass of it, but Lamin was still absent. Thus I had to go toddling off to serve the table myself. The bar was managed - if that is the right word - by a short stout fellow. I asked him for two more glasses of white wine.
"We only have one glass left," he replied impassively.
What kind of pantomime was this? I wondered. I waved at the plush, not to say flashy, or flamboyant, decoration of this place, and then turned my gaze to the ebony face across the counter.
"What?" I seethed in disbelief. It was not so much the facts of the matter that annoyed me but the lack of manners in presenting them. Couldn't he at least say 'sorry'! "A big, expensive place like this, and you only have one glass of white wine left?" I said.
He gestured at bottles behind him on shelves.
"You can have ---------.
I missed the name, but I wasn't interested in any case. I walked off in disgust.
It was a long time before Lamin finally appeared and I could ask for our bill. We gave him a tip, the equivalent of €2.50, for which we received a reluctant thank-you from him.
Nobody said good-bye as we left the place, and nobody even seemed to notice our going.
Lamin
Sometimes, while watching from our balcony in the evening, I caught a glimpse on the beach of what Mustafa had called 'the real Africa '.
What was 'real' about it? Well, first I would say that these Gambians were gathering here at sunset, a very pleasant time of day to be on the beach, when the heat of the day is declining. This is the time when Westerners, who have been roasting themselves senseless in the burning sunshine, abandon the beach for their hotels and a quick shower to wash off the gunge they grease themselves with to diminish the ravishment of their skins.
Second, we Westerners are all too knowing, all too artful, all too mindful of what might serve our own best interests. We can never fully relax like the people in the picture. What strikes me most about them is that they seem alive in a way that we are not. And what does it mean to be alive if that does not mean to enjoy nature and the company of others. We people of the West, by contrast, try to enjoy things. And when we tire of one thing, well, we just go out and buy another one. We never learn that things cannot bring happiness.
The people in the picture do not have a lot of goods that they can hope to take pleasure in, but they have each other, and this photo, in my estimation at least, waxes quite eloquent about that.
It has the look of a Lowry painting, I think, because it breaths the same kind of tranquillity. But whereas the industrial wage-slaves in the Pendlebury painter's work have been hammered into 'matchstick men' with bent backs and bowed foreheads - to soften their aspect and render them less menacing to the artist and the bourgeois buyers of his paintings (I would argue) - the people in my photograph seem happy in their tranquillity, their enjoyment of each other, and their freedom from a life wedded to competition, money and the clock.
Maybe their example swayed me somewhat, or maybe it was just the dispiriting effect of the heat there, but having gone to the trouble and expense of hiring a car for a few days, I really didn't feel like going anywhere in it. What were we going to experience in Janjanboreh, after all, or anywhere else for that matter, that we couldn't find right here? In fact, I think we went out in the car only twice - for money and shopping! We couldn't have put more than 10 kilometres on it.
There was always something to look at just outside of our hotel, on the beach, maybe,
or closer...
It was not long before the day came to return the car. The day before it I filled up the fuel tank because the agreement with Aziz had been that we receive a car with a full fuel tank and bring it back full. But the little top-up we were expecting to give it cost us 15 euros. I wanted to make a point about that - and other matters too - when we climbed the stairs once more and entered the grandly advertised but diminutive office of Afriq Cars and found ourselves seated once more before the grand fan, the PC, and the face of Azziz.
The exchange of pleasantries ended, I launched my first missile.
"The fuel tank was not full when we got the car," I said.
"Not full?" he answered, with the puzzled look on his face that seems to be a common response of Gambians when confronted with inconvenient truths.
"Is it full now? he asked, possibly to buy time.
"Yes," I said, "paid for with my own money, because we only used the car to do a bit of shopping. And," I went on, your driver... what's his name?"
"Sabu".
"Well, he was supposed to come to our hotel to put the spare wheel in it's proper place, you remember? Well, he just didn't turn up."
He looked puzzled.
"Maybe he forgot."
He said that as if proposing a perfectly plausible reason.
"It's no way to run a business," I protested.
In the end he said that if we came back to The Gambia he would let us have one day car hire at no cost. As he drove us back to our hotel I asked him where Sabu was now.
"He is on leave," was the reply.
Yeah, permanent leave, one would hope!
Next morning, right on time at ten o'clock , Omar arrived. He was the driver who would conduct us to Senegal
Omar
His punctuality, then, was the first feature of his personality that I remarked in the short time that we knew him. But the most prominent of Omar's qualities was his irrevocable taciturnity. He never initiated a conversation, but would invariably respond to any efforts of yours with simplicity and delight. Next, he was extremely discrete. For example, he discretely handed over a small sum of money to a policemen at a checkpoint. Later he stopped to buy sweets and sugar, only to pass them to a soldier at a military roadblock. All this was done with the utmost prudence. There was no hint of any embarrassment or awkwardness about the affair, no attempt at humour, nor even any sign of cynicism. He just behaved in a business-like way, as if to say, Well, this is the way things are, so you might just as well get on with it.
On the outskirts of the town, away from the dubious lures of Western influence, people went about their time-honoured occupations.
Leaving Serrekunda
As indeed did the animals.
At the border, we had to get permission to leave the country by having an exit visa stamped in our passports, and then, a little way down the road, we had to have our passports stamped again with an entry visa. But at last we were in Senegal
Here we had to get out again to present ourselves before a structure hardly more sizable than a shed. I had no sooner joined a small queue in front of it when a fellow in civilian dress, who seemed to be just lounging about the door, accused me of taking a picture of the customs post. He demanded that I delete it. I swore blind that I hadn't taken a picture, but he wouldn't believe me. He only let the matter drop when I showed him the last video I had taken. Now I was free to conduct my business at the open window with an official who busied himself with copying passport data into a ledger.
A little later we were held up by a military roadblock, and later still by gendarmes, so that we were many miles into rural southern Senegal
Senegal
3. Senegal
Diouloulou
Yes, we were finally in Senegal
and then in the town that was the destination of the day's journey, where some people, at least, were pleased to see us. I must say I was vastly thankful for that welcome in the light of later encounters with people plainly not pleased to see us. But it's not Senegalese people I have in mind here. However, everything in its turn.
Our final destination was in fact some distance from the town itself, an 'African guest house', as it was dubbed on the website I used to reserve a 'round house', where we would spend the next eight nights. The proprietor of the place was in fact an English national who had gone out to this region of Senegal
On arrival, we were shown to our lodgings by our host - let's call him Jeremy, for the names in this narrative have been changed 'to protect the innocent', as that old television drama of the fifties, Dragnet, would have it.
Jeremy, then, when we'd stashed our bags in our round house, took us out to a bar-restaurant by the sea to enjoy a drink after our journey.
Bar-restaurant by the sea
Now I imagined, when we were settled at a table there, that Jeremy would spend a little time telling us all about the Casamance and what it was like to live there, because we would have taken a keen interest in that. Instead he switched on the laptop he'd brought in with him and sat in silence, eyes stuck to the screen, fingers tapping at the keys. His conduct was somewhat puzzling on three counts. First, and most importantly in my mind, it is nothing less than rude to be in the company of others, especially when they are strangers, and just ignore them.
Second, if you are rude to people, and these people happen to be your customers, they are likely to avoid becoming your customers in future, so that your business suffers. Third, what about the business? I don't know a great deal about business, but I do know that when you start one, you have to devote your life to it, at least in the early stages when it is struggling to survive. If that is the case, how could anyone starting a business afford to spend valuable time tapping at a laptop in a bar?
Back at the guest house we made ourselves at home in our round house, which appeared attractive on the outside
and comfortable on the inside. It included a large blew mosquito net hung over a cosy-looking bed.
We now joined our fellow guests around the fire by the bar. The company consisted of a lone woman in her twenties with short hair who left a couple of days later, a single bearded gentleman of retirement age, and a couple, Glen and Linda, enduring a second marriage or relationship by the looks of things, as she was notably younger than he was, and also Jeremy, our host. Everyone nursed a drink apart from us, but nobody offered us one. Later, in darkness, we all sat down round a table for a meal outside the house Jeremy shared with Diale, the Senegalese lady he had chosen to share his life with, and their two young sons.
The meal consisted of a very bony and tasteless fish with a peanut sauce, a vegetable something like a green pepper - although it was too dark to say what colour it actually was - and rice, all just deposited on the table in the dark. The peanut sauce left me less than appreciative, I must say, and I recalled with wistful memory the pizza and chips and other tempting comestibles Jeremy had listed as available for enjoyment in his website description.
After eating, the company exchanged the darkness of the table for the darkness of the bar, a simple concrete construction consisting of a wall equipped with ledges to support bottles and a counter erected in front. In the light of the fire there we watched a drumming and dancing performance effected by several locals. At the end of it a spatter of applause seeped from the guests, and as nobody seemed to have anything to say about what they'd witnessed - nor anything else either, as I remember - everyone headed for bed. It was just after ten when we exchanged the darkness of the bar for the light in our round house. After we spread the mosquito net over the bed, I turned out the room light and joined my wife inside the net by the light of our torch. Then I switched it off.
Next morning, we joined our fellow guests for breakfast at the table fronting the house.
The retired gentleman was munching some tasty-looking beans on bread. However, none were offered to us. Bread and jam seemed the only eatable at hand for our consumption, washed down with coffee and powdered milk. When we'd finished eating, the retired gentleman was served with an omelette. Mmm, we like omelettes, but nobody offered us one. And then a plastic bag of bananas was dropped on the table. During the meal, Jeremy's two young sons attempted to finger the food on the table by standing tiptoe on the sand in front of our chairs, the younger one clinging to my shorts for support.
In the afternoon we departed on a very hot and humid walk to the sea, two or three kilometres away.
We spent some time again at the seaside bar and then continued walking into town, where we enjoyed a meal at a restaurant we found run by an Italian lady.
After we had walked all the way back to the guest house in the heat and the humidity, you can imagine that we were quite anxious to have a shower. Now there was a shower in our en-suite bathroom, but whenever I tried the tap, the water ran cold. I assumed (ridiculously, I suppose,) that the hot water would have to be switched on. We found Jeremy at the bar with the others. When I asked him if we could have a shower, he replied enigmatically,
"Ask me ten minutes before."
What did it mean? Since it would take us ten minutes or more to get back to our round house and prepare for a shower, I was asking him ten minutes before. Clearly I would have to ponder this conundrum somewhat, but as it seemed to mean 'not right now' we just took seats and tried to engage with the guests. Fortunately this was easier than last night because a newcomer had joined the group: a lady on her own, Annabel, who was German, though she spoke excellent English. I believe she was having a nearby property renovated for her own use and was lodging here temporarily while the work was being done.
Annabel proved to be a very enlightened and refined lady. I was able to talk with her avidly about one of my favourite subjects, philosophy, and I was delighted to learn that she was familiar with the work of two of my favourite philosophers, both German as well, Friedrich Nietzsche and Erich Fromm. It was quite an animated conversation that took place between us now because I had never before met anyone who could share my interest in writings so dear to my heart.
Meanwhile, Glen and Linda, either out of the boredom of their relationship or exasperation with all this nonsensical talk about philosophy, entertained themselves by winding up the kids by tickling them. Jeremy, on the contrary, obviously wanted to get involved in the conversation, for when I mentioned the name of a psychologist, Carl Jung, he dropped into the dialogue the name of Jung's last book, 'Man and His Symbols', which was mostly written by colleagues and not Jung himself. As neither I nor Annabel responded to this drop of a name, Jeremy turned his attention instead to the kids - who'd been wound up by now to the point of insurrection - and tried to calm them down.
When everyone rose to head for the dinner table, I asked Jeremy again if we could have a shower.
He just shouted, "Diale, hot water for a shower!"
"So where do we have the shower," I asked, still puzzled about exactly what to do.
"Do you want to have it here?" he snickered.
Again: what did it mean? We returned to our room, supposing our bathroom to be the venue for our shower, and that the hot water had been switched on. But when I tried the shower tap, the water still ran cold. We waited... and we waited... But every time I tried the tap the water came out cold. Finally Judith surged out the door, protesting she'd had enough of this. When she got back she said that she'd found Jeremy seated in his open-air shelter in the company of the single gentleman.
"Jeremy," she'd smouldered, "we are waiting for water for the shower!"
His reaction was to mutter, "Ah, oh," and then to shout: "Diale, water for the shower!"
Minutes later, Diale turned up at our quarters with two rubber buckets, one of hot water and one of cold. Floating in the hot one was a somewhat rusty and diminutive Nescafe coffee can. We 'showered' by dipping the coffee can into the hot water bucket, scooping out half a can-full, and then dipping it into the cold water one to fill it. Then by turns we soaped down our sweaty members and then doused them with lukewarm water.
But beyond writing and the meanings of words, the episode has implications for his livelihood. Anyone who wishes to run a successful business must make every effort to understand completely the needs of his customers and to ensure that these needs are met in the shortest possible time, especially when customers are waiting in some discomfort. To be concerned about people's needs is not just good business practice, it marks the extent of one's humanity. While to sit indifferently in a chair somewhere while people are waiting for something you've promised them ages before smacks of contempt.
When we got back to the bar, there was no sign of Jeremy or any of the guests, just four or five casamancés seated in the dark on plastic chairs and talking Wolof, the most widely spoken native language of Senegal
I poured out a glass each for us and we sat down in chairs amongst the others by the fire. We managed to communicate a little with them using French, the official language of Senegal
All the guests were at the breakfast table next morning when we came out of our round house. The elder boy was clothed in the jumper of a Cub uniform, a treble row of badges trickling down one sleeve. Simply to avoid an awkward silence, I asked a question that I already knew the answer to.
"Do they have Cubs here?"
Jeremy seemed to take that as an invitation to recount a childhood experience. The Cub jumper was his, he said, and then elaborated the theme with the claim that he had been a Sixer and had earned all these badges, a few of which he fingered to explain what he'd done to earn them. It is interesting to note that during our entire time with Jeremy he never ever asked us a single question about our experience of creating a new life for ourselves in France England
The retired gentleman departed that morning in the company of Jeremy, who was off to Banjul Airport
But for us, the days became more and more alike. Today again another hot and muggy trudge to the sea, another hour at the bar and another trudge into the town,
A Meeting with Some of the Locals
where we supped another drink in another bar
and observed the changing scene outside the window. For sure there were no 'sights' to see here, in the sense of tourist attractions, but the life of this town was exceptionally vibrant and constantly changing. There may not have been much to see here, but there was a great deal to observe. And to note its striking contrast with what you saw in Europe.
Again we had a meal at the Italian restaurant and finished the day's excursion by taking a taxi back to our holiday home. Darkness was falling when we tramped from the taxi to the bar. Jeremy's parents were there all right, but what a change had been made to the place! There were candles on the table - as well as a table cloth - and little lights in the trees! The meal of fish, vegetables and rice looked appetizing. I remembered the evening of the day of our arrival when we'd consumed indifferent food just dumped on the table in the dark, and reflected that Jeremy's parents had arrived at quite a different holiday residence to the one we'd arrived at.
What could account for the difference? Why were his parents deserving of better treatment than the rest of us? He had previously mentioned that his mum and dad were not at all happy with his decision to make his home here in Senegal
I had been thinking that we should see a bit more of the Casamance than we'd seen so far, which is why I let Jeremy convince me to join a boat trip with the others to take place the day after tomorrow. But I really wondered whether I was doing the right thing when later Linda and Glen began teasing the elder child again till he started screaming, while Diale padded back and forth with the younger one slung on her back.
Next morning at breakfast, the elder boy, with a bogey pendent to his nose, stood next to my leg attempting to finger the food on the table again. Thankfully Jeremy's mother arrived. Obviously a lady of some délicatesse, she produced a tissue from nowhere and swabbed the soiled schnozzle.
Sitting outside our dwelling later, I noticed Diale speaking on her mobile phone in front of her house. Evidently some planning was in process for tomorrow's boat trip. I strolled over to ask Jeremy what time we would be setting off next morning. His answer was that the trip was off because the boat was 'cancelled', and that they would be going instead to Ziguinchor to watch a football match and that they would be staying the night there.
Again, what did it mean? Precisely who had cancelled the boat? And why? It seemed that whenever I asked Jeremy a question, crucial information was missing from the answer. I was beginning to suspect that we were being managed. I told him truthfully that we had no interest in football, so we would not be going.
The exchange, however, was interesting enough from a psychological point of view. Why hadn't he given us an honest explanation of why this trip had been cancelled? One answer is that he didn't think we were entitled to any explanation, or, more likely, he had bungled the trip somehow and wanted to conceal the truth. This is obviously just an inference, but when you lack facts for an analysis of events you are condemned to guesswork. However, the episode showed that Jeremy had little respect for discussion and compromise, since the trip to Ziguinchor to watch a football match was simply presented to us as a fait accompli.
Whatever they planned for tomorrow, we would be going to the sea and the town again today, as there was nothing much else to do. But since we couldn't face that long tramp in the sun again, I asked Diale to order us a taxi to take us to the beach bar first, and then later into town. When we got to the town in late afternoon, the driver swerved into a garage and pumped some air into a tyre.
A Stop at the Garage
Now he reversed back into the street,
and I asked him to drop us at a restaurant we wanted to try just next door to the Italian one.
From the veranda there we saw a lad come by on a bicycle, a live chicken just tied to a handle bar.
Hard to imagine any Western lad doing that.
Back at Chez Jeremy, I asked for hot water. This time its arrival was not delayed, so that we were able to 'shower' early. Afterward we joined the party in the bar again, but in the absence of Annabel I was bored silly. It was at about this time that I baptized our associates 'pilgrims' in my notes, after the party of European opportunists Marlow was obliged to keep company with throughout his journey up the Congo River in Joseph Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness'.
The evening could have been quite delightful because two Senegalese drummers were in attendance playing djembe drums in company with a guitarist. They played very well and I wished to relax and just listen, but that was impossible because Jeremy's kids began dancing madly, the elder one kicking sand at the drummers and forcing Judith and I to move our chairs away. But Jeremy accidentally put an end to all that when he kicked the family dog and it yelped. He claimed that it had bitten him. But I know something about dogs, as we had had several of them in my childhood. They will only ever bite their master if they are being mistreated.
Again I was reminded of Conrad's book, where one of his principle themes is the essential dignity and restraint of the Africans - he emphasises restraint - contrasted with the coarseness and lack of self-control characterising the Europeans. The party of pilgrims, then, hastened to the table when food was signalled, while we abandoned it to join the musicians by the fire. The drummers carried chairs for us, a notable detail because I never saw the guests ever do anything for each other.
After the meal the pilgrims stuck to their table, while we chatted with the performers. I asked one of the drummers how long he'd been playing. Three years, he said, practising 5 to 8 hours a day. Apparently he had learned from a 'master', living in England
At breakfast next day Jeremy hinted at a visit to a clinic, but then this 'visit' underwent a metamorphosis into a 'tour of several villages',
"or... we could go on a boat trip."
But by now I had decided that I really didn't want to take part in any of Jeremy's foggy projects, and that I would have to content myself with the somewhat dull but nevertheless tangible excursions of our own to the sea and then to the local town. But then all talk of setting off for anywhere evaporated as Jeremy disappeared into the house and then appeared again concealing a sizeable object behind his back. And then, with a sweep of his arm, he brandished his possession with the words:
"This is my new machete."
It looked a bit rusty to me, but I doubt if the intention behind this unexpected display had anything to do with aesthetics. Nor even possessions as such, though I suppose we all know the type who cannot stop talking about the things he's got. What is a machete? Well, it's a cutting tool. But how many people would go into their house and come back out again to show a visitor, say, a coping saw that he'd just bought. I mean, wouldn't you worry that he might think you a bit cracked?
No, again you have to interpret the behaviour psychologically. The healthy, normal resistance to such conduct is overcome by a strong desire to create a particular image of oneself, in this case an image of the weapon's possessor hacking his way through an African jungle, defying the lions and vexing the leopards.
Why would anyone want to convey such an image of himself? The answer lies in doubts about one's manhood.
Then it was once more onto the beach my friends, and then the town again and then back again to the scene of our ordeal. But tonight a van was parked just inside the gate. Later we learned it belonged to three Germans travelling in this part of the world. The meal that evening was to be pizza, but it took hours to prepare and apparently was in somewhat short supply for all of those waiting for it, owing, I suppose, to the arrival of extra guests.
Next morning nobody was at the breakfast table except for the elder son, who ornamented it with a hanging bogey again. A wasp buzzed disconsolately in the jam jar that nobody had bothered to put a top on. Then Diale appeared with the younger son - who turned his face away on seeing us - and, leaving him in our company, disappeared inside the house again. Now the child, who proved to be remarkably strong and agile for one so young, simply thrust Judith's knees aside and perched himself barefoot before her on the bottom railing of the table, where he began screaming and reaching for food. At that, we got up in disgust - in refusal to mind other people's unruly children. We were now forced to stand and watch the spectacle, sipping our coffee and consuming our food on the hop, as it were. However, the child was unable to seize any food, but managed to grab three banana skins and fling them on the ground. A margarine tub tumbled from the table in their wake before Diale came back and led him away.
It was this episode that led me to suspect that it was a policy of the proprietors here to use their guests as unpaid child minders!
The Germans were supposed to stay seven days, according to Brenda, who sometimes served as a source of information in a place where information was often lacking. She said she'd been asked by one of the travellers if she knew of somewhere else where they could stay because their dog, a big one, which had been kept in their van for the night, was a hunting dog, and he might go after the children.
Tell us some more porkies!
I only wished we were leaving with them.
Yet again to the bar at the beach, but when we came out, I saw that the local fishing boats were returning from the sea.
I decided to approach for a closer look.
These big boats had to be hauled right up to the trees, but there was no shouting of orders and no confusion. Everyone knew what to do and exactly when to do it. (The Europeans on the boat in 'Heart of Darkness' by contrast couldn't do anything without a lot of shouting, noise and chaos.)
The women cleaned the fish,
while the men brought in more.
The kids took an interest in us, or rather just wanted their picture taken,
Again there followed a visit to the town, where we enjoyed - if that is the right word - some liquid refreshment in a bar where our table turned out to be alive with flies
and the view from the window was mildly interesting, but a little puzzling.
A meal again, but not here! and a taxi back to our increasingly alienating abode.
But this evening I was able to engage Brian in a real conversation. We talked about England Liverpool , where I had the impression that I was visiting a different society to the one I had been born into in the South.
Brian did not have a chance to reply to that observation because Linda, who had been listening without comment up to this point, protested.
"I take exception to that!" she griped.
"Where are you from?" I asked.
When she said she was from Cornwall
But then Glen sputtered, "Well I'm from the southeast".
And without another word, he just unfurled himself from his seat and stamped away.
Back at home after our holiday, I looked at Jeremy's website to see what he would say about this pair. In his opinion they were 'a very lovely couple'.
Now maybe I'm getting too old to appreciate modern conduct but, try as I might, I cannot see what can be very lovely about people who just rubbish a rational argument and then just simply escape to avoid listening to any reply.
And doesn't Jeremy's remark about the loveliness of this pair leave you feeling just a little sick at the repulsive sycophancy shown by someone just to get a little custom?
Well, as they say in Lancashire , there's nowt so queer as folk!
Next day at breakfast I pointedly ignored Glen and Linda. There were no bananas on the table this morning, but three reclined on the ground. When the elder boy pushed past my knee to get into position for a grab on the table top, I barked, "No!" and, lifting him bodily, deposited him back on the ground.
Looks like I ended up minding other people's kids after all.
When Linda arrived, she took the child, who was clothed in nothing but a tee-shirt, on to her knee. After a time she looked down and perceived a petite penis peeping from beneath his minimal clothing. With an inexpressibly delicate movement of her hand she concealed the offending member with the bottom edge of his tee-shirt. Obviously she took exception to penises too, regardless of how small they were.
The word today was that the pilgrims were off to the beach. Well, 'the beach' is a big place and we were hoping to avoid them there when we set of in a taxi for it.
But when we arrived at the bar that was our habitual starting point for the day, we discovered Jeremy there. A few minutes later Glen, Linda, Diale and the kids came in.
Now previous attendance here had often seen us seated next to a table occupied by three French visitors, and this was the case today. But Jeremy's younger child had hardly got through the door when he spied a mobile phone lying on the visitors' table and made a grab for it. But the owner seized it first with the words,
"Laisse-moi tranquille."
The pilgrims then began entertaining themselves with eatables, but the younger son, declining to keep to his seat at the table, instead turned his attention to ours and the objects upon it, one of which he attempted to abstract.
"No!" I shouted. I was beginning to get seriously annoyed now, not so much at the child, who was after all only a child, but the parents, and especially the father, who should be the fount and source of discipline in a family, but who instead allowed his children not only to disturb people with their screaming but to interfere with them too. All the time that we were in Africa we saw not a single African child misbehaving. But go to England
But after my shout the child returned to his own table where his mother began handing him chips.
Brenda observed these transfers for a time as though seeking a meaning in them, and then said suddenly,
"He's just throwing them on the floor!"
Eventually someone took him away to be entertained elsewhere.
But he was soon back. When Glen and Linda received their meal, the ubiquitous kiddie favoured their table with the regard of his eyes and the shriek of his larynx. The male victim of the raid lifted a chip from his plate and silently ceded the Danegeld, never raising his face from his food.
When the two had finished eating, Glen strode like a man with a purpose up to the bar, where a woman attendant was enjoying her meal, and said,
"When you're ready, could we have the bill?"
Of course the woman could not possibly understand what he said because French is the official language of Senegal
Later we headed up the beach to our habitual restaurant in the town.
This place, on the beach, didn't look open.
This one was, so we stopped for a drink.
We had our evening meal again at the Italian lady's restaurant
View from the Italian Restaurant
and after that we took a taxi back to Jeremy's. In addition to our fellow guests, there was in the bar that night a Senegalese fellow with a guitar. I asked him if he was going to play for us.
"Un peu," he said.
But we had just got seated to listen when, without a word, Jeremy took charge of the man's guitar and plucked out a little ditty before handing it back to the man who could actually play it. There was not the shred of an attempt to justify the seizure. It was just a sudden urge to demonstrate to everyone that he too could play a guitar. It almost seemed that he could not bear the prospect of anyone else being the centre of attention.
After that, I remember hearing some talk about mosquitoes. Jeremy said he once thought he had malaria and went to the hospital for a test. He collapsed outside the door, he said. But the test proved negative and the illness turned out to be flu. He did not explain how common flu could make a man collapse.
Finally our last full day arrived. Outside we found Jeremy seated by the fire occupying himself with a dagger and sheath. Later he began tapping at his laptop. Glen and Linda now came over from the table with cups of coffee and took seats. Then the younger child arrived and made a grab for the coffee cup that Glen had placed beside him on the sand and knocked it over.
When everyone moved to the table for breakfast, it was discovered that there was no water.
"We need some more water!" Brian shouted towards the house.
"Jem, water!" Brenda trilled.
Jeremy came out with his laptop cuddled under one arm, grabbed the empty canisters with his free hand and marched back into the house looking a bit peeved.
When he came out Brian asked for juice. Jeremy went inside again, but when he returned without any juice, Brian, thinking his son had forgotten it, I suppose, asked for it once more.
"She has to make it, you know," he said belligerently. "She picks it and boils it. It doesn't come in a carton, you know."
Maybe so, I would say, but why wasn't all this done before? That was probably Brian's thought too, but he had the restraint - that important word from 'Heart of Darkness' again - not to voice it. One does not engage in family squabbles before strangers. That is axiomatic among cultivated folk.
Also it is disrespectful to treat your father with such scorn. I can imagine how he would react if his own sons spoke to him in that manner, as they will do eventually, as they will learn to do, through his example.
After breakfast I glimpsed Jeremy at some distance from the house swaying on a swing suspended in a tree and hugging his younger son, a picture of guilt and regret.
There is an enormous amount of material there for an old psychologist like me, as Nietzsche would have said!
We wanted a taxi in the late afternoon to take us into town, but Diale wasn't able to order one for us. Jeremy, however, who was lying in his hammock with his laptop on his abdomen, offered to take us into town. I asked him to drop us for the last time at the Italian restaurant, where we had our last meal in Senegal
Musicians were in attendance at the bar again, but not, unfortunately, for our undisturbed enjoyment. As soon as they began playing, the younger child attempted to beat the drum while the drummer was playing it. We were compelled to move away, no longer disguising our disgust at the behaviour of these ungovernable children, while Brenda shouted the child's name in an effort to stop him from molesting us.
Several times on my rare visits to England
An example: Five months after we returned from our holiday to Africa , I learned that the British Prime Minister's gamble with the future of the nation, the Brexit vote, had failed. He immediately announced his intention just to walk away from the mess that he had created. At the end of his last speech in the Commons he was rewarded for his failure with a standing ovation.
But back to our last evening in Senegal
"You don't have to wait this long at a chippy!"
Finally the food arrived. Everyone just helped themselves, using their free hand to take more chips than the spoon would bear. As the food was placed on the table the musicians moved to another small one to continue playing, and we joined them, just as much to make a point about preferences where company was concerned as to listen to their music undisturbed by the behaviour of unruly kids and the discourtesies of ignorant adults like Glen and Linda.
Next morning I felt the interminable eight days of our ordeal finally drawing to a close, for today was the day of our departure.
Jeremy looked a little distracted at breakfast that morning, but I doubt if that distraction had anything to do with our impending departure. When Brian joined us and discovered that the milk powder can was empty, he asked his son if there was any more milk. Jeremy entered the house then, returning almost immediately afterward to take his seat again.
"There isn't any," he said gloomily.
Brenda, ever the peace-making female, said she rather preferred coffee without milk.
Glen and Linda stuck resolutely to their lodging this morning being lovely to one another I suppose and avoiding the courtesy of saying good-bye to us.
And then suddenly Omar was there - on time! We shook hands with the four witnesses of our escape... and then we were gone.
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