Border crossings, elegant travellers and dolphins in the river

The journey continues...

Travelling down from Dakar, Senegal, towards Guinea Bissau, is not a straightforward itinerary. For one, there happens to be another little country stuck in there -- The Gambia -- which is sometimes referred to as the thorn in the side of Africa. To get from the north of Senegal to the south you have to pass through the country -- and stretched out all along either side of the Gambia river as it is, thus long and narrow, you can quite easily ass through it without really realising that you have just been in a different country...


No -- not really!


First of all it takes time to get through African borders. The country you are leaving has several officials -- from Immigration, from Customs,  the man with the stamps,  the man with the book in which your details have to be written up, who have to inspect your passport and all in it, scrutinise it with a fine tooth comb, write down the details in a large ledger book, and make sure that all the information they collected from you when you entered the country, is still the same and has not changed in the three days that you have spent in the country. 

Border crossings

Then you queue up to get through the border -- money changers clamour around you, young girls with large baskets of hard boiled eggs, peanuts, cassava, beads, toiletteries, children who want BIC pens or who want their photographs taken, mothers with babies on their backs, donkey carts loaded with people crossing the border, truck after truck after truck with goods -- some of them waiting three, four, five days to make the crossing -- and if you are clever, you pretend to be a bus rather than a truck, and you are allowed to jump the queue and get across that border sooner than later. 

Secondly, believe it or not, when you cross a border everything changes. And I mean EVERYthing. Suddenly the people look different -- completely different. The Senegalese are generally very tall and slim. The Gambians are generally  a good measure shorter and  more squat in build, with rounder faces. The trinkets the vendors sell are different -- in Senegal Rastafarian/Senegalese colours (green, yellow and red) are usually present somewhere, whereas in Gambia there are much more browns and blues, and the fabrics that both the women and men wear differ  -- in Senegal mostly the African prints - bold, colourful, printed designs and in Gambia far more batik and tie-dyed cottons. The architecture has subtle differences - the colour of paint is different on walls and roofs, the mosques look slightly different, the village compounds have different layouts. It is in fact quite remarkable, when you care to pay particular attention, just how many differences there are. In Senegal, in the areas we travelled through,  there were lots of forests with giant trees and thick undergrowth, but when we got to Gambia, as a result of the geography of the country, the landscape is pretty much one of marshlands, mangroves and rice fields.

                                                    
                                                    Stingrays by the trillions drying in the sun

Thirdly the country on the 'other' side then wants filled in forms -- mother's name, father's name, number of children, secret pleasures and reportable vices, where will you be staying, who will be vouching for you once you are there... Well, so it seems -- one gets pretty nifty at filling in forms in all sorts of languages and answering some pretty nosey questions. On a continent where there is such a massive migration of peoples across borders every moment of every day, it is quite remarkable how much information must be gathered from each one of those persons each time they cross a border. Definitely border posts are the one area where there will never be unemployment! And then -- the officials at the border posts also have their own hierarchical system -- the more junior clerks are dressed smartly in their uniforms, neatly pressed and ironed, boots polished, very officious. But then, the guy who saunters about, charming the womenfolk and collecting email addresses and penfriends, the one who wears flip flops and a t-shirt, a pair of flashy dark glasses and a thick gold chain around his next, invariably turns out to be the commandant of the border post who is the last one to take the bundle of passports and to ask the odd uncomfortable probing question. 

                                                 
                                          The Senegalese bride -- money pinned to her dress  as a gift from the guests

What quite amaze me at the border posts is to see just how many people from other African countries travel. I love going up to especially the women waiting under the big mango tree outside the immigration office or seeking shade in the leeway of the trucks and commenting on for instance the fabrics  they are wearing,

"Is that a typical Gambian fabric?" I would ask about a design I had not seen before, speaking English because we are now on the Gambian side.  First I get a blank expression, which tells me they don't speak English. I repeat in French. "No," comes the reply, "it is Malian". "Malian?" "Yes -- we are from Mali". So why a I still surprised that women from Mali should be waiting to be processed on the border between Senegal and Gambia? Especially women who look as if they had just stepped out of a salon where they had had their hair coiffed, their makeup done, their dresses laundered and pressed -- in other words, meticulous and neat and tidy and cool -- when they had been travelling for the last three days on a packed bus with no airconditioning or facilities? I  cannot tell you why -- because I am still astounded that this is the way it is. Here we are -- looking hot and sweaty and scruffy, dusty feet in dirty sandals, clothes in disarray and creased and sweat stained,  -- and feeling quite fine about ourselves for, after all we are travelling. I have always taught my children what my mother taught me -- when you travel, like anywhere else, you look your best. In Africa no one needs to be taught. That is how they are. No 'comfortable' clothes because you are travelling long distance, no track suit bottoms and shorts and creased t-shirts like we see on long haul flights. Here they travel for days at a time, squashed in a hot, airless bus seat for 36 plus hours on dusty roads, muddy streets, no water, nowhere to freshen up, nowhere to sleep for the night before moving on -- but they look neat and tidy and smart. Yes -- that is how they are.

                                            

So -- where was I? 

Border crossings. We crossed the border from Senegal into Gambia at Soma, stayed a few days - a few glorious days in beautiful beautiful Gambia -- first at Tendaba -- where much fun and hilarity was had in the pool, involving washing lines, volley ball games and bird spotting boat trips into the mangroves, then in BintangBolong with more boat trips, swimming in the river and enjoying sleeping under a giant baobab tree -- and then crossed the border at Farafenni back into Senegal -- this time on a ferry -- and here we are now in the Casamance -- an area where hardly any tourists have been coming during the last ten or so years because of the sporadic rebel activity and landmines in this region. As Will put it in his blog entry today -- the situation is "a little like Scotland wanting independence from Britain - but then, it is not exactly the same"...(sic!) The Diolan people want independence from Senegal -- which in a lot of ways make sense seeing as they are a completely different people from the Senegalese (although probably the most of them have a Senegalese mother or father or grandparent somewhere along the line). They are also south of The Gambia -- so separated from where the government and the action is. Dakar probably do not care too much about them and the fact that there has been conflict and unrest in this area, resulting in the Home Office of ever western country advising their people not to come here, because it means that all tourists come to Dakar and the northern part of Senegal and they do not have to share the spoils.

                                                   Diolan architecture: the incredible impluviums

But -- the fact of the matter is that despite the landmines and the strong -- very strong military presence in this area, it is SO worth visiting. It is beautiful -- truly beautiful. The people are warm and friendly and welcome you to their region with pride -- they have so much to show and they do so with pleasure. These past few days I have seen and experienced things for the very first time -- such as the stunning architecture -- double storey houses, impluviums, dolphins in the river, a 107 year-old man, a queen that can shoot a bow and arrow seven kilometres across water to kill a Frenchman who had laid claim to her people's land,  vulture fish eagles, fishing villages populated by people from ten different countries, all fishing here for a specific fish which they salt and dry or smoke and then send back to the respective countries they come from (Kafountine and Elinkine), attending a Senegalese wedding and participating in the joyous festivities, -- and the list goes on. 

What a pleasure this place is!

 And the journey continues...

 

African graciousness and elegance

Karabane , also called Carabane is both an island and a village located in the extreme south-west of Senegal , in the mouth of the Casamance River . Heavenly site, with a pleasant climate and lush vegetation, it is also a historical perspective the first counter colonial French in Casamance . In addition - both economically food - they also practice fishing craft and collecting shellfish , but professional fishermen come mainly from other regions. -- where we are now