Banjul

Sitting on an outside terrace at AliBaba, sipping on a cool JulBrew, watching people walk down Atlantic Avenue, Serrekunda’s main street....have I died and gone to heaven...again?

Having just consumed one of the best eclectic meals that I’ve eaten in my whole lifetime - Thai chicken balls followed by an Indian curry chicken pizza, washed down with Gambia’s national beer, all the while listening to this black guy playing an original calypso/reggae/bluish/quasi-funky but totally classy rendition of Tie a yellow ribbon ‘round the old oak tree on his electric organ. Oh yeah, almost forgot to mention, AliBaba is a Lebanese joint.

Madeleine and I are on the third day of a four day whirlwind tour of Banjul, capital city of the Gambia. The Gambia is Africa’s smallest country, a tiny sliver of a country wedged into surrounding Senegal. The Gambia has a magnificent 80 kilometer shoreline with breathtaking, vast and clean beaches. Last week I received a call from the school board chair of the American school in Banjul. Having heard that I was leaving Conakry at the end of this year, he invited me to apply for the directorship at the Banjul school. Our friend Lisa had just returned from Banjul and raved about the beauty of the place and how one could “lay in a hammock on the beach watching the sun slip into the Atlantic Ocean”. Although Banjul had never been on my radar screen as far my next posting goes, Lisa’s enthusiastic review of the place kind of got my attention, especially the part about the hammock and the sun slipping into the ocean. Me thinks I could very well take up that sport and enjoy every minute of it.

We lodged at the Kombo Beach Resort Hotel, a tired but comfortable seaside resort that is situated just a few kilometers south of Banjul. This place has seen better days, is a bit run down (the door to our room fell off its hinges when we opened it...), but it’s clean, the AC works fine, the bed is comfortable, the toilet flushes, the shower works, and we see and hear the ocean waves from our balcony. What else could one ask for?

Serrekunda, and especially our hotel, appears to have been taken over and infested with billions of fat European tourists. We are talking really big people here. Most of them are sunburnt, but still spend most of their day laying and roasting in the sun. The pool area is really something....pool chairs swamped with sizzling red bellies...haven’t these people heard of melanoma?

Madeleine and I quickly got tired of the sizzling bacon frying on the deck chairs scene so we spent our first day walking on the beach and occasionally getting wet in the Atlantic waves. There is something very soothing and humbling about the ocean.

The following day we went to the school and met the director and board chair. We wanted a feel of the place. It was a very interesting day. Banjul has a lot going for it, great school, comfortable accommodations, easy living, electricity, sidewalks, decent roads, not too expensive, well stocked supermarkets, and yes, poverty, but not the constant ‘in your face’ poverty like we have in Conakry.

On our third day, we again got away from the roasting pool side melanoma-in-the-making fest by escaping to Banjul proper, where we could experience the real Gambia. A typical African city, but cleaner and more organized, and consequently, far more livable than Conakry. We visited St. Josephs Adult Centre, a women’s adult learning centre run by some nuns, which turned out to be the highlight of our day. Add one more cause to the Yaakaar project.

So our fact finding mission to Banjul turned out to be quite interesting. Will we be remaining in Africa next year??? After visiting Banjul, what was a definite no last week, appears not to be so definite for both of us today. We are giving ourselves some time to decide. Now, where’s that hammock...