Wednesday (Day 5) Birds and baboons

Today was one of the days designated for a tourist trip and I was very excited. Ginger probably less so as we had to be up and on the road by 6am!

I was wide awake by 5am and just lay in bed listening to the prayers from the mosque broadcast by load speaker, the birds were already noisy and the baby next door was...yet again...crying. Looking out of the window I could see a full moon and hundreds of really bright stars, there is so little light pollution that every night was spectacular but this one seemed even more so.

Against all the odds were actually made it to Makasutu on time. Sidat had come along and we sat in the back eating Polo's for breakfast. We arrived just before 7am and it was just getting light, our guide for the day was a lovely local man whose name was also Sol Badjie, he soon arrived with 3 more customers, men from The Netherlands.

We had just set off into the bush when a troop of monkeys ran across the dirt path we were following, there must have been 15 or so and they made an absolute racket, the largest one brought up the rear, making sure none of the babies got left behind.
We walked for about 2.5 hours and it was almost magical,

Sol and Ginger got to spend quality time together away from the worry of their 200 children and Sidat and I tried in vain to find the eagle owl that we had been told lived near the path. In total we spotted 26 different types of birds and many interesting insects.
We were also due to go out on the river later so while we waited by the pool of the hotel we had nice cold drinks and dangled our very hot feet in the cool water. Well Ginger and I did, neither of the men can swim (like most Gambians) so we kept threatening then with swimming lessons, I must say neither of them seemed too keen!

After an hour or so waiting in the sun our dugout canoe arrived and we were off through the mangrove trees, we passed an oyster camp and saw some ladies collecting them with the big scimitar and collected 3-4 more bird species for our list. We came to rest near a clearing in the bush where an outdoor restaurant had been built with huge wrought iron tables and chairs.                         We sat chatting and watching the baboons while a local man played the kota, a 21 string traditional 
West African instrument and sang songs about the Mandinka and Jula tribes. There are seven native tribes in the Gambia and they all have their own language which can make meetings interesting as unless you know the person you don't really know what language to talk. Most people speak several and there is Wolof which seems to be quite universal. Unlike some African nations there really

doesn't seem to be any animosity between the tribes, everyone is accepted for what they are, and on a side note women are treated as pretty much equals, no need to walk a few steps behind or hide your intelligence here, although Sidat did explain that women and men attend the mosque at different times but that is more because the men would be distracted by the women leaning forward to pray than anything else!

It was still only early afternoon so we visited another village to give out clothes but they were quite orderly and there was barely any danger to 'the toe' at all. We dropped Sidat off at his gym and headed home.

When we got back to our compound I had to admit to Sol that I had lost my camera and ask if he could put the dogs away so I could search the car. He was so worried that he had a good search himself and when he couldn't find it he contacted his Mum, so they could search their compound, it was like the twilight barking from 101 Dalmations as word spread that my bright red camera was missing. Several people contacted us to say they had looked everywhere but couldn't find it and I had just about given up hope when I had a eureka moment.....it was in the mango tree!!! I had balanced it their while I swept out the compound and it had been there overnight, luckily it was still there and the word went out to stand down all search parties, from that moment on whenever something couldn't be momentarily found it was suggested we look in the tree...

So can you remember the guy called Richard on the plane that I had arranged to meet? Well today being Wednesday the time had come for my 'date' My lovely hosts were going to chaperone me just in case and after a nice cold shower and 10 minute tart up I was ready to go.

As we were on 'Gambian Time' we got there a fashionable 30 minutes late but he was still there watching football (bad start) We joined him and quickly ordered our food, the first red flag should have been that he ordered cheese baguette and chips, WHY when you are in a country with an amazing cuisine of it's own would you do that? Anyway we sat chatting for a bit and it soon became very apparent that one word fitted him well, and that was 'knob' he was apathetic, racist and boring..not to mention incredibly rude. In the 4 days that he had been there he had done nothing other than cruise a few toubab bars and watch football. Obviously that is fine if that is all he wanted to do but on the plane he told me he came over to help out in schools and generally make himself useful. As soon as was humanly possibly I explained we had been up very early and although it was only 9.15 I was exhausted and ready for bed. Outside I apologised to Sol for exposing him to such a pig and we headed back to our lovely home, with me appreciating even more the experiences Sol and Ginger were enabling me to have xx