The Gambia is an unusual place; at least the parts I have seen. I stayed at Cape Point in Bakau, on the mainland off the island of Banjul, the capital, which is connected by a bridge over tidal Oyster Creek. The River Gambia opens into the sea, darkening the waters and the sands with grey silt, after neatly running the length of the country, east to west, from Senegal, and beyond that, from its source in Guinea 700 miles away. The country is an enclave of Senegal, and is shaped as if a child drew on the atlas a silly cloud-snake with a sturdy rectangular bottom, slithering inland.
I didn't see anything much during my stay, outside the eye hospital and the short drive from the hotel. The last time I was here in February it was the high season, and I travelled on the direct Thomas Cook flight, which was packed with plump, pink Brits, who were all very jolly and became jollier as the drinks trolley did its lengths. When we arrived, Cape Point was already full of them with their loose upper thighs and rosy shoulders fleshily at odds with the obviously conservative African culture. Some Western women visit The Gambia for sex tourism, and I received a few inquiring looks as I went to and from work in my sensible long clothes, but no propositions (unlike in Istanbul). Cape Point felt like a weird enclave of African Benidorm within the enclave of the rest of the country.
The locals were very friendly and said hello, or sometimes hellohello. But as they passed me they added quickly, ‘How are you?', and I felt obliged to answer with something as I walked, so that we unnaturally projected the whole conversation over the shoulder whilst receding gently away from each other.
Esha, one of the kitchen boys, tall and gangly, gave me a mango one morning. It was yellow and soft, and very large - the size of a small papaya. He said it was a joojoo mango - the best kind. I didn't have time to tackle it before I left for work, so I thanked him and asked for it to be kept in the kitchen for later. Esha and I both forgot about it at dinner and breakfast for two days, and then we remembered at the same time.
“Would you like the mango chopped, Sara, or would you like it full?” He pronounced it ‘fool’, so I momentarily thought of a mango fool, with whipped cream and soft, juicy peaks. “I think chopped would be easier, please, Esha.” I said. I couldn't imagine how I would eat it otherwise. He agreed, but then turned back conspiratorially. “Would you also like a fool mango that you can hide in your fridge, Sara? That you can eat any time.” I liked this idea very much, and said so, but I thought I should eat this one first. I had also requested a crop of green mangoes from the hospital to smuggle back in my hand luggage to make mango chutney.
In the end I ran out of time at breakfast, so I took the full mango with me to work. I ate the entire thing myself, standing in the sandy yard with my feet apart so I didn't drip on my trousers. The cleaning lady spotted me and called, “Eh! Mango Girl!” The yellow juice was running off my elbows and I knew I looked undignified but I didn't care. It was delicious; bright and buttery. Everyone was pleased how much I enjoyed one of their mangoes.
I was the only guest in the hotel, and on the first night I missed the chef’s dinner schedule. He instructed me to eat at the hotel next door, but that he would cook for me tomorrow. The next night I arrived at the empty courtyard restaurant and he was there promptly with a cold Julbrew for me. “What’s on the menu, chef?” I asked. “Barracuda!” he said triumphantly. I rather liked this way of eating - the chef decides what he wants to cook and I’m told what I’ll eat.
The mangoes were falling from the trees with dull thuds that made the cats jump. One of them, small and ginger and white, circled my chair like a shark, bumping into the legs to tell me of its hunger. “Alright, I know you’re down there,” I told it. “But I like fish too.” It told me loudly that I was being selfish.
I told Chef about my joojoo mango from Esha, and he tried to give me another one, saying, “You must only eat joojoo mango for breakfast, but for you I will make an exception.” I regretfully declined, as I didn’t think I could manage another one in the same day; not after all that fish.
The night after the barracuda, Chef decided that he would cook me garlic chicken with long-grain rice and tomato salad. I had come home from the hospital with nine enormous fruits which I had to fit into my hand-luggage. I read that the personal mango allowance on a plane coming into the EU is no more than 2kg. I estimated that I had around 6kg but there was no way I was going to leave any one of those beauties behind.
On my final night I returned from work late, and sat on my balcony with a beer. I finished the budget I had been working on, and then cracked open a second beer and some pistachios. I was hungry, but more than anything I just wanted to sit and relax before dinner. A telephone rang. It was such an unusual sound - the traditional rrrrring - that I didn't immediately realise it was the landline. I went inside to look for it. On the other end was Reception. “Hello yes, Chef has started cooking your dinner. Please present yourself in the restaurant.” The personal service was pleasing, but I was a little put out that my brief relaxation had been interrupted so soon. He could probably see me drinking my illicit shop-bought beer on my balcony; he could have waved the fish at me instead.
When I arrived in the courtyard the kitchen door was shut. I knocked and stuck my head in. Chef was at the grill, grilling something fishy. “Yes boss,” I reported. “I’m here.” Then I sat down to wait, and so did my cat.
Later when I checked in at Banjul airport, I put my hand luggage on the scales and lifted the bag with one hand, pretending that there wasn't much inside. The check-in woman raised an elegant eyebrow at the 13.6kg displayed, but said nothing. When I put my luggage through security, I confessed to one of the guards that it was full of mangoes, and the whole team gathered round in astonishment at how many appeared on the screen. ‘So many mangoes!’ they exclaimed with delight, and fell about laughing.
There was construction work going on, and everything was chaotic. The boarding gate was temporarily situated in the outside cafe, and when the microphone was carefully unboxed, plugged into the wall below the telly, and boarding announced by a woman in a high-vis Royal Mail jacket, everyone leaped up as if the starting gun had gone off, and started battling their way ferociously through the maze of plastic chairs and tables. One woman lost her head completely and dragged a whole set of furniture with her for some distance, parasol waving precariously. By the time she had extricated herself from all the legs, most people had overtaken her.
My transfer in Casablanca was the final place I might get into trouble over too many mangoes. On the outbound journey five days earlier I had nearly missed my connection; the security hall was so chaotic that everyone was late for their flights, and eventually had to go to the front and barge in. This meant that everyone in the queue went nowhere, until they in turn were late and had to queue-jump. With ten minutes to go before take-off, I did the same, dispensing sweaty apologies along the line. I made it to the gate to find a small queue, and several flustered people running behind me having escaped security in the same manner. In the end our efforts were in vain, as the baggage handlers were all on strike and we sat on the runway for 90 minutes until a team of men in office clothing came to load the bags onto the plane. But I didn’t want to risk missing my connecting flight home or losing my mangoes; I couldn't count on another strike to delay the plane if I was late this time.
However, my travel luck appeared as never before: the two separate misfortunes of others enabled my mango bag to go through the scanner with barely a glance. As I arrived in the security hall, this time I was prepared for the chaos. In the corridors from the plane I had smoothly overtaken almost everyone on my flight, despite having been seated in the back row. As I approached the crowd pressing around three open security lanes, a large group of confused teenagers turned and headed back to the domestic terminal. “Stupid boys,” the woman next to me tutted. “They’re flying to Agadir and they’ve all been clogging up the international terminal for half an hour.”
Being perfectly positioned, I swooped into their place and was loading my cargo onto the belt within moments. As my bag disappeared and I stepped through the metal detector, a fearsome row started up in the queue next to mine. A woman was screaming at the security team, brandishing her passport, her face contorted with rage. Everyone stopped with shock and turned to watch, the chaos and delays forgotten. This was the sort of behaviour, I thought, that lead to the arrest of that shouty British woman in Dubai recently. However, all the security guards simply started shouting back, which only infuriated the woman further. I asked the woman who had earlier condemned the group of boys, as I had heard her speaking Arabic earlier, what had happened and what the angry woman was shouting about. She told me that there had been something in the woman’s passport that security didn’t like. “But,” she added, “I was just like that about four hours ago. I've just left my husband." As I tried to arrange my tired face into an appropriate expression - warm sympathy? Sisterly you're-better-off-without-him solidarity? - she continued, to my relief, "for four months. I'm already missing him. Airports are difficult, aren’t they?”
For me, though, the security team was entirely distracted; no one was looking at the screen as my bag appeared. I collected my luggage and left quietly. My mangoes were safe!
______
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I didn't see anything much during my stay, outside the eye hospital and the short drive from the hotel. The last time I was here in February it was the high season, and I travelled on the direct Thomas Cook flight, which was packed with plump, pink Brits, who were all very jolly and became jollier as the drinks trolley did its lengths. When we arrived, Cape Point was already full of them with their loose upper thighs and rosy shoulders fleshily at odds with the obviously conservative African culture. Some Western women visit The Gambia for sex tourism, and I received a few inquiring looks as I went to and from work in my sensible long clothes, but no propositions (unlike in Istanbul). Cape Point felt like a weird enclave of African Benidorm within the enclave of the rest of the country.
The locals were very friendly and said hello, or sometimes hellohello. But as they passed me they added quickly, ‘How are you?', and I felt obliged to answer with something as I walked, so that we unnaturally projected the whole conversation over the shoulder whilst receding gently away from each other.
Esha, one of the kitchen boys, tall and gangly, gave me a mango one morning. It was yellow and soft, and very large - the size of a small papaya. He said it was a joojoo mango - the best kind. I didn't have time to tackle it before I left for work, so I thanked him and asked for it to be kept in the kitchen for later. Esha and I both forgot about it at dinner and breakfast for two days, and then we remembered at the same time.
“Would you like the mango chopped, Sara, or would you like it full?” He pronounced it ‘fool’, so I momentarily thought of a mango fool, with whipped cream and soft, juicy peaks. “I think chopped would be easier, please, Esha.” I said. I couldn't imagine how I would eat it otherwise. He agreed, but then turned back conspiratorially. “Would you also like a fool mango that you can hide in your fridge, Sara? That you can eat any time.” I liked this idea very much, and said so, but I thought I should eat this one first. I had also requested a crop of green mangoes from the hospital to smuggle back in my hand luggage to make mango chutney.
In the end I ran out of time at breakfast, so I took the full mango with me to work. I ate the entire thing myself, standing in the sandy yard with my feet apart so I didn't drip on my trousers. The cleaning lady spotted me and called, “Eh! Mango Girl!” The yellow juice was running off my elbows and I knew I looked undignified but I didn't care. It was delicious; bright and buttery. Everyone was pleased how much I enjoyed one of their mangoes.
I was the only guest in the hotel, and on the first night I missed the chef’s dinner schedule. He instructed me to eat at the hotel next door, but that he would cook for me tomorrow. The next night I arrived at the empty courtyard restaurant and he was there promptly with a cold Julbrew for me. “What’s on the menu, chef?” I asked. “Barracuda!” he said triumphantly. I rather liked this way of eating - the chef decides what he wants to cook and I’m told what I’ll eat.
The mangoes were falling from the trees with dull thuds that made the cats jump. One of them, small and ginger and white, circled my chair like a shark, bumping into the legs to tell me of its hunger. “Alright, I know you’re down there,” I told it. “But I like fish too.” It told me loudly that I was being selfish.
I told Chef about my joojoo mango from Esha, and he tried to give me another one, saying, “You must only eat joojoo mango for breakfast, but for you I will make an exception.” I regretfully declined, as I didn’t think I could manage another one in the same day; not after all that fish.
The night after the barracuda, Chef decided that he would cook me garlic chicken with long-grain rice and tomato salad. I had come home from the hospital with nine enormous fruits which I had to fit into my hand-luggage. I read that the personal mango allowance on a plane coming into the EU is no more than 2kg. I estimated that I had around 6kg but there was no way I was going to leave any one of those beauties behind.
 |
| Nine mangoes. The joojoo mango is the yellow one. |
When I arrived in the courtyard the kitchen door was shut. I knocked and stuck my head in. Chef was at the grill, grilling something fishy. “Yes boss,” I reported. “I’m here.” Then I sat down to wait, and so did my cat.
Later when I checked in at Banjul airport, I put my hand luggage on the scales and lifted the bag with one hand, pretending that there wasn't much inside. The check-in woman raised an elegant eyebrow at the 13.6kg displayed, but said nothing. When I put my luggage through security, I confessed to one of the guards that it was full of mangoes, and the whole team gathered round in astonishment at how many appeared on the screen. ‘So many mangoes!’ they exclaimed with delight, and fell about laughing.
There was construction work going on, and everything was chaotic. The boarding gate was temporarily situated in the outside cafe, and when the microphone was carefully unboxed, plugged into the wall below the telly, and boarding announced by a woman in a high-vis Royal Mail jacket, everyone leaped up as if the starting gun had gone off, and started battling their way ferociously through the maze of plastic chairs and tables. One woman lost her head completely and dragged a whole set of furniture with her for some distance, parasol waving precariously. By the time she had extricated herself from all the legs, most people had overtaken her.
My transfer in Casablanca was the final place I might get into trouble over too many mangoes. On the outbound journey five days earlier I had nearly missed my connection; the security hall was so chaotic that everyone was late for their flights, and eventually had to go to the front and barge in. This meant that everyone in the queue went nowhere, until they in turn were late and had to queue-jump. With ten minutes to go before take-off, I did the same, dispensing sweaty apologies along the line. I made it to the gate to find a small queue, and several flustered people running behind me having escaped security in the same manner. In the end our efforts were in vain, as the baggage handlers were all on strike and we sat on the runway for 90 minutes until a team of men in office clothing came to load the bags onto the plane. But I didn’t want to risk missing my connecting flight home or losing my mangoes; I couldn't count on another strike to delay the plane if I was late this time.
However, my travel luck appeared as never before: the two separate misfortunes of others enabled my mango bag to go through the scanner with barely a glance. As I arrived in the security hall, this time I was prepared for the chaos. In the corridors from the plane I had smoothly overtaken almost everyone on my flight, despite having been seated in the back row. As I approached the crowd pressing around three open security lanes, a large group of confused teenagers turned and headed back to the domestic terminal. “Stupid boys,” the woman next to me tutted. “They’re flying to Agadir and they’ve all been clogging up the international terminal for half an hour.”
Being perfectly positioned, I swooped into their place and was loading my cargo onto the belt within moments. As my bag disappeared and I stepped through the metal detector, a fearsome row started up in the queue next to mine. A woman was screaming at the security team, brandishing her passport, her face contorted with rage. Everyone stopped with shock and turned to watch, the chaos and delays forgotten. This was the sort of behaviour, I thought, that lead to the arrest of that shouty British woman in Dubai recently. However, all the security guards simply started shouting back, which only infuriated the woman further. I asked the woman who had earlier condemned the group of boys, as I had heard her speaking Arabic earlier, what had happened and what the angry woman was shouting about. She told me that there had been something in the woman’s passport that security didn’t like. “But,” she added, “I was just like that about four hours ago. I've just left my husband." As I tried to arrange my tired face into an appropriate expression - warm sympathy? Sisterly you're-better-off-without-him solidarity? - she continued, to my relief, "for four months. I'm already missing him. Airports are difficult, aren’t they?”
For me, though, the security team was entirely distracted; no one was looking at the screen as my bag appeared. I collected my luggage and left quietly. My mangoes were safe!
______
Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this post and would like to read more, you can add your email address to the Follow Me! widget above to have new posts emailed to you.
______
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