A Typical Travel Day in The Gambia

[Note from Lolo: This is a partial post - Alex couldn't finish it before he had to go back to village. Since he is now on his 3-month village challenge, I don't expect he will be able to get access to the web to finish it until March... but I thought it was interesting - his description of his trip from his village to Banjul, the capital which is in the Kombo region]

I am glad to finally have made it to the capital region for our Christmas gathering. My day began at 4:30 a.m., and I arrived at the Peace Corps dormitory at 3:30 p.m. What should have been a 3 to 4 hour journey turned into an 11 hour adventure.

The trip into Kombo for Christmas started the night before, when my host brother called the Gele gele driver to let him know we, my two peace corps friends and I, were traveling the next day. One gele will pass by my village if the driver knows he has customers.

4:30am: We woke up; the driver is known to come as early as 5:00 and we had to be ready or he would leave without us. By 6, he was still not there, which was of no concern because there is no schedule. My host brother tried calling him, but his phone was turned off. At 7 I was worried, because I have never heard the gele pass by after 6:30. My host father called and found out he was not coming.

7am: We then walked 1.5 km to the next village where a morning gele leaves. After a 20min walk we arrive in village to find out we just missed the gele. The next gele would not come until early afternoon. We decided we did not want to wait because the geles usually have to wait to fill up or might not show up, and we did not want to risk losing a day of travel. We checked on a donkey cart to the main road from the village which is about 8 km. The driver wanted to charge us 400 Dalasis (22 Dalasis to the dollar) which we thought was outrageous. We decided to walk back to my village.

9am: Upon arriving back at my village, we decided we could walk to the main road where it would be easy to catch a gele (6km) or try and get someone in village to take us on a horse cart. Someone whom I knew offered to take us for 250 dalasis. We thought it was a lot of money, but we did not know the price and it was cheaper than the other guy. I figured the guy in village would give me a fair price becuase the village was small and we are not suppose to bargain with people in village. We decide to take the donkey cart, because we have bags and it would be far to walk.

9:40: Finally left our village again on donkey cart. Once we got to the main road, we stood by the edge of the road trying to wave down geles. We waited about 30 minutes to find a gele which was not full. After a 40 min ride, we arrived at the ferry terminal.

12:30pm: We arrived in Banjul by ferry. We walked about 15 minutes to the car park only to find there were mobs of people. Many people were coming home from the village after Tobaski. When the volkswagen buses pulled up people would mob the door making if difficult for the people trying to get off. It took us an hour of pushing and shoving to get in one of the cars, and we only made it because some gambians were friendly and basically pushed everyone out of the way to let us on.

close to 3pm: Rode by bus for about 25 min to the next car park to switch taxis, and take a new van to the Peace Corps residence. We treated ourselves to GamJuices, similar to flavored icies, but made with real fruit.

3:35pm: We finally made it!!!!