Categoriearchief: My Gambia

Things to Do: Watch a Wrestling Match, Place to Go: Sanyang

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In all the years that I’ve been coming and going to the Gambia, I have never attended a wrestling match. Until this one on a Sunday in Sanyang.
Sanyang’s “Paradise Beach” is a beautiful, relaxing place. Daytrips to the beach are organized daily and from different places. At night, have your dinner (the freshest fish; just caught a few 100 m’s away!) at the nice restaurant on the beach. And, if available, stay in one of the 12 rooms at the Rainbow Lodge. A lovely, peaceful place, with every comfort you’ll need…And every Sunday a beach barbeque and a wrestling match!

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Monkey play

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While the walls of the compound are coming up and I’m waiting for fresh building pictures, I thought I’d post a little intermezzo of a scene I caught while I was walking through the beautiful Senegambia Hotel gardens.  Did you know that monkeys eat flowers, play and swim just for fun?

The Island of Goree

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The Island of Goree, a former slave island near the coast of Dakar, Senegal, is one of the most beautiful, heartbreaking and fascinating places I ever visited. All at the same time. Some years back I  was determined to go, even by local transport (quite an experience, your back and bones will agree…). I took a guide with me and we chose the local way of traveling; a “sept-places”, which is a station wagon with seven seats, some partly welded in. If you’re lucky it’s only seven people and their luggage, since people also tend to take live animals in or on top of the car. Leaving early, and traveling from Banjul to Barra (crossing the river by ferry) to Dakar, it took a bit less than a day to get to Dakar. It was a 2 days’ trip. After visiting the island the next morning we returned to the Gambia that same day.

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Pictures: the slave house, the rooms/ cells and the “point of no return”: the gate through which captured slaves were lead onto the big ship that brought them to America. Once every so-many weeks. The name “Goree” sounds kind of familiar when you’re Dutch, doesn’t it? That’s because the Dutch have been one of many people who have been fighting heavily to obtain the island. And the “trade”…

MJ’s Beauty School

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 Still no new building pictures to share, so I’ll use some blog space to show a great person and initiative I’ve come across: MJ and her Beauty School in Brikama. MJ, Mariama, is a young Gambian woman who started this school to teach girls to be a professional beautician and/or hairdresser. While learning the profession itself, they also get courses in assertiviness and how to do business. And, because the girls are still learning, they need costumers in the salon next to the school. I love to go there,  they’ll do their very best and you’ll get a lot of attention!

Pretty Common

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img_4927-c..but what a great design. You’ll see these Agama lizards run around pretty much everywhere around you in the Gambia. The Gambians don’t even look at them anymore. Me, I keep on making pictures of them, I discovered when going through my files. And.. secretely.. I can’t stop imagining what a great bag they would make. (Which, of course, I would never wear or buy..)