TRAPPED IN THE GAMBIA!

Before I left the US, I obtained all the entry visas I knew I would need – Ghana, Mali and Burkina Faso.    Senegal does not require visas for US citizens and The Gambia was not on my radar.   It was added to the itinerary at the very last minute to compensate for the strong possibility that a large portion of Mali – the most important part of the trip – would be eliminated due to terrorism and kidnapping concerns.   I had no time to apply for the Gambia visa but knew that visas are routinely issued at border entries.   Everyone on the trip, I told myself, would need to get the visa in country.   We would all sink or swim together.  

I should have known better.   This is Africa.

The Gambia – and it is officially known as The Gambia, not the Gambia, or even Gambia, (and not to be confused with the Gambia River, which flows through it)- is the most bizarrely shaped country in Africa – perhaps in the world,   It  has peculiar road management policies and while its entry standards are quite relaxed, it is a stickler for the technically perfect exit, a conundrum for the traveler without a clue and a giant problem for someone in the undesirable position of having been unknowingly granted unauthorized entry who wants to get out.

Imagine a country as thin as a finger, beginning at Africa’s Atlantic coast and extending eastward, 2/3 through the center of another country – Senegal.   To get from northern to southern Senegal one must drive around the eastern edge of The Gambia, which slices Senegal almost in half.   The Gambia itself, only 25 miles wide, north to south, is composed mostly of the Gambia River, which dissects the narrow country in two, flowing eastward from the Atlantic.

I learned quickly enough that although Americans are required to have a visa to enter The Gambia, all of my travel companions, who hail from the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Holland, are exempt.   Only I would have to pray to the gods that the sentry on duty at the Gambia-Senegal border would grant me entry.  If he did not, I would have to leave the group and find a way to meet them at our final destination in Senegal. But where would I get a taxi?   The border is in the middle of nowhere with not even a donkey cart in sight. 

We arrived at the border just before closing – close to 5pm – a good time, we thought, to get waved through as the border guards surely were ready to close up shop and head home.  I nervously waited to know my fate.  After only a few minutes I got my entry stamp – good for 28 days.  We were in!   Because of its last minute addition to the itinerary, The Gambia was a new destination for the two group leaders.  They were as ignorant as we regarding its peculiarities.

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We made our way west across the entire length of the country to Banjul, The Gambia’s capital, which sits on the Atlantic Ocean, and enjoyed two days of beach, reliable internet, plentiful (but cold) showers and good food.

Getting out was not as easy.

We needed to go north, up to Senegal, to reach our final destination, Dakar, also on the Atlantic coast and only about 75 miles north Banjul. 

But we were south of the Gambia River and the Senegalese border was on it’s other side.  There are only two places in all of The Gambia where the river can be crossed – by ferry as there are no bridges.  One of those crossing was in Banjul, not far from where we were staying.   The Lonely Planet cautions that trucks are often held up at the Banjul ferry crossing for 3 weeks.   We got there  early – about 6:30 am, a full 1 ½ hours before the ferry opened for business but we were not the first one’s there.   We were promised that we would cross on the second ferry going out.   We waited patiently in our place on line for the 9 am ferry.   As soon as it pulled into port, there was mass chaos as trucks and other vehicles jockeyed for position and in the frenzy blocked all movement.  The ferry workers wanted us to pay for our passage, but we were reluctant to give them any money without a guarantee that we would actually board.   We pulled out of line and headed east, the direction from which we had arrived,  halfway across the country inland to the only other river crossing.   The nightmare was only beginning.

There is only 1 road in The Gambia.  The Trans-Gambia Highway  which runs the east-west length of the narrow country.   Although it is 4-lanes wide, the road is completely, 100% unpaved and is a broad, red dirt boulevard of potholes the size of small craters, donkey and cow crossings, and the most inept, inefficient system of immigration, traffic and military controls I have ever witnessed.    An immigration post is stationed approximately every 20 miles, the purpose of which was never made clear to us.  Some immigration officials waved us on, but most forced us to stop in order to inspect documents.  It didn’t matter really which documents we produced – the  vehicle’s registration papers, personal drivers’ licenses, trip brochures, engine operation manuals –  the officials seemed to simply be seeking something to do; some entertainment to pass their very long days.   Most of the officers boarded the bus to chat – “where are you from?, “where are you going?, how do you like The Gambia?”   They were thrilled to report the latest UK soccer scores or inspect the interior of the strange- looking truck that we are traveling in.   Some officials though, apparently needed more distraction from their boredom.  Quite a few asked to review each and every one of the 18 passports on board.  Passengers were matched up with their pictures and visas were inspected.  When we explained at each stop that just 20 miles back we had already been through immigration control, we were told that we were now in a different jurisdiction and that these officials had responsibility for the new area we had entered.   When we asked for a document from the inspecting officials to carry to the next stop that would attest to our legal entry, we were told that that would be impossible – the inspecting official has no authority to issue such paper.

As if this wasn’t torture enough, there was a military or police stop within feet of every second immigration control post.  They too, were curious and bent on fulfilling their job descriptions with gusto.   Somewhere near the 25^th traffic control, when our driver was asked for the 24th time where he was from, he responded, as he had before that he was from the UK.  The inspecting officer did not understand his response and he asked again.   Frustrated, tired, hot and pissed-off, the driver responded, that he was from “England, you know, your former colonial master.”  Lucky for us, the official laughed.  We were put through he same inspection and Q & A routine, stop after stop, time and again, every hour, and it quickly began to wear on our nerves.  Would we reach nirvana – the other side of the narrow river, so easily swimmable; so near, yet so far, - before twilight when driving is no longer an option for safety reasons?

We reached the second ferry crossing but were turned back so that the truck could get weighed.   We got through the weighing station, and along with other trucks, buses, pick-ups, and cars, we were squeezed, shoved  and rammed onto the overcrowded raft.   It took only 5 minutes to cross to the other side, but it took 11 hours to cover the 185 mile trip to the ferry, an average of 17 miles per hour.

Once we finally hit terra firma on the north side of the river, we pulled to the side of the road and pitched our campsite, exhausted and infuriated at the waste of time and human resources.  We were only 10 miles from the border with Senegal where we could finally leave The Gambia behind.

In the morning, we were the first to show up at the border.   Yet again, Immigration (with a capital “I” this time) inspected our passports, the last stop before we would finally pass through  border control.  My entry “visa” as it turns out, which Gambian border officials had stamped into my passport 5 days previous, was not really a visa, but a "tourist stamp" and, I was told,  had been in the country illegally.  There was nothing the Immigration Chief could do.    I would have to proceed to the border and pray.   As I was walking out the door, dejected and almost in tears, he called me back.    “Wait,” he said.   I can issue a backdated entry visa which would indicate a legal entry.  The cost?   A mere $40, which he put directly into his pocket. 

“Almost there”, I thought! 

 But, no, this is Africa.

No ink in the stamp pad.

No working pen with which to sign.

I thought I would explode.   Maybe I should have waited to hand over the $40.

Within moments,  ink and a pen appeared from somewhere, and I was on my way, heading over the border into Senegal.    I was never so happy to leave a country before!

 

ZIM OR ZAM?

The long overland journey has finally ended.  We made it over the border and  to our last destination – Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. 

One of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World, Victoria Falls  are fed by the Zambezi River which, after falling over the largest waterfall drop in the world, eventually empties into the Indian Ocean.

Last year we visited the Falls, which straddle both Zimbabwe and Zambia.  The big debate is where the view is better – Zim or Zam?   I can say that each viewpoint has its advantages, although the spray is so strong that we were sopping wet, through to our underwear, in both countries.     I wrote last year about our departure from the Zimbabwe airport.   Robert Mugabe, one of the world’s worst despots, turned what was formerly known as Rhodesia, into one of Africa’s worst basket cases of dysfunction and poverty, and created hyperinflation that exceeded one million per cent.  He has robbed the mineral-rich country blind and has socked away BILLIONS in private foreign bank accounts.   The country recently stopped printing trillion dollar notes and switched to the US dollar as its official currency.    The difference the changeover has made in just a year is stark.  Whereas last year the airport was dismally and barely lit and had nothing – absolutely nothing – no food, no drink, nothing in the shops - this year the tiny terminal was bursting with tourists and nourishment was plentiful, as we waited patiently to check in for our flight to Johannesburg.   And, the electricity worked!


Johannesburg is enormous, sprawling over a huge geographic area.   We rented a car in this left -side driving country.   Not a great idea.  Yosy lost his license (er, "misplaced" it . . . somewhere in the world), so I had to handle the LIE-rush-hour-type traffic from the airport to the hotel with the manual drive rental.   Not only is driving on the left, so is the stick gear, as well as the blinkers and the windshield washers - all is reversed.   Yosy was screaming at me the whole way, to "shut off the window shield washers," and to stop hugging the left curb.   It wasn't fun

But back in Zim, we had high tea at the gorgeous Victoria Falls Hotel, housed in a 1904 colonial building that sits high on a hill overlooking the narrow gorge and the Falls. The Hotel was the setting for the movie The African Queen, with Bogie & Bacall.   For dinner we tried smoked crocodile appetizer and medium-rare warthog.   I can highly recommend both.

While Jozi is not as stunningly beautiful as Cape Town (in fact, its not pretty at all), there seems to be a much greater mixing of the races here.   With a thriving black middle class, blacks are patrons and not just the employees of the shops and restaurants.  This city is bustling and very alive.   It feels more cosmopolitan and sophisticated. 

We spent hours yesterday at the incredible Apartheid Museum, which I can write pages  about, but will spare you, since we are about to leave for an (escorted) bike tour through Soweto, the largest black township in the country.   No Township in the world has as much historical and politcal resonance as Soweto.  Created in 1904 to move non-whites out of the city but close enough to provide workers, it is the birthplace of the uprising against apartheid and former home of two Nobel Prize winners (Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu).   

Tomorrow we fly home.   

NORTHERN NAMIBIA

Thirteen days of travel northward in Namibia and (other than the City of Swakopmund; pop: 20,000) we’ve seen three people.   Not a village, town or even a compound has crossed our path.   Where are all the Namibians?  Does anyone live here?

 It would take another few days before we bumped into the 2 million who call this place home.

In the meantime though, the scenery is spectacular.   Hundreds of kilometres of red sand desert or rocky wilderness.  Gorgeous rust-colored granite mountains or green valleys appear mirage-like, around a corner, lit up by the diffused sunlight of a foggy morning or  shrouded in ambiguity as stormy,  lightening-filled skies loom on the horizon.  It is the joining of the western and eastern thirds of the US; Big-Sky Montana, Utah and Nevada meet New England in the vast emptiness of the moon.

Namibia is not like the rest of Africa.   Tap water is potable.  Hot water, electricity and paved roads abound.  There are clean, well-lit and well-stocked supermarkets.  And unlike West Africa, the heat and frenzy of a desperate people are absent.

We drove along Namibia’s western shore, known as the Skeleton Coast for its treacherous shoreline.  According to the guidebook, early Portuguese sailors called it “As Areias do Inferno” (The Sands of Hell), as once a ship washed ashore, the fate of the crew was sealed.

Our first stop outside of Swakopmund was Cape Cross, home to thousands of seals sunning themselves and playing in the surf.  It smelled awful but it was so much fun to view the seals up close and personal – milking from their mothers’ breasts (what are seals’ breasts called anyway?), playing in the ocean and lazing on the sand beneath the boardwalk on which we walked, meandering among them.

We bush-camped at Spitzkoppe (“Pointy Head” in Afrikaans) and saw 6,000 year-old drawings painted in caves that sheltered the descendants of the original Man, and watched as both the sunrise and sunset transformed the valley into spectacular shades of orange, red, mint green and white.  (See photos at above link).

But the highlight so far was the visit with the San Bushmen including a night of camping in their village.  The San were the original inhabitants of Southern Africa.   Only 2,000 of the 30,000-member tribe remain in the bush,  hunting and gathering as they have for 300 hundred centuries – an astounding 30,000 years!.   The majority however are in transition.  This generation is the first to have moved permanently out of the bush, settling on land given to them by the government.  For them hunting is only done at the supermarket.   But the gathering of nuts, berries, medicinal plants, and beauty supplies is still practiced. 

We turned off the main road and drove along what can only be described as sand pathways which twisted and turned amongst the scrub, knee-high bushes and the occasional tree, traveling deep into their tribal past.  Arriving at last, we had our first encounter with aboriginal Namibians.

The main sources of income now for the San are government subsidies and tourism.  As we pitched our camp they changed from their “street” clothes into their bush costumes, transforming their village into a living museum, to teach us what it was like to have lived in the bush, completely dependent on hunting and gathering for survival.

 The San is a complex egalitarian society without hierarchy, and because they were never able to build up a surplus of food, full-time leaders and bureaucrats never emerged.  There were no aninals, crops or possessions; no ownership and no Chief.   While it has been noted in 17^th century literature that their lifestyle was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short,” recent ethnographic data has shown that “hunter-gatherers worked fewer hours and enjoyed more leisure time than members of industrial societies.” (Lonely Planet).

When the school bell clanged loudly at 7 am, children came running from all directions, darting barefoot in the sand and bush, scurrying between the donkeys and acacia trees to get to their classrooms before the bell stopped ringing.  We rose with them and spent almost 3 hours on foot learning about San traditions and their secrets of survival.   The San alphabet contains 4 different clicking sounds,  mesmerizing to hear – I could listen to them speak all day -  and extremely difficult to mimic (hopefully, the video at the above link will be audible enough to detect the clicks, clacks and snaps of their tongues and palates).    After dinner they entertained us with traditional song and dance and answered our multitude of questions with humor, patience and grace.  The night was cloudless and the southern sky was ablaze with stars; the Milky Way dazzled, undimmed by the bright lights of the faraway city.

The next day we were off to Etosha National Park, at 20,000 sq. kilometers it ranks among the world’s greatest wildlife preserves.  Its name, which means “Great White Place of Dry Water,” is taken from the greenish-white Etosha Pan, an immense, flat saline desert, and is home to a great diversity of wildlife, including lions, oryx, wildebeest, giraffes, zebras and rhinos, to name just a few of the animals we saw, some of which were crossing the dirt road we were driving on.  (No walking is allowed in the park – or even stopping to pee - way too dangerous to exit the vehicle.)

We are now in northernmost Namibia, on the banks of the Kavango river, which separates it from Angola, just a stone’s throw away.  Tomorrow we enter Botswana and the Okavango Delta, THE place to be in southern Africa, where we will canoe the delta for 2 days and nights.