First Day!
Day 1
Monday July 18th
Start: Banjul, The Gambia [13 27 N 16 35 W]
Mid: Kaolack, Senegal [14 10 N 16 15 W]
End: St. Louis, Senegal [16 01 N 16 37W]
The last time I would leave my house for the past year was at 5:30 in the morning. While waiting on the highway for taxis, we had to split up. I managed to get a front seat of one car while leaving Nate and Erika behind for other transport. At Banjul, for the first time, I got a car to the ferry terminal instead of walking. While I pulled in with my second car to the terminal there’s Nate and Erika pulling in with their private transport they got two minutes after I left which drove them directly to the terminal.
At the customs post at The Gambia / Senegal border we were waved into the back area where they checked each of our passports. From here on out, my passport, we realized, would take the longest. I almost filled up the pages with visas and exit/entrance stamps that I had to go to the Embassy the week before for more pages. This was after I had already gone to the Mauritanian embassy. Every custom guard now had to go through blank page after blank page in order to find my Mauritanian visa, although the entrance stamp to the country was in the middle of the book (where the new pages were added).
In Kaolock I laid my last four dalasi I had on me on a rock for anyone to find. With those 15 cents gone, I now had no Gambian money left.
From Kaolock we headed to St. Louis, in North-Western Senegal. St. Louis, which is in Senegal, used to be the capital of Mauritania when it was under French rule. However, when Mauritania became fully independent in 1960 St. Louis went to Senegal and so a new capital had to be formed. Not wanting two capitals side by side, they headed north and founded Nouakchott, their new country capital. If you look at a detailed map of Mauritania and Senegal you can see that Mauritania actually bends down to reach St. Louis, but doesn’t actually reach it.
The actual layout of St. Louis makes it interesting. From the mainland there’s a river that go north-south. Going further west, passed the river, there’s an island, then the other side of the river, and then a peninsula of Senegal sticking out. Passed that is the ocean. So, St. Louis is split into three sections: The peninsula, the island, and the mainland.
Heading in St. Louis you can see the French influence in the buildings, the curved streets, not to mention the language. Every year St. Louis hosts a Jazz Festival that attracts thousands and thousands of tourists from all over the world. There are enough hotels in St. Louis to handle all of them, and we were looking for one in particular.
The man who drove us from Kaolack said he knew where the hotel was and would drive all three of there for 1500CFA (~$2.75) total. We agreed and he drove from place to place asking for directions to where it was. We backtracked, went up side streets, backtracked more, zig-zagged back and forth though a main street before we found it. The taxi couldn’t go down the side street since it was full of mud, but along the edges was clear. I walked that way to see if it was a hotel and found some guy who spoke English who was from The Gambia. He tried helping us out. Nate got involved since it was easier to communicate in Wollof with him.
What I thought to be an employee was just some visitor who was helping out for something in return. We asked him politely to go back to the hotel and eat his dinner, which he kept on insisting he stopped eating to help us.
“My friend, we did not ask you to help us. You left your dinner to help us. Go back to the hotel and enjoy your dinner”
As he whipped his glasses off he yelled “Fxxx you! Fxxx you!” and he stormed off. I yelled back “Thank you” again for a sincere acknowledgement of his help. He responded with another “Fxxx you!” before turning the street to our original hotel.
We agreed to go to another hotel.
We hadn’t paid the taxi driver yet and Erika asked Nate “15?”, which he replied “Yes.”. I then watched her pay the driver 15000CFA ($27.50) and thought nothing of it. Only when we were walking to another hotel, around the corner did Erika realize it should have been 1500CFA and not 15000CFA. We agreed to split the costs since we all were in fault to some degree. Erika asked Nate “15?” thinking 15,000. Nate said “Yes” thinking 1,500. I watched her pay 15,000 thinking it was for the full taxi fare from Kaolack and not just to go a few blocks down the road.
The driver honked for us to get out of the street and we watched him leave to have a good time with his friends with our money without us realizing we overpaid him 40 times more than what it was worth. (we were overcharged a factor of four found out later, and 10 times for the mistake). So, if you’re ever traveling from Kaolack to St. Louis and see taxi number 6092 make sure to yell at him for us. Split three ways we each lost ten bucks. One good thing about having this happen on the first day was that we now agreed to tell each of us exactly what was paid for and what wasn’t, and without any shortcuts of language (15 for 15 hundred or 15 thousand) to use for money between us – unless absolutely understood.
We left the hotel to find something to eat for dinner. While walking down a secondary road we came across an internet café where for 50 cents all three of us could check out e-mails for an hour total, with a French keyboard. This made typing an interesting account and my first email home was just in lines
In St. Louis
NW Senegal
French keyboard
No type good
More later
In The Gambia we are used to finding ladies sitting on the street selling everything from vegetables, fruit, bean sandwiches, rice with sauce and other street food. For a fraction of a cost of eating out you can be twice as full. In fact, that’s what we mostly survive on when traveling. There was none to be found in St. Louis, no bean-sandwich ladies; no rice servings, and only the occasional vegetable lady. Nate used his Wollof skills to ask a few vegetable ladies where something cheap would be to eat. They recommended this one restaurant that we couldn’t find so we went inside this one-room restaurant. The had maybe twenty seats total, all plastic, with one fan in the corner. Plus, a TV. This was a surprise to us as very few small shops in The Gambia have TV’s. For one, the power – or the lack thereof. We ate our meals and watched TV for a bit before heading back to the hotel to shower and sleep.
Yes, the shower. Surprised to even have a shower (The Gambia, most of the cheap hotels we have barely have running water, so bucket baths are the way to go). It had a shower head that you could hold and move around. Well, when I was taking my shower the tube connecting the shower head to the water pipe broke loose. It wouldn’t have been a problem if there was actual knobs to turn off the water. I scream as water was now racing to the wall at full speed, splattering in every direction, and changing paths to now sprinkle the entire bathroom. There was no knobs, only screws where the knobs used to be. With wet fingers I tried to turn them off and managed slowly to turn it millimeter by millimeter while getting showered upon in every random direction. Turned the water off, plugged the hose back in and continued. Ten seconds later the hose came off a second time! I now am using one hand to block the firehose of water coming to the wall while the other trying to turn off the water again.
Neither Nate nor Erika had any problem, although for the floor being a little wet form my episode. The sink was in the same fashion, with no knobs and only screws. I was the only one who had enough torque to turn they completely off and each time they used the sink they called me over to make the final twist on the screw.
While I was showering, Nate was talking to the ladies downstairs in Wollof. He explained that Erika and I were both teachers, while he taught agriculture in The Gambia. The ladies understood just enough Wollof to understand the basics, but when Nate tried explaining that he worked with bees they were lost. He finally made them understand with: “I work with tiny animals that go pop pop on your arm. I reach inside their coffin and pull out gold.”
We all shared the only bed in the room for the night, luckily it was double.
Monday July 18th
Start: Banjul, The Gambia [13 27 N 16 35 W]
Mid: Kaolack, Senegal [14 10 N 16 15 W]
End: St. Louis, Senegal [16 01 N 16 37W]
The last time I would leave my house for the past year was at 5:30 in the morning. While waiting on the highway for taxis, we had to split up. I managed to get a front seat of one car while leaving Nate and Erika behind for other transport. At Banjul, for the first time, I got a car to the ferry terminal instead of walking. While I pulled in with my second car to the terminal there’s Nate and Erika pulling in with their private transport they got two minutes after I left which drove them directly to the terminal.
At the customs post at The Gambia / Senegal border we were waved into the back area where they checked each of our passports. From here on out, my passport, we realized, would take the longest. I almost filled up the pages with visas and exit/entrance stamps that I had to go to the Embassy the week before for more pages. This was after I had already gone to the Mauritanian embassy. Every custom guard now had to go through blank page after blank page in order to find my Mauritanian visa, although the entrance stamp to the country was in the middle of the book (where the new pages were added).
In Kaolock I laid my last four dalasi I had on me on a rock for anyone to find. With those 15 cents gone, I now had no Gambian money left.
From Kaolock we headed to St. Louis, in North-Western Senegal. St. Louis, which is in Senegal, used to be the capital of Mauritania when it was under French rule. However, when Mauritania became fully independent in 1960 St. Louis went to Senegal and so a new capital had to be formed. Not wanting two capitals side by side, they headed north and founded Nouakchott, their new country capital. If you look at a detailed map of Mauritania and Senegal you can see that Mauritania actually bends down to reach St. Louis, but doesn’t actually reach it.
The actual layout of St. Louis makes it interesting. From the mainland there’s a river that go north-south. Going further west, passed the river, there’s an island, then the other side of the river, and then a peninsula of Senegal sticking out. Passed that is the ocean. So, St. Louis is split into three sections: The peninsula, the island, and the mainland.
Heading in St. Louis you can see the French influence in the buildings, the curved streets, not to mention the language. Every year St. Louis hosts a Jazz Festival that attracts thousands and thousands of tourists from all over the world. There are enough hotels in St. Louis to handle all of them, and we were looking for one in particular.
The man who drove us from Kaolack said he knew where the hotel was and would drive all three of there for 1500CFA (~$2.75) total. We agreed and he drove from place to place asking for directions to where it was. We backtracked, went up side streets, backtracked more, zig-zagged back and forth though a main street before we found it. The taxi couldn’t go down the side street since it was full of mud, but along the edges was clear. I walked that way to see if it was a hotel and found some guy who spoke English who was from The Gambia. He tried helping us out. Nate got involved since it was easier to communicate in Wollof with him.
What I thought to be an employee was just some visitor who was helping out for something in return. We asked him politely to go back to the hotel and eat his dinner, which he kept on insisting he stopped eating to help us.
“My friend, we did not ask you to help us. You left your dinner to help us. Go back to the hotel and enjoy your dinner”
As he whipped his glasses off he yelled “Fxxx you! Fxxx you!” and he stormed off. I yelled back “Thank you” again for a sincere acknowledgement of his help. He responded with another “Fxxx you!” before turning the street to our original hotel.
We agreed to go to another hotel.
We hadn’t paid the taxi driver yet and Erika asked Nate “15?”, which he replied “Yes.”. I then watched her pay the driver 15000CFA ($27.50) and thought nothing of it. Only when we were walking to another hotel, around the corner did Erika realize it should have been 1500CFA and not 15000CFA. We agreed to split the costs since we all were in fault to some degree. Erika asked Nate “15?” thinking 15,000. Nate said “Yes” thinking 1,500. I watched her pay 15,000 thinking it was for the full taxi fare from Kaolack and not just to go a few blocks down the road.
The driver honked for us to get out of the street and we watched him leave to have a good time with his friends with our money without us realizing we overpaid him 40 times more than what it was worth. (we were overcharged a factor of four found out later, and 10 times for the mistake). So, if you’re ever traveling from Kaolack to St. Louis and see taxi number 6092 make sure to yell at him for us. Split three ways we each lost ten bucks. One good thing about having this happen on the first day was that we now agreed to tell each of us exactly what was paid for and what wasn’t, and without any shortcuts of language (15 for 15 hundred or 15 thousand) to use for money between us – unless absolutely understood.
We left the hotel to find something to eat for dinner. While walking down a secondary road we came across an internet café where for 50 cents all three of us could check out e-mails for an hour total, with a French keyboard. This made typing an interesting account and my first email home was just in lines
In St. Louis
NW Senegal
French keyboard
No type good
More later
In The Gambia we are used to finding ladies sitting on the street selling everything from vegetables, fruit, bean sandwiches, rice with sauce and other street food. For a fraction of a cost of eating out you can be twice as full. In fact, that’s what we mostly survive on when traveling. There was none to be found in St. Louis, no bean-sandwich ladies; no rice servings, and only the occasional vegetable lady. Nate used his Wollof skills to ask a few vegetable ladies where something cheap would be to eat. They recommended this one restaurant that we couldn’t find so we went inside this one-room restaurant. The had maybe twenty seats total, all plastic, with one fan in the corner. Plus, a TV. This was a surprise to us as very few small shops in The Gambia have TV’s. For one, the power – or the lack thereof. We ate our meals and watched TV for a bit before heading back to the hotel to shower and sleep.
Yes, the shower. Surprised to even have a shower (The Gambia, most of the cheap hotels we have barely have running water, so bucket baths are the way to go). It had a shower head that you could hold and move around. Well, when I was taking my shower the tube connecting the shower head to the water pipe broke loose. It wouldn’t have been a problem if there was actual knobs to turn off the water. I scream as water was now racing to the wall at full speed, splattering in every direction, and changing paths to now sprinkle the entire bathroom. There was no knobs, only screws where the knobs used to be. With wet fingers I tried to turn them off and managed slowly to turn it millimeter by millimeter while getting showered upon in every random direction. Turned the water off, plugged the hose back in and continued. Ten seconds later the hose came off a second time! I now am using one hand to block the firehose of water coming to the wall while the other trying to turn off the water again.
Neither Nate nor Erika had any problem, although for the floor being a little wet form my episode. The sink was in the same fashion, with no knobs and only screws. I was the only one who had enough torque to turn they completely off and each time they used the sink they called me over to make the final twist on the screw.
While I was showering, Nate was talking to the ladies downstairs in Wollof. He explained that Erika and I were both teachers, while he taught agriculture in The Gambia. The ladies understood just enough Wollof to understand the basics, but when Nate tried explaining that he worked with bees they were lost. He finally made them understand with: “I work with tiny animals that go pop pop on your arm. I reach inside their coffin and pull out gold.”
We all shared the only bed in the room for the night, luckily it was double.
posted by Mike | 2:22 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home