N13°26’24” W015°48’29” – N13°24’05” W015°48’10”
km: 5
I sleep really bad tonight. The tide is high and the waves sound like rain, it is incredibly cold at the river (around 20 degrees). In the morning its stormy and cold at only freezing 19°C. I skip the morning bird watching and decide together with Jemmah, my host, to go in the afternoon when the weather might be better. I really like the people here, out of the tourist places you can really find nice and very hospitable places!
The mangroves forest meeting the Savannah on the other riverside is really spectaculars and the neverending herons of all kinds are amazing. Even the people are really nice and when coming back from the boat trip the children of the village give me a nice welcome so I take one of them on my shoulders and go to the shop to get Nescafe. When we come back the others want rides on my shoulders too so it takes some time before I finally get my coffee,,, Never mind, we have a lot of fun!
In the afternoon and on the boat trip next morning I talk a lot with Jemmah, about all his little problems. He wants to open a bigger resort on the other side of the river – on an amazing place just where the wetlands meet with Savannah – it would be a crime building something there! However he is searching for a partner as he could get 2 ha of land on a little hill there for less than 2000 Euro.
While telling me this on the way back over the river he is busy keeping the water level in the leaking boat low. The toilet in his “restaurant” is a hut on a bridge – shower too! Sorry man I know I am at the hand right now but I don’t want to be your partner. He is only a little disappointed when I leave to Kwinella, the little village on the way here. I want to spend my last night in Gambia there.
I get an amazing welcome at the village. Evening bird watching is not happening because of being surrounded by amazingly nice and beautiful people all the time. In the evening when making music a girl from the USA who is volunteering there hears me and comes to have a chat. She tells me things then that make me see the women here different. Most of the girls in the rural areas in the Gambia have their Clitoris and parts of their labia cut off when they are between 8 and 13. I can hardly express what I feel then. Even at Jemmahs place in Tendaba girls where more or less offered to me with the words “you are a man, you need sex….” – and girls are not supposed to have fun? How can these guys here enjoy sex with girls who……? This is just so… African! I and I the rastaman says…
wild mix of pics without comment… check out the difference between high tide and low tide more than 200 kilometers away from the coast!
