Merry Christmas!
W2N 'Where to Next?'
Rob 'Bee' Clark
Thu 25 Dec 2008 10:45
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13:42.2N 14:54.9W
It's Christmas morning...!!
...although it doesn't feel much like it. I'm still
in The Gambia and have been slowly making my way back down river to Banjul.
Well, I was until anchoring at the river's edge a couple of days ago and
receiving such a warm welcome from the people in the nearby tribal village of
Manjumba (nothing more than a cluster of mud huts really)that I was in no hurry
to move on. I'm still travelling with a Dutch boat Lady of the Lowlands
and will be spending Christmas with Henk and Maria but in the village,
being Muslim, it's just another day although we are being treated like
celebrities and can't go anywhere without an entourage of excitable children
following us around.
It's incredibly hot here and the wildlife is
unbelievable. Just a short distance upriver, we passed a herd of hippos in the
shallow water. We've seen crocodiles, monitor lizards, monkeys, chimpanzees,
parrots, vultures, eagles, pelicans, snakes and goodness knows what else.
It really is hard to believe that this is the wild, that this is not staged for
the tourists but a way of life for the indigionous people who manage to survive
on so little.
Christmas for me then will be pretty unusual.
Credit cards are not accepted anywhere here and the only ATM is in Banjul where
I first arrived over two weeks ago. As such, I've run out of money and have been
unable to provision for anything very spectacular although I think Maria is
cooking a Christmas cake today! Considering that I arrived in The Gambia
expecting the worst and prepared to stay only long enough to provision for the
next leg to Ascension Island, it is testiment to the incredible adventure I'm
having that I have chosen to spend my Christmas in a primitive Muslim community
with no electricity, no running water, no money... and no
Christmas!
Anyway, I hope you're all having a fantastic day
and in many ways, I'm sorry I'm not there but for the first time in the 'Where
to next?' project, after nearly 4000 miles, eight throws of the dice and so many
dissapointments, I can honestly say that this is nothing less than I could
possible have hoped for. I can say that for the first time, I will be sorry to
leave.
Thanks for all your gracious messages. Few places
here have electricity and I've not seen an internet cafe for a long time so I've
been unable to keep up-to-date with them or reply (My Vodafone 3G modem would
work here but it is stupidly expensive). Nor, for the same reason, have I
been able to post any photos to the blog although I have over two hundred of The
Gambia alone and I'd love to be able to show you. Canasta is in great
shape and I even flew the spinaker running down the river on Tuesday. The locals
seem slightly bewildered to see us anyway so it must have been quite a sight to
see the big colourful spinnaker ghosting down the river as the sun set. I was
just showing off really and well, to be honest, it's just one of those things
that has to be done simply because I may never get another chance in my
lifetime... like stroking a crocodile at the Kachikally Crocodile Pool in
Baccau!
So, HAPPY CHRISTMAS then to you all!
Bee
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