Heading west... "just get us back to the gambia"
Trip Start
Jan 30, 2008
1
18
27
Trip End
Jun 23, 2008
Soma,
Gambia
Saturday, March 22, 2008
The next morning we
were up by 7 a.m., and out of the
hotel and on our way by 8. Our goal was to make it back into The Gambia, even
further than Janjangbureh (our starting point days earlier). It was an
ambitious goal, but after a day like we experienced in the park, I didn't know
what more could really go wrong.
We started at the Velingara garage in Tambacounda... again,
just as one "sept-place" taxi was pulling off. That meant we were the first
passengers in our "sept-place" taxi. Sound familiar?
My words:
Getting to the garage at around 8:30(we were starting to get so good at accounting for time and recording how long things take to happen... mostly to laugh about at later times). After playing around with the local youth, taking photos(thank you kids for breaking a new camera, but we got some good shots), asking every 10minutes, and not thinking too much of the wait because it was early in the day and something felt like nothing could get worse then yesterday. We finally filled up the sept-place and were on our way by around 10:30, this one not nearly as quick as the one we took to Tambacounda 3 days earlier. We got into the main septplace garage and quickly jumped in a taxi to the boarder garage, where we had to grab a taxi across the boarder, the time was around 1:00pm and we knew what was coming... lunch time break in service. There were two people out of how ever many people they were wanting to get into that "vehicle"(one of the worse i had seen all along), and oh shit was exactly what came out of our mouths. Jori looked at me and i knew exactly what i had to do... we threw down 600D(30bucks) and bought the rest of the vehicle. We knew we had to get across the boarder and on our way, we were already later then we wanted to be and there could be more hold ups at the boarder. The manager who i just made really happy asked if we could take two people who couldnt afford the seats(we did "own" the car, so we could do anything with the extra room). Ofcourse we let them into "our car", but then about 6other people piled in, we honestly didnt care at the point, we were moving and quick!
After a quick boarder crossing(jori trying to exchange her shirt for one of the official gambia immigration shirts), we were SO happy to be back in the Gambia, and to leave senegal behind us. I kept telling jori we were going to get a bus to out of Basse Sante Su by 2pm, she never believed me but somehow we found one heading west(not as far west as we wanted to go, they kept saying it was too late for us to go that far today... yup, shoulda listened to them). So instead we got a gelleh-gelleh to wassu .Where we changed gelleh-gelleh(started to realize that this was wasting 30minutes at every stop to refill passengers) to Brikama Ba. When we rolled into brikama ba, we had read that the town turns into a huge market on saturdays, which was absolutely great to watch as we ran after literally the last bus leaving that day. It had been held up at the police station so we were able to catch it and save some of the last seats. After waiting a looooong time for the driver to clear something up with the local police we were on our way, this was it, this was the bus to Soma. By this time it was close to 5 oclock, we knew we were starting to get close to our cut off point, but i was in good faith because the guidebooks and everyone kept saying four hours...
We had heard that from Basse to Soma should take 4hours, NOPE, we then heard from Wassu should take 4 hours, then brikama ba... yup four hours. We knew something was up, but we headed on. We had heard the south roads were terrible, like worse then the north ones(just bumpy enough that it makes you feel like your on a vibrating bed) but the south ones - wow, im talking craters, literally like bombs had been dropped on them, and thats where there was actual roads. It just kept getting worse and worse. Only about an hour into our trip and not making any progress we broke down and looked to have snapped an axel. It was a minor break honestly but what happened next blew my mind. The driver and his assistant(the one who collects all the money and i guess also is the engineer) are going at the axel and then rope the thing together. Within 15minutes were on the road again and im praying that they know their knots. What happens on these roads are... since the actual roads have potholes the size of a mini cooper(or some the size of a volvo station wagon), the drver places two wheels on the road and two on the dirt trench on the size. What happens is a nice 40degree lean to a vehicle severely topheavy(forgot to mention that this one had a goat on the roof and a bed and a ton of other stuff), and the feeling that at any moment we'll go toppling over on the side. Another hour into the journey we get our first flat tire, by now its dark and surprise no one has a flash light. THANK GOD i grabbed jori's crank flashlight(dad coming through on those christmas gifts) and start cranking away and show off my american toy. They love it and it makes the job 10times easier for them.
As we head off again, by this time were 1/2 way to soma, its around 7 or 8, and were realizing now the four hour thing... if you had a range rover it MIGHT take four hours. We have been stuck in the middle of this gelleh-gelleh, not those luxury VIP seats up front, smack dab in the middle of about 20 sweaty gambians. The breeze from the window is doing nothing... and all i remember is blowing on jori to keep her cool. The sun is down but the heat is left over from the day... The road starts getting worse, and its hard to get even worse, so we start taking these side paths about 20feet away from the road which are literally a dirt track that helps by pass 1/2a mile or so. We take one and pretty soon were about 5miles from the road and heading in the opposite direction... literally in the middle of the bush, in the middle of the night. So were bouncing down this road and we come along a broken down gelleh-gelleh literally in the middle of no where, i mean NOTHING is around them, so the passengers pile in and on top. Now totally over weight and bouncing along the bush, i start getting the sense that were on a cow trail and that fear comes true when we end up stuck in a village with a path 6inches wider then the gelleh-gelleh. As we creep through these villages we keep hearing these loud bangs and pops. I think its something we are running over. But when we finally come out to the main village and the intersection with the road were suppose to be traveling on and stop... we find out its the bed on the roof. Its totally smashed and an argument breaks out. As jori and i back from the situation i send jori off to find some cold drinks and i try and ask the locals where we are and how long it should take to Soma. The local kids cant even find it on the map but find the closest town, and they say 4, i repeat, 4 hours?!?! they nod. By this time were getting close to 9pm. We end up staying in this town for an hour, were not sure why and i think its because the gelleh-gelleh has problems and they are getting another one. Somewhere around the hour mark, driver and a couple of other guys come running along with a new bed frame, they throw it on top and instruct us all to get back in. Jori and i look at each other and laugh so hard realizing we just wasted an hour because the driver had to find a bedframe.
Our plan all along was to stay in this beautiful nature camp resort on the water, it was about 30minutes due west of Soma. Once we got to Soma we had to take another short gelleh-gelleh trip to a small village and then get picked up on the side of the road by this man who was the manager of the resort. His name was Lamen and we had made a reservation through him, and had been talking to him all the way since Senegal. Every time we broke down we would call him and update us on where we were and how long it would take. He was a god sent and really helped to keep our morals high throughout the day(I needed it a lot more then jori today). By the time we got stuck in this little random village at around 9pm he knew that there was very little chance we were going to make it to his camp(called Tandaba Camp).
We finanally got on the road again and finished the last leg, jori and I tried to sleep... mostly listening to This American Life(god I love ira glass, we listened to this amazing show titled "brilliant plans", all about brilliant ideas that people had planned out and had gone very very wrong... very ironic) along the way. We pulled into Soma at 1:30am. It was literally a ghost town... the few random people we saw as we came into the city were very sketchy looking. Nothing was open and no gelleh-gellehs were leaving when we got to the garage. We were approached by a guy who was yelling Serekunda(in the direct direct and could drop us off), we got very excited and quickly threw our bags on. Little did we know that after he pulled his van around to pick us upm pulled to the other side of the garage and stopped... we were waiting for the bus to fill up, quite a difficult task at 1:45 in the morning. We laid in the bus and contemplated our options, called lamen on the phone, decided to just go home in the morning. Then, the bus driver turned on Arabic pray on the radio full blast at 2am and we decided to ask him where the nearest bathroom was... jori in the process asked not only where the bathroom was but also where she could change. He thought we meant a hotel room, so on we went down the road to the nearest motel. This was the drivers' recommendation... so we went with it. We figured a place to close our eyes for a couple of hours wouldn't hurt. As we walk down the street we come across literally everything youd imagine in a transportation stop along any major throughway(hookers, gas stations, bums, lots of trucks, etc). We finally get to "moe's motel" - Seems like a run down motel, but we don't care. We are shown to our room... a mattress on the ground, a bathroom which consists of a whole in ground, no windows, no electricity, no mosquito net, no clean sheets, and after a long day we thought it looked like the best hotel we had seen in our life. The driver told us he would wake us around 6am and savespots on the first bus, we called Lamen and told him we were staying in town and then heading home. Thank god I brought a towel(pillow) and clean sheets on the trip. Jori and I threw some extra bug spray on and hit the bed around 2:30.
At 4am I was awoken by jori POUNDING on my chest. She was screaming, literally screaming....
THERE IS A BUG IN MY EAR!!!!! She was screaming like a mad man. After about 30seconds of jori jumping around the room and crying I finally hold her down. I take a flash light and shine it into her ear. I checked around the top and saw nothing. After 15hours of traveling and a couple of long days in a row I wasn't believing everything that was coming out of my girlfriend's mouth. I thought maybe she is hallucinating or havig a bad dream, so my main concern was to calm her down and comfort her. She had already woken up the rest of the compound by now. By now it had been almost a minutes and I had gotten the idea to take toilet paper and wined it up to stick down into her ear. After about 10seconds of this and nothing happening but more tears I decided to just talk to her and comfort her more. So I rested the flashlight on her ear and leaned over her... she was absolutely terrified. I started more and more to believe there was some type of bug in her ear... maybe a little nat or fly. But then after maybe a total of 1:30 had gone by I lifted the flashlight off her ear and about 10seconds later... a huge beetle came crawling out of her ear. About an inch long in size and with some wings too. I jumped back and screamed holy shit(probably not the best idea) and threw the flashlight... she jumped as well and this thing was finally out of her ear. After some DDT was sprayed to kill him and more tears were shed by jori... things were finally calming down. After stuffing toilet paper into our ears, we passed out again for a short while, praying no more bugs were around. We didn't have that much of a choice at 4am, sitting on the side of the road was dangerous and we had already used the room for alittle bit.
We were awoken by the gelleh-gelleh beeping at 6am...
