Lifestyle > Train of Thought
West African Travel Log Daily Updates For Trip 2008 (including pics)
TraceOneInfinite:
As I explained before, the Rasta culture is huge in Gambia. And they don't call Gambia "the smiling coast" for nothing. Marijuana is a part of daily life in the country. It goes along with battling the elements such as digesting the food, the hot weather, mosquitoes, crowded streets and hustle of city life. Somehow the ganja blends beautifully with the life there. They have adopted Jamaica's Rasta culture in Gambia and ofcourse ganja is a big part of the Rasta way. Even strict Muslims and proffesionals engage in it's use in Gambia. People may pass by, see friends, have a seat, drink some tea, and pass around some ganja with their tea. The most popular song in my time in Gambia was a song called "Ganja Farmer". The songs lyrics go like this...
"Some ganja plant-a...
call me the ganja farmer...
it's a million ways (somethin somethin) ganja
Babylon comes to put my farm on fire....
...I'm a ganja planter....
...Call me the ganja farmer!"
I took this article about marijauna from a travel website about Gambia
http://www.accessgambia.com/information/ganja-drug.html
Ganja is the name for Marijuana (Pot), and seems to be more prevalent than liquor given the Islamic restrictions on alcohol consumption. Be aware that partaking and possessing Ganja is illegal in The Gambia. "Cannabis" is also used to describe the substance.
WARNING:
Never engage in illegal drugs. Penalties and prisons in Gambia are harsh.
Cannabis grows naturally in The Gambia and other parts of Africa and has been used as a recreational drug for centuries but its abuse is now widespread in both rural and urban populations in Africa (United Nations, 1989). The potency of cannabis varies widely geographically, with reduced levels of the major active principal, delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) found in plants grown in cold climates; cannabis in West Africa is likely, therefore, to be highly potent. In The Gambia there are three cannabis harvests per year and its low cost, and ready availability favour its widespread use. The cannabinoids are highly lipophilic and accumulate in body fat, leading to a long half-life in chronic users (Harvey, 1985).
British Journal of Psychiatry (1993) 163, 798-801
Now_Im_Not_Banned:
^I'm all down with the Rasta, homie, but that ganja looks fuckin dirty...
TraceOneInfinite:
This was my second trip to West Africa. I had spent the month of November 2007 there, and I had again planned to spend the month of 2008 there. Back in 2000 I had began making close friends with Gambians living in the United States. I would ask many questions and they would tell me a lot about back home. Often they would invite me to come to their country, but I don't think they really expected me to take the offer seriously. They would tell me they were going "next year" then when the "next year" would come they would say "no, next year"... Then again the next year would come and still they would say "next year". Finally after 7 years of this I told my friends I was just going to go by myself.
They told me "no, you can't go by yourself, its not safe, you need to wait till I go next, Im going next year".
I insisted that I was going to go by myself so at that point they gave me names and numbers of their family members living in Africa and told me to contact them if I needed anything during my trip.
So with little planning, and little money I was off to Senegal. One of my friends had told me that in the Gambia, "everything is so cheap, it will be hard for you to even spend 500 dollars in one month".
But what he failed to mention was that it is possible to spend only 500 on just myself in a month in gambia, but that a great deal of money would need to be spent on others.
For example, if you go in a taxi ride you pay for your friends to, if you eat you pay for yourself and everyone else eating, if you stay with friends they will say its free but at the end you may be asked to give "something from you heart" which can be a very high amount. Any favor anyone does for you no matter how small it is curteousy there that you may give them some money for it.
My first trip to Senegal and Gambia I stayed the families that my friends from back home had linked me to. And while I am grateful for their hospitality I think many wrong assumptions may have been made. They maybe thought that their primary goal was to keep me safe on the trip, or to impress me with the life there, or make me comfortable enough that I wouldn't feel like it was a struggle being away from America.
But I was there for the opposite. I was there for adventure. I was there to see things and do things that could not be found in America. So while I was taying with the families I started going out on my own, making my own movements, making my own friends.
I learned that often the wealthier families didn't know their way around much. They had most of their things at home and had attatchments to family and friends living in the West.
One good friend I met while out on my own was Idiboy. His nickname blah blah blaj yada yada yada.
So this time I put my trip into his hands. He picked me up directly from the aiport blah blah blah yada yada yada.
I spent much of the trip just trying to keep up with him, he moved very fast, wheeled and dealed for me, blah blah blah yada yada yada.
The first day in Senegal we spent most of our time at Goree island, Goree island blah blah blah yada yada yada.
We set out to travel from Senegal to Gambia. It was a long trip and we spent some of the time conversating with the others on the bus. One girl on the bus sparked conversation when she said that "all men are bad". The boys and the girl started debating whether it was boys or girls that "fake on you". Supposedly showing you one face and then showing another. I was interested in the conversation but part of it was in Wolof and part in English. After a long exchange in Wolof I had asked for an explaination of what they were saying. So the assistant to the bus driver tried to explain...
"See our way, in our culture here is that you can date someone or you can have a girlfriend. You have to to find out what you like. But the problem is when some people take it too far, and they will be with somebody for years and years and never marry, then maybe after 9 years they leave eachother or something. Muslim and Gambian way is to get married".
So that gives you an idea of what the conversation was like on the bus. There was one point on the bus ride when everybody started laughing at my friend. He had held everyone up cause he had to stop to use the restroom (#2). So he went off into the bushes and people laughed about how long he took or complained he was holding everyone up. When my friend came back he said, "Yeah, they want to laugh, but one day they will have to go, and they will have to do the same thing, you can't help".
Often whether travelling or in the city you have to pee or poop just on the side of the road. Even at the point of immigration, after getting my passport stamped I remember peeing on the side of a biulding outside.
In America we have the luxury of privacy and locking all our doors and hiding ourselves away from the slightest discomfort. However, in Gambia that luxury is not there, the people are congested and learn to get along one way or another. So its no surprise the people end up being very open people with nothing to hide.
Infact then when I finally got into Gambia we went to a home along the way. My friend said we might be able to stay there for a few days, just to introduce myself to his cousin that stayed there. When we got there the main house was locked with nobody home, yet they had a makeshift guesthouse, where my friend said he stayed at times. We went in there and I took a shower. There was no towel so I put on some boxers and sat outside just a minute to airdry. There was nobody there but my friend and I. Abruptly his cousin showed up, I went to rush to put some clothes on, yet my friend was like, "ohh its okay, just introduce yourself".
So anyway, it was kind of strange to me that I began introducing myself to this man while sitting outside in his front driveway(inside a gated property) in nothing more than my boxers, asking if it was cool if we stay there.
I tell this store just to mention how things are out in the open in Gambia. You see women breastfeeding in public on buses and cabs, people urinating out in the streets, occasional nudity at the beaches, and even sometimes you can be at someones house people may change clothes in front of you only making slight considerations for privacy.
Eating is a group affair. You hardly ever go get food on your own, but rather wait till everyone is eating and join in eating out of the same bowl. When you try to leave and say your finished they will always try to encourage you to eat more.
Well maybe my introduction didn't work out so good after all. Because after at first being told I would probably be able to stay there for free as long as I wanted, I ended up with a 500 dollar a month offer the next day.
So we only ended up staying with my friends cousin for two days. It wasn't that bad of an offer but we wanted to stay closer to the beach anyway. While there I was given the main room of the house. My friends cousin moved and re-arranged his things right away. The room was very much like an American teenagers room might be. A big stereo system, pictures of his family and girlfriend, and posters on the wall of American musicians like Eminem, Britney Spears, and so on. He was playing a music station that was nearly identical to most urban stations in the US.
My friend and I both agreed that it wasn't really our style. I was looking for different style, perspective and atmosphere in Africa, and my friends cousin was too much into America for our taste. And what's the point of travelling if your just getting more of the same.
Next we went and visited some of Idi-boy's friends. We sat in a circle and chatted, passed around tea and things. Idi-boy asked if I liked the vibe there. The discussion was a lot about Obama and the election. They were mostly Rasta's and their style was a reggae-African pride look. The guesthouses were shaded by large trees, there was a big water well, open space, bushes and hamack in the middle of the property, and the owners home was designed on the outside with colorful African artwork.
So there we would stay and it worked out well. The owner of the property was Sidi, he charged us just 350 for the whole month. He had a set of 4 guesthouses. Basically he had biult the first, started renting it out, eventually biult the second, then third, and was finishing up the fourth as I was there. His whole family and friends had their own spot also inside the property and they all worked together tending to the property. I ended up spending a lot of time with these people and getting to know them during my trip.
The name of the city was kololi, it was walking distance to the Palma Rima beach, but it wasn't a short walk. It took me about 3 days before I got down all the twists and turns on the way to the beach that I started making the walk on my own.
I would spend a lot of time walking during the trip. My friend bragged to me that he knew his way around better than anyone else, that others didn't know the backroads we walked and that he was saving me hundreds on taxi fares.
I enjoyed all the walks. It was a great break from the confinement I experience back home in America. To be out, walking around, going place to place, having dozens of friends, sweating in the sun, swerving around in the dark of the night, were all things that reminded me of being a kid again, before I was 16 and had a drivers liscence.
The walks at night were quite an experience. At times it was pitch black, as many area's either didn't have power, or the power had temporarily gone out. There are temporary power outages that last about 2 hours every few days. This is an improvement from the nearly daily power outages I had experienced the year before.
Upcountry trip.
My last night at the guesthouse they threw a big going away.
IslamInevitable:
Nice man... it takes a lot of courage to get up and enter a completely different culture... but they seem like cool peoples man... make me wanna go there soon
LAXCENTRAL:
DAMN.... IN FINITE
PLAYER IS ALL G-ED OUT
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