Just Another Day

Last Wednesday I decided it was a good day to head to Basse to take care of my monthly banking. As Peace Corps Volunteers in The Gambia, we have two options for our banking locations, Kombo or Basse. And as Basse is only a few hours away from me, it is where I tend to go to take care of business. Plus, you can also get ice cream, hamburgers, and other good ole’ Western favorites in town, so it’s a fun place to go with friends and hang out once in a while as a break from village life.

However, as the two friends I usually go there with were both occupied, I decided to just have a fun day trip by myself.

For me to get from my village to Basse, I first bike about 1 hour to get to the town Bansang (also where I go to use the internet at the hospital…such as right now). At Bansang you find the “car park,” and that’s when the fun begins…

The first order of business is to find a driver going the right direction and work with their “apprentice” to work out the fee. For most destinations there is a standard fee, and once I immediately start talking to them in the local language they usually don’t try to mess with the standard prices, but it’s not unheard of. Next is to arrange for the cost of any extra parcels I’m bringing along that need to be tied to the roof. For most of my excursions I only have my backpack and keep it on my lap, but it is quite common to look on top of any “gele-gele,” the cars they drive, and see sheep, goats, buckets, mattresses, suitcases, and bags of rice, corn or peanuts. It makes for quite the interesting scene.

The gele-gele is an experience quite unlike any other. The cars themselves are basically old 15-passenger vans from Europe that have been gutted and transformed into vans that transport upwards of 22 people. That is also quite a sight. There are basically 4 rows with 5 people across each, and then as many crammed into the back end as possible. It’s really not fun at all, not in the least. But the experience itself is usually most comical, with such a sight…a van loaded to the brim with people and then literally topped off with chickens, goats, bags, produce and who knows what else…it is a sight to see.

So I found the right gele-gele, secured the price and hopped on in. And it turned out to be quite an interesting day of gele-gele experiences.

The drive from Bansang to Basse should be about 2 hours, give or take. And it is generally uneventful, just a drive through a part of Gambia that is actually quite scenic with trees and wildlife. A good time.

But on the way there I kept hearing loud talking from the back of the van. This wasn’t too uncommon, as Gambians can sometimes tend to talk very loud, and very intense. But as the people around me started to look to the back of the van I realized there was a fight going on! I’m not sure who started it, what the point was, or what they were actually saying. But I could tell from the language I do know that they were not speaking pleasantries. Nope.


They got pretty roudy, and at the next police checkpoint we came to, they were not-so-kindly asked to get off. I don’t know if the issue was ever resolved. The rest of the ride was quite uneventful.

I enjoyed a nice time in Basse, taking care of banking, drinking come cold Cokes, and even indulging in some ice cream. But then it was time to head back to so I could get back to site yet that evening.

Again, I went to the car park, found the right gele-gele and made sure the prices were good to go. Oh, another point worth mentioning is that the gele drivers, quite rightly, only leave when the gele is full of passengers. This can mean, for example, that if you get to the gele just as it is filling up, the wait to leave can be very short indeed. Oh the contrary, if you are one of the first to get the car, the wait is brutal…and brutally hot, as the cars do not have air conditioning.

In any case, the gele did fill up and finally took off. But not too long down the road there was a great popping noise and the van kind of shifted. We pulled over to find that the tire was blown. Whether this was due to the heat, the wear-and-tear, the poor road conditions, or the sometimes crazy driving…I’m not to sure. But the tire was done. But these are professional drivers, so of course they had a spare tire on hand. But when they had replaced the tire and we were all climbing and clawbering back inside, I couldn’t help but notice that the new tire was a flat.

So we continued on our journey, now with a flat tire instead of a blown tire, until we came to the first town, Bakadagi, about 12 k down the road. There we pulled over and the driver worked out a deal with another gele driver to transfer us and get us back to Bansang, although with these two delays it was putting me enough behind schedule that I was debating if I would actually get back to site before dark.

So we transferred vehicles and all the supplies on the roof and headed down on our merry way. The man sitting next to me kept insisting that I needed to help him get a US Visa, something I’m quite used to by now, and I did a good job of politely explaining to him that I can’t get him a visa any more than he can get me a Gambian visa…because visas are not my job. It’s a common conversation around here, but I digress…

As I was day-dreaming out the window, trying to avoid further conversation, I sensed more problems on the horizon from people’s expressions and fast discussions. As I turned to look behind me, it was unmistakably clear… they had either forgotten to, or very poorly, tied town the items on the roof, and buckets, bags, metal rods and suit cases were flying all over the road! (Luckily no goats were on the roof for that one!)

So we stopped, we backtracked, and everything was gathered back up and, this time, tied down well. It was another one of those moments where laughter really is the best way to respond, because any other response would just lead down a bad road.

And by the time we got back into Bansang, ride that should have taken just a few hours had taken up the latter part of the day. So I ended up hanging out with my friend Alicia and spending the night there. Today I’m finishing my way back to site, making a stop here at the hospital for a few blog and email updates.

So, the point of the story? This is normal life. It’s funny. It’s odd. And it’s very unpredictable. But this is life in Gambia, and my regular life in Africa. It’s not always safe. It’s not always funny. And it’s not always pleasant. But it’s fun. And it’s an experience quite unlike any other!