09 October 2009 - Timesonline - Alex Spence
In a brightly painted courtyard at her home on the Atlantic Coast, shaded by citrus and avocado trees, Ida Cham Njie is teaching my girlfriend, Michelle, and I to cook fish yassa, a staple West African dish.
It’s a family effort: Ida’s sisters-in-law clean and gut the cassava fish we bought at a local market a few hours earlier, while her husband, a quietly-spoken engineer, helps prepare the vegetables.
“In our culture it is taboo for men to be near the kitchen,” Ida says. “If my mother-in-law saw this, I’d be in trouble.”
Ida is a tall, striking woman in her mid-40s. She formerly ran one of The Gambia’s top resorts, but struck out on her own in September, opening Yobouy, a catering business and cooking school specialising in traditional cuisine.
One of a growing number of entrepreneurial locals attempting to offer tourists a more intimate, community-based experience, Ida is determined to show that there’s more to her country than golf, game fishing and birdwatching cruises.
The Gambia is one of Africa’s smallest countries, a 350 kilometre strip along the Gambia River that is almost entirely enveloped by Senegal. Its 1.4 million people depend largely on small-scale agriculture for their livelihoods but tourism is also crucial to their fortunes.
The former British colony attracted 146,759 tourists in 2008, of which more than 40 per cent were from the UK.
It may not be as popular as, say, the Caribbean or Thailand as a wintersun destination, but The Gambia does have plenty to recommend it: terrific climate, cheap prices, decent beaches. It’s only a six hour flight from London and in the same time zone; it helps that almost everyone speaks English.
And the addition of several flash new hotels, including the eco-friendly Mandina Lodge, set in a protected 1,000-acre rainforest, and Coco Ocean, a luxury oceanfront hotel that opened last December, has helped to lure a broader range of tourists. Yet for all its apparent appeal, we were sceptical.
After ten days travelling through remote villages in Senegal, we worried that we would find The Gambia excessively touristy, even a bit dull.
Would we be trapped in a dreary resort, surrounded by grey-haired Brits interested only in improving their tans and their golf swings? A French expatriate we met in Senegal, when we told him we were heading to The Gambia, quipped, “How’s your grip?”
We’d heard all the stories about sex tourists and “bumsters”, the local hustlers who prowl the beaches and markets looking for gullible foreigners to prey on. Thefts and attacks against tourists are on the rise, according to the UK’s Foreign Office.
And a series of negative headlines in the British press hadn't improved our perceptions, either. In December, a couple of British missionaries were jailed for apparently criticising The Gambia’s human rights record; more recently, over 1,000 villagers were rounded up and forced to drink toxic potions after they were accused of practicing witchcraft.
In the end, though, we were pleasantly surprised. The Gambia is touristy, sure, but it’s hardly Bali or Phuket. There are no fast-food chains or flashy Western-style stores. There are only six sets of traffic lights and a couple of ATMs in the entire country.
Step outside the landscaped, air conditioned comfort of your hotel and there’s no mistaking you’re in a poor African country: dusty and potholed roads, animals roaming freely, barely roadworthy vehicles belching black smoke.
Michelle and I arrived by land from Senegal to the north. After a delay at the ramshackle border post, we jostled onto an impossibly crowded car ferry for the journey across the river to Banjul, the capital.
We had arranged for a driver to meet us at the other side, but he was nowhere to be seen. Instead, we were quickly surrounded by touts and taxi drivers. A policeman stepped out of the crowd to help us find a ride to our hotel. A grateful taxi driver quietly slipped him 100 dalasis (£2.40) for his trouble.
The hotels cluster along the Atlantic Coast. We stayed at Ngala Lodge, in Bakau, a seafront town that is home to diplomats, businessmen and members of The Gambia’s political elite. Ngala Lodge is a converted colonial mansion on a clifftop road near the British High Commission, with spacious suites and an excellent restaurant. Its real highlight is a lush garden that sweeps down to a private beach.
For the first few days, we were happy just to laze about, swimming and reading, drinking cocktails, watching the sun set. Most of the other guests similarly seemed to have little inclination to leave the hotel.
Feeling a little guilty, we did venture out in the evening to check out some of the restaurants along the coast, which were surprisingly good. The first night, we ate at Avocado, at the Coconut Residence hotel in Kololi.
Admittedly, we had a couple of gripes — the service was comically overattentive and the price was, by local standards, eye-poppingly expensive (£90, including wine, for the two of us) — but the food was generally very good.
The next night we tried The Butcher’s Shop, in Fajara, which we liked even more. It was romantic but unpretentious, friendly, and served an excellent steak. The restaurant was only a few kilometers from our hotel, so we decided to walk back after dinner. Everywhere else we had been required a taxi and it was a warm, pleasant night, so why not? Despite the warnings about attacks on tourists, we did not feel unsafe.
The next morning, we meet Ida.
A day with her begins at a small beachfront market in Tanji, a village about 15 minutes from her family home in Brufut. It's typical of other markets we’ve visited in Senegal and Gambia: full of noise and colour, the air thick with the stench of fish and acrid black smoke from open fires.
Women in loudly-patterned dresses, children in tow, sell barracuda, catfish, snapper, ladyfish and various other types of seafood I can’t identify. They're formidable negotiators, so we leave Ida to take care of the haggling. Then it's on to the vegetable stalls where we stuff our baskets with green tomatoes, aubergines, onions, okra and sorrel leaves. Back at Ida’s house, we soon transformed her courtyard into an open-air kitchen.
Home cooking in Gambia is a slow, labour-intensive exercise but also a marvellously social one. Their cuisine is relatively uncomplicated, consisting predominantly of fish or chicken stews — this being a Muslim country, pork is seldom eaten — served with rice.
Ida shows us how to prepare the fish, then they’re wrapped in foil and left to grill slowly over a small charcoal stove. The sauce, a mix of onions, lemon juice and mustard, simmers in another huge pot, while Michelle purees the sorrel leaves using a giant wooden mortar and pestle.
The yassa takes several hours to cook; by the time Ida declares it ready the courtyard is filled with stomach-teasing aromas.
We sit down with the family on the tiled ground as the yassa is laid out on a huge plate in front of us. Everyone digs in with their hands, as is customary. It’s harder to eat this way than it first seems and I make a proper mess of it; Ida, finding it hilarious, eventually takes pity and hands me a spoon. It tastes good — simple, but filling and flavoursome.
After lunch, there’s a surprise. Ida has invited her friend Sheikh Omar Sohna, a Gambian percussionist, to join us for lunch and he lets us have a go at playing his djembe drums. Sheikh Omar, who goes by the stage name “Sheikh Blondie”, recently returned to The Gambia after eight years living in the UK, largely because he missed the lifestyle and the weather. Now he teaches drumming to schoolkids and tourists. He’s a natural entertainer and his enthusiasm for Gambian music is infectious.
He tells us that although Gambian musicians are overshadowed by their Senegalese neighbours — many of whom, including Youssou N’Dour and Baaba Maal, have become internationally famous — they are every bit as skilled and imaginative. “Every Gambian is born with a drum,” he says.
That may be true, but can he teach a rhythmically-challenged white guy to play? Slowly, patiently, Sheikh Omar guides Michelle and I through the basics. Then he counts off a simple beat: "tone, tone, bass . . . Tone, tone, bass. . ."
We do our best to follow but we're too tentative. "It’s dead animal skin," he chides. "You can’t hurt it."
Eventually, we find a groove. Sheikh Omar begins singing in Wolof. Ida and the family clap and dance along. The music is irresistible, as is their openness, their hospitality. Hopefully, for their sake and for The Gambia's, a new generation of British tourists will think so, too.
Need to Know
Alex Spence travelled as a guest of The Gambia Experience, staying at Ngala Lodge in Bakau for 4 nights. This winter The Gambia Experience is offering seven-night packages at Ngala Lodge from £854pp, based on B&B for two and including flights from Gatwick, transfers and taxes.
For those on more of a budget, The Gambia Experience offers seven nights at the four-star Kombo Beach hotel from £546 pp, based on B&B for two sharing a non-air conditioned room, including flights from Gatwick, transfers and taxes.
What to do
The Gambia Experience offers several bookable full or part-day excursions, including a boat journey to the historic slave trading station that inspired Alex Haley’s “Roots” for £48.50 per person and a four-wheel-drive tour of beaches and fishing villages for £35pp.
For those interested in wildlife up close, there are trips across the border to a nature reserve in Senegal for £58 per person and a day in the Makasutu eco-forest for £44 per person.
Visas & jabs
British passport-holders do not require visas for tourist entry to The Gambia. Vaccinations not required for entry from the EU, but jabs for typhoid and hepatitis A are recommended. Malaria is a problem, so anti-malarial medication is avisable.
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