getting about

We had our first ride in a gelii today. For those uninitiated among us it is a bus – of sorts. Made by finding an ancient space cruiser and removing everything except the frame, add an assortment of home made metal structures, precariously attached, to act as seats, and then beat it to within an inch of it’s life and you get the idea.



There’s the determined driver and his assistant who leans out of the door shouting incomprehensible destinations.


It has to be full before the driver will leave. “How much room?” screams our Mandinka instructor. “4” So 8 of us pile in to join a strange array of characters. The woman with the baby glued to her front with multi patterned material wrapped tightly around her ample torso, a cleanly clad youth plugged into his i pod tapping some unknown rhythm against his leg, a British couple on their 5th holiday in The Gambia (parents of an ex VSO), the deodorant less man who hacks grolleys in his throat, a tiny lad returning from school complete with case and gas canister twice his size. Add to this a sack of onions (never mind my feet) shopping bags, the rucksacks and there’s hardly room to breathe. That’s okay the smell makes me reluctant anyway.


So off we go, all 16 of us. The sliding door flies off its runners to be inadvertently caught by the poor soul who has his arm out of the window. (There’s no room for it inside) The back seat rotates to an angle of 45 degrees just before the rear window falls out onto the rope that suggests this might have happened before. We jump, lurch and bump along, every jolt bashing us against our neighbour.


Payment is D5, about 12p. Unzip the rucksack, find the purse buried in its depth and then try to decipher which note was, at its inception, red, amid the brown paper wad, all in a square centimetre of moveable space.


At each stop most people have to alight allowing a tangoed manoeuvre to exchange passengers, until we eventually reach our destination. Serekunda market – but that’s a whole new story.

Just to let you know


Photographs are not always easy to take. For a variety of reasons people are not always happy. We’ve been told that some Muslims are concerned about their souls being depicted, thoughts that we might be trying to make post cards to sell and various other ideas. A man, verbally attacked Pete and then tried to take his camera, for taking a picture of a road sign. Added difficulties downloading them onto the Internet and it’s all a bit haphazard but there are a few (thanks Rob) on


www.flickr.com/photos/walfords