Born to be Wild
on Phil Bradfield (The Gambia), 22/Jun/2010 16:45, 34 days ago
(Written 20/06/2010 23:00, My House, Janjanbureh)Because I don’t have my own transport, I don’t get out of Janjanbureh very much into the surrounding area. As Pete and Liz’s landlord Mulai put it, I’ve “become a house boy”. Today however, Pete and I took a trip 20km up the south road to Bansang, to visit Chris and Mel, a VSO couple who work at thehospital there. They’re saying goodbye to Gambia – they head back to Kombos on Tuesday and Canada on Sunday – and I suggested going to say goodbye before they left. The trip gave us a chance to check out Bansang as well; Pete and Liz have been there once before as it’s where they have to collect their petrol from, but I don’t think they explored very far.Chris tells me that Bansang has a population of about 9,000, which makes it roughly double the size of JJB, and there are certainly a lot more shops and the market is much, much bigger. Lots of people selling hardware, fabric, clothes and shoes as well as the women selling veg, a few of whom were, unbelievably,still there past 11:30. We managed to buy some things we can’t get in JJB (carrots, mooli, chocolate milkshake and washing up liquid, if you must know!), and decided that, now that we have a bridge onto the south bank and don’t have to wait for the ferry, we may come back a bit more. The only downside to Bansang is that in comparison to JJB it’s really, really scruffy: the main street was piled higher with rubbish than anywhere else I’ve seen (presumably because the place has more people and more going on, but the same amount of people who clear up, ie zero), and the streets are much narrower and less well made. But it certainly didn’t feel unfriendly; I don’t think it’d be a bad place to be posted to as a volunteer, particularly at the hospital: there’s a British lady who’s pumped a boatload of money into the place (she’s got an MBE for her work, apparently) to make it, in some ways, better than the country’s main hospitaldown in Banjul, and Chris and Mel have a really nice, new house at the back of the hospital compound.But, before we could take a look around, we had to get there. If you’d like to reconstruct the experience of riding the road from JJB to Bansang, here’s how you should go about it:1.Find a 100cc Yamaha, and a friend who knows how to ride it.2.Find a 20km long stretch of half-set cement.3.Find a tractor and drive it over said cement.4.Let the cement set. The tractor’s tyre tracks should be at least an inch deep and well defined.5.Climb on the bike behind your friend. Drive along the tyre tracks. Have several other friends spaced along the way who throw bucketfuls of sandy dust at the two of you as you pass, simulating a passing gelli or 4x4.This is for the“lite” version. For the full experience, do all of the above in a place where the temperature is in excess of 40°C, and with only one passenger footrest on the bike.But, I’ve got to admit, I’m not complaining. I can really see why Pete loves the bike so much: the countryside is beautiful, and you feel much closer to it riding than in a vehicle. It’s really enjoyable, despite the discomforts! If the bike wasn’t missing a footrest, I’d quite happily do longerjourneys sat behind Pete. One cool thing is that I can look at the reflection in the back of Pete’s helmet and get a wide-angle view of what we’ve just passed, with my own distorted, manically-grinning face in the middle of it all!And yes, despite the fact that we were doing 30kph down a dirt road in the African bush and it wasn’t really appropriate to the situation, I still sangBorn to be Wildmost of the way there and back.