The Wildlife of Janjanbureh
on Phil Bradfield (The Gambia), 02/Jun/2010 10:19, 34 days ago
(Written 30/05/2010 09:45, My House, Janjanbureh)This is a post I’ve been meaning to write for a while, and just not quite got round to. When you’re wandering around the streets of JJB, it feels like you run into a lot more wildlife than you would at home. Some of it’s pretty exotic, some of it’s less so, but I thought I’d share a few examples.Gambia is famous for its bird life. If you take a walk a little way out into the bush then you’ll see the variety for yourself, but in town the bird I see most often are, somewhat surprisingly, vultures. When courses are being run at the RED office, the organisers will frequently buy a cow with the money they’ve been given to provide food. They’ll then slaughter it on the first day anduse the meat for the duration of the course. When they do this, the slaughtering takes place in the RED compound itself, and so once the meat has been butchered, the vultures descend to fight over the carcass:I know it’s not a great picture, but you can probably appreciate that I didn’t feel like getting too close. Those things arebig.Not all the bird life is quite that large though, or that ugly. These little fellas were pecking around in Bendula’s, a bar we frequent fairly often:And then there was this one, perched on a branch overhanging the river:Just don’t ask me what they are.Descending closer to ground level, you see an unbelievable amount of lizards. They’re everywhere, from the trees......to the bar......to your own doorstep!I know for sure that some of them manage to get into the house, as evidenced by their crap on my floor. They’re not bad housemates though: you hardly ever even see them. And if they’re insectivores, maybe they even eat a few of the cockroaches.Then, of course, there are the multitudes of domestic animals, which wander freely round the town during daytime, pitching up in the most unexpected places. You might see a goat perched halfway up a tree:Or some sheep waiting at the localbitiko:Of course, I’ve missed out the major form of life here: the people. But that’s for a forthcoming post...