by David Pugh
I took some family photographs, and we were served our first meal since our French bread and coffee breakfast, fish and rice with no vegetables. The rice was home-grown and very tasty but the vegetables, which seemed to be growing everywhere, were destined to go to a Jola co-operative, which provided rudimentary schooling and limited healthcare. After lunch we crossed the village to see Kopasio, Ahuben’s oldest brother, who didn’t seem that delighted to see that the prodigal had returned unannounced. Nevertheless, Kopasio brought us another bucket of cashew wine, this time we used a traditional cup, the hollowed out shell of a small coconut with a hole bored right through it, into which a stick was poked.
At about 4pm the whole village got very excited, a minibus had stopped at the T-junction; it must have driven across that broken bridge in Susana. Remus said some hasty goodbyes, I left Quamiso enough money to pay three months’ rent, about £10, and he was amazed by my generosity.
On the outskirts of Varela the bus driver pointed to a hotel owned by a Portuguese man, but Remus insisted that there was a nicer locally owned complex down on the beach. Varela centre had two small shops and that was about it. The bus driver said that once the vehicle filled up, he wouldn’t be back for at least two days. This was worrying as I needed to fly back to the UK in three days’ time, and I noticed that there were no vehicles, apart from a tyre-less van, to be seen anywhere in the village. The roundavel-style hotel complex was closed up, only opened for four weeks every Christmas, when the German owners came with their friends. The rest of the time it was occupied by four caretakers, who were not prepared to let us have a room. We went down to the magnificent beach for a bath and to watch the sunset. Remus didn’t want get sea salt in his dreads and settled for cleaning his feet with pumice stones, which littered the sand. The huge stretch of beach only had three other people to watch the dying light, a young local couple and one of the German complex’s caretakers.
The caretaker suggested we go back to the Portuguese hotel, which had a fine restaurant that served every kind of food with cold beer and fresh water. I pictured a bowl of vegetables and a plate of fresh fruit. When we got back there, the rather grumpy Portuguese owner told us that his restaurant had been closed since his Italian chef had disappeared and was no longer open to visitors; it was just too much work to keep it going for the occasional blow in. The caretaker said that he thought he knew of a woman who took in lodgers, we trudged back into the centre of the little town. The lady didn’t want such an odd couple in her house and sent us off with a live chicken as some kind of compensation. Ahuben remembered that he had a little sister living near the Portuguese hotel; he found it difficult to keep track of family relations. Before finding his sister’s house he had to find some kana, this done we set off, with the caretaker in tow. We found Little Sister’s mud brick house but no one was in, being Sunday evening I thought the family might be at church. Remus and the caretaker went off, with the very patient chicken, to find them and I sat by the tin door admiring the incredibly clear stars. There are some advantages to a town with no electricity, unless you’re a hotel property developer. Within minutes Little Sister, her husband, their three children and a very drunk man I assumed to be a relative, were herded into the compound by Remus and the caretaker. Little Sister opened the padlocked door to bring out some cups, which seemed to be the prize possessions in an almost empty hut. Her husband stepped on the chicken’s head and took three attempts to pull it off, the chicken made up for its earlier silence.
The small fowl was soon boiling in a pot; I didn’t think it was really big enough to feed everyone there; another young woman had turned up to help get a bed ready for Remus and myself. The kana wouldn’t last much longer as everyone, including the women, was passing around the cups. I gave the drunkard a 1,000-CFA (Communauté Financière Africaine) note to go and buy some, pandemonium broke out when the family knew what I had done. Why I had given the town inebriate so much money? I told them that I assumed from the way he was bouncing their little son on his knee, that he was an uncle. They all said he was nothing to do with them and a hunting party went out in all directions to look for him. He was dragged back about fifteen minutes later, with a kana bottle in each pocket, he had obviously been returning from my errand when he had been waylaid and his honesty besmirched. No one wanted to give the drunk any kana, I pointed out that he had gone to fetch it, so I shared my cup with him. Remus looked at me in disgust, telling me that I knew nothing of Africa. When the food was served, the drunk was elbowed out and started crying pitifully, I gave him some bread dipped in rice; everyone else pretended not to notice my foolish white ways.
I asked Remus how far it was to the Senegal border; could we walk there along the beach? If we followed the coast, it would be thirty to forty kilometres but much less if we walked inland. I didn’t see that we had any other option if I was to get back to The Gambia in time for my flight. I was feeling very positive about the trek, tomorrow was going to be my 55th birthday and a day I wasn’t likely to forget. As it was nearly midnight and we planned to start the walk at 4am, I thought it time we turned in. Remus was having none of it, if we were to have a long march, we needed ganja to fortify us for the day and help us sleep well that night. It was 2am by the time we got onto our straw mat, having walked the town, knocked on many doors and woken up a lot of people before we found the local drug dealer.
Chapter 13: Jungle Jeffery
I’d never slept in a mud brick house before and did not expect to awaken to such a damp atmosphere. The floor and walls were wet to the touch, the air was thick with perspiration and exhaled breath, my sweat-soaked shirt, that I’d naïvely hung up to dry, was even wetter than the day before. I silently packed, hoping we wouldn’t disturb the rest of the family, still asleep behind a curtain. I wanted to leave some money with Little Sister, we had to wake her as Remus didn’t know the way to the beach; he wasn’t proving much of a guide. Little Sister walked us to the right track; the stars were bright enough to see our way. We diverted to the German-owned beach complex, where the caretaker joined our expedition. Mr Caretaker would be coming as far as Kabrousse in Senegal, where he had some business. We stopped at the fresh water well, where I filled an empty two-litre bottle and added two purification tablets just in case; Mr Caretaker offered to carry it for me as he had no luggage. Remus carried his small designer duffle bag and my ex-army holdall, which he’d taken a shine to, leaving me with my heavy rucksack, Remus hadn’t even brought a towel for himself and was happy to share mine. It was about 5am by the time we reached the beach and started the walk north; the stars were still quite spectacular and they picked out the ruin of a very ambitious luxury hotel complex. Its concrete beach bar had tilted forty-five degrees into the sand; it was like the end scene in the original Planet of the Apes movie, where Charlton Heston discovers the half-buried Statue of Liberty. We reached the headland as dawn was breaking behind us, and I was getting aware of tightness in my chest. I hoped the sensation would pass, but as I had had no breakfast and only half a cup of water, combined with the weight of the bag on my shoulders, I knew I was in for a rough day.
It was time to move into the bush, Remus had paused to light up a joint and I had some more water, which I realised I would have to share with everyone else. I should have enjoyed the walk through the African bush but my chest was killing me, though my feet were working fine. After about an hour and a half, I was thinking that one’s birthday was good day to die, kind of rounding things off nicely, if I stepped on a landmine at least I’d be at rest. We came to a four-foot-wide stream; I wouldn’t be able to jump it with the extra weight, so I handed it to Remus. He flew across with the rucksack on one shoulder. I let him carry my bag the rest of the way, and I took his far lighter Naf Naf duffle. My progress picked up, and then Remus told us to stop, take our shoes off and roll our trousers up to the knees. Ahead of us was a swamp, it was probably a reasonable sized river for part of the year but now it was just black mud. At least it was warm but didn’t s
mell too fresh, I expected to wade out with leeches on my calves but everything looked okay. Remus told me not to bother putting my shoes back on, as there’d be several more swamps to cross over the next few kilometres; I wished I’d packed trekking sandals.
The bush track was a bit hard on bare feet, particularly when I was ordered to stop and then to run very, very quickly over the next stretch, through an army of black ants who were busy stripping a snake down to the bone. If they bit my foot it would be painful, my mind turned again to Charlton Heston, this time to the film The Naked Jungle, where he has to protect his farm from being stripped bare by such creatures. I skipped lightly over the backs of the insects; I swear they were big enough to bear my weight. When we cleared the last swamp, I had a welcome break to slip my feet back into my shoes; I gave up on the idea of socks until I could get the mud off. Mr Caretaker was very pleased with his cleaned toes; he’d used the remains of my purified water to wash his feet. Even Remus exploded at this act of stupidity, and we walked in silence for the next hour. It wasn’t long before the caretaker and Remus were back to exchanging jokes, I was just longing for a drink and something to eat.10.30am my watch finally stopped running, just as we reached the estuary that marks the Senegalese border. People were gathering at a makeshift landing to wait for a canoe, powered by an outboard motor, to take everyone across the river to some tin-shed buildings. A Jola woman had recognised Remus as Ahuben from Cassalol and was obviously bad-mouthing him and pointing at me.
I thought she must have been saying, ‘How could you drag that poor old man across all that bush, under the burning African sun?’
He told me later, in a rather embarrassed tone, that she had assumed that we were an item and that he was just another beach bum who had sold his arse to a foreigner. I was drooling over a raw cassava a young mother was eating; she recognised my need and gave it to me, in return for 100-CFA. The powered canoe finally arrived and we all piled aboard, it was lying very low in the water but there were plenty of eager hands to help bail it out. A customs official was waiting at a table on the other side to check out our papers, and I spotted a shop. The proprietor had a bowl of water with a block of ice floating in it, for the locals to drink and bottled water for the odd foreigner who passed this way. He sold nothing to eat other than some biscuits; I decided that wouldn’t do much for my dietary needs and found a timber pile in the shade, to catch up on my sleep and wait for some transport to arrive. Around noon, the caretaker woke me up, not to tell me that a bus had arrived but that there was no shade left outside and I’d better go back and sit in the shop with the others. An hour later, a builder’s estate car pulled up next to the shop; I told Remus to offer him anything to get the four of us back onto a metalled road. The builder was able to take us all to the Senegalese beach resort of Cap Skiring, from there even I knew we could get a bush taxi to Ziguinchor and on to Brikama. We had dropped Mr C at Kabrousse, so we set about finding food. Cap Skiring had a lot of upmarket restaurants that would probably not welcome two mud-covered travellers. We discovered a small local restaurant, which only served one dish, fish and rice, with the option of a pickled pepper.
It was around eight o’clock by the time I got to my single room at the Suma, a bargain at 300-dalasi. Remus wanted to see what I was getting for my money and pronounced the room, ‘Very nice!’ and could he use the shower first before changing and hitting the town. There was no stopping this man when he was in holiday mood.
Chapter 14: The Man with Dead Eyes
We settled on a Guinness at Lana’s Bar; Remus went to a takeaway restaurant just across the road and came back with his favourite dish, a kilo of pork, with no vegetables except for a solitary onion, which he rolled in my direction, when I expressed my disappointment. We talked about our trip, Remus was eager for us to do it again but next time we should bring Sylvia with us as he would very much like to have sex with her again. I told him I was very flattered and Sylvia would be equally touched, but I wasn’t very keen on the idea. He said he had the perfect solution, tomorrow night I could have sex with his second wife, Marianne, as a special send off. He assured me that Marianne was a very nice lady and would give me a very good send-off. I asked him if he had discussed this plan with his wife; he said there was no need, as I was still a very good-looking man, and she would be very happy to oblige.
Sylvia had been staying at our friend Madge Robinson’s ecolodge just outside Brikama; she joined me at the Suma next evening. Cleaned up and changed, we took the Gelleh-Gelleh, a one-price minibus, to Kotu police station. When we got to “Nature” a lot of regulars had gathered to say goodbye to us, and the palm wine flowed; then we were off to the special send-off. The special send-off amounted to the three of us ending up in Remus’ local, Marie’s Bar. We had three Guinnesses while Remus ordered a kilo of fried pork from the huge grill, and we settled down to talk of future plans. We had told him that we were interested in possibly buying the Happy Hippo Hostel Hotel. Remus thought it a good plan and suggested we give one of the small apartments to his family, to act as caretakers while we were away. Sylvia and I had not found time to discuss how things had gone at the solicitor, discussing a possible purchase. In fact, she had been very tight-lipped about the subject.
Remus suggested if we invited him over to stay with us in the UK, he could find a job and a girl in our town to marry him, then after three weeks he would run away to find a better job and even better wife. It seemed I wasn’t destined to meet the glamorous Marianne.
Our kilo of pork arrived, along with our special surprise, his old friend Aboboulaye Jatta was in town, Bob the Bastard, as we’d later call him. This small but sinewy mean-faced man was accompanied by a huge Afro-headed stooge, looking like a heavy from the 70s Shaft movie. ‘I hear you are interested in purchasing the 4H property,’ Bob announced. How the fuck did he know that, we’d only told Remus the day before! We took an instant dislike to the man, his eyes looked robotic, free of humanity, more like surveillance cameras. We were both reminded of Molefi in the bar of the Gaborone Hotel, this was a dangerous man. We had already heard rumours about him from some of the guys who drank at “Nature”. He had helped several young Gambian men find work with him in the UK. Many of them disappeared when they found out what that work entailed, refused to obey and were never seen again. Big Size, the brother of our new Brikama friend, Bouba Dibba, was one of the disappeared and was rumoured to be hiding from Bob in a North London ghetto. ‘I have my eye on that property,’ he announced. ‘It is next to a development I am planning, a casino complex; the 4H would make a nice little annexe, an exclusive short-time hotel, you know.’
‘You mean a brothel, and I was told you were a devout Muslim,’ I said.
‘Indeed I am, dear boy, but only when my mother is around,’ he laughed. ‘She is a sweet old lady who believes I’m a good man, and I’d appreciate no one telling her otherwise, you understand?’
‘In fact,’ he continued, ‘I’d kill anyone who would upset her.’
‘Oh, I’m sure you would,’ I faced Remus, ‘You respect this creature?’
‘Yes, yes, he help family lot,’ my brother replied.
‘If that is so, how come your sister Jeneba’s been living in a rusted shipping crate for two years, since her lovely house was destroyed by the big flood?’ I asked.
‘I supplied the crate,’ Bob smiled. ‘When my conversion of the 4H is completed, Jeneba can live there as the “Mama San”, I believe they say in Thailand,’ he retorted, ‘That is unless your whore of a wife wants the job, strictly serving black customers, of course.’
Sylvia jumped to her feet and stared straight into those robotic lenses,
‘Well, you’re too fucking late, Whitey, we’ve already bought the 4H!’
Chapter 15: Stealer of Souls
No one moved, everyone was shocked, me perhaps the most. ‘She called me Whitey!’ Bob stammered, his tight little body starting to erupt in fury. Sylvia moved first, she reached into his trousers and grabbed his gris
-gris; most Africans wear these small juju bags around their waist. They are made usually of leather, perhaps even an animal’s scrotum. Inside are symbols of protection, including your mother’s hair and in latter days, words from the Quran. She held his scrotum over the coals of the pork barbecue grill.
‘You are no African, Englishman!’ she spat.
Bob was exploding. Sylvia screamed, ‘I’ve got your Gregory in my hand, Whitey, one step towards me from you or your gorilla and it’ll burn, along with your soul and the soul of your Muslim bitch of a mother!’
Remus pleaded, ‘Give it back, womans, he nice kind man, good to family, don’t burn his juju, he burn in Hell forever.’
‘Nice one, Remus, that helps our side,’ I thought.
‘One day, woman, you’ll pay for this, after all my boys have fucked your little hairless cunt!’ he smirked.
Sylvia looked at Remus in disgust, ‘You can get out of here too, before your Gregory joins his on the fire!’
‘Me no have Gregory, me Christian,’ were his parting words.
Back in our room at the Suma, Sylvia and I were having words while I packed, ‘Well, Sylvia, I think you’ve made a rather nasty enemy for life but I love how you handled him, I couldn’t have dreamt it up. Now what about us buying the 4H? I don’t remember us discussing this.’
‘We did agree that we could afford the risk; I’m taking the risk and I’m not going back tomorrow. I’ll stay here till all the paperwork is sorted and everything is signed.’
‘What, here in the Suma?’ I looked around at the flaking paint and patches of damp. ‘It is a bit like our UK home, I suppose.’