Following my favorite tradition of crossing from one country to another along the most remote and least-traveled borders, I approach The Gambia from its southeastern corner. I move forward in uncertainty because I don't know if at the end of the road I have chosen I will actually find a border post where I can stamp my passport. Worse yet, if I actually find one, I don't know if the Gambian side will grant me a visa. The reality is that I have no options because the detour that I found south of Tambacounda is the only one that leads me to Gouloumbou, a town with a bridge to cross the Gambia River. Therefore, from here on, I leave it to the intuition of assuming that sooner or later an entry point will appear somewhere, somehow. Even though on the Senegalese side of the border I pass through different villages, people there do not need any documents to cross from one country to the other, therefore nobody can tell me if there is an official crossing.
Finally, a light of hope lights up when in the last town next to the border, the police confirm that I can leave the country and find a migrations office on the Gambian side. Despite not knowing whether they will grant me a visa on the other side, I do not hesitate to stamp the exit in my passport. Riding in no man's land, I enter without directions or references beyond the only trail available in front of me. The hot dust particles kicked up by the wheels of the bike filter through my nostrils to revive the damage in my lungs. I feel the sun's rays pierce the back of my neck. I have a congestion that makes it difficult for me to breathe and I know that it is not a result of the weather, but of the sensitivity that I have developed to polluted air from pedaling for so long on dusty roads.
In the distance, I see shacks and some scattered goats going around defying the temperatures in search of food, biting bushes paled by the sun. Every once in a while, villagers pass by protected from the same solar oppression under their turbans. I continue cycling following the instructions that one of them gives me until after a while I find the immigration post I was looking for. There, out of a little house the size of a shoebox in the middle of the bush, more policemen come out than rabbits out of a magician's top hat, eagerly to kill boredom with me.
The situation does not help the nerves that I already have beforehand due to the bad reputation that checks have at the borders of this country. In The Gambia, the rigorous anti-drug laws are accompanied, of course, by a very high level of corruption. That would not be a problem for me since I would never think of such a stupid thing as arriving at a border with drugs on me. The problem is that many of the legal medicines that we use in the West are illegal in Gambia and it is very difficult to find an official list of them that clarifies the situation. Because of this, Rubén and Aurora, some Basque cycling friends, experienced an ordeal when Aurora was arrested for carrying the diazepam that she needs for her severe back pain. The arduous process of liberation required several days, the intervention of officials from the Spanish embassy, the Basque government, and friends and relatives so that she could regain her freedom without trial and without paying the exorbitant sum of money that was demanded of them. For this reason, one day before entering the country, I dedicated myself to verifying one by one the medicines that I carry in my emergency kit and purging it as much as possible of everything that could raise suspicion, in order to avoid even the slightest possibility to have problems. Still, paranoia led me to bury it in the bottom of the most heavily loaded rear pannier.
When I get off the bike, I greet them one by one with a strong handshake and a big smile that tries to hide my nerves. Fortunately, the easy-going spirit of the officers helps me to chill out and I relax even more when they confirm that I can indeed obtain the visa on the spot. The bureaucratic process is quite expeditious until they tell me that the visa (no more than a damn stamp with faded ink and filled out by hand) for 3 months is going to cost me 75 dollars.
- What??? 3 days are enough to cross the entire country! I could actually cross it in an hour and a half if I wanted! - I exclaim with more resignation than anger so as not to cross them.
No amount of whining suffices to get a discount and just like months ago when I entered Burkina Faso, when I paid for the most expensive visa in all of Africa, I have no choice but to clench my teeth and fork out this small fortune. Right after, once I think we are done, I walk out drenched in sweat from the sauna where the transaction was conducted. I walk down self-absorbed towards the bike, grumbling to myself for what I have just paid, until a second before jumping on it, I can hear an officer behind me go:
- Wait a minute, now we're going to conduct the inspection! -.
Dammit! It is true that I should not have anything to worry about, but if there is one thing I have learned in two years from the authorities on this continent, it is to never, ever underestimate the scope of African corruption. The inspection begins with 3 officers circling the bike like hungry sharks around a helpless seal.
- "I've got a headache. do you have anything I could take for it?" - one of them grimaces, forcing a childish innocence that I don't buy for a single second. In fact, I know very well that this is the exactly bait they throw at people as an excuse to get straight to the first-aid kit and avoid drilling through a mountain of clothes.
-I'm sorry officer, I’ve got nothing. Actually, I was hoping to ask you guys for help. Look at how badly congested I am. Do YOU have anything for me? - I retort seeking revenge.
My answer in the form of a question unsettles them but they say no and ask me straight away to open up my panniers. From then on, my task is to distract them as much as possible and leave the pannier where I have the first-aid kit for the end of the search. They make me open one at a time and empty out all the contents which they scrutinize in detail, even when I throw the stinkiest pants, boxers, and socks I own in their faces. The sun that is burning us all equally is not enough to dissuade them while they continue until the only thing left to open is the pannier that I have managed to keep from them until the very end. At that moment, with almost every single possession I own scattered around us, they look at each other and in a gesture of pity (or resignation) and tell me that the search is over and that I can now go. While it is very likely that my first-aid kit did not have anything that could be argued as illegal, I would definitely prefer that they did not get to it.
After more than an hour of absurd bureaucracy and having left the amount of money equivalent to what I have spent in a whole month in several countries, I can finally enter The Gambia. Unfortunately, I have lost so much time that I only have a couple of hours left to reach my destination for the day, Basse Santa Su, the easternmost city in the country. By the time I arrive, I need to find my way in the dark, trying not to get a puncture in the cracked asphalt that line the edges of the road. Everything is closed and a teenager, one of the few people who still wander at night, walks me along several dirt alleys right to the door of a clinic where his director, whose contact I was given weeks ago, was waiting for me.
Dr. Mohammed opens the metal gate of his house attached to the clinic he runs. The first thing that surprises me is not his youth but that he is not African. He is Pakistani and came here 5 years ago to run a small women's clinic for an Islamic NGO. Staying with him and his family brings back the most wonderful memories of the hospitality I received each day I spent cycling across Pakistan, where I learned that the Koran says that guests are a blessing.
Over dinner, he tells me that he studied medicine in Minsk as an exchange student. This does not surprise me as much as the fact that he confesses to speaking very little Belarusian, but since he tells me with total conviction that speaking it was not necessary to be able to study there, I logically assume that the classes would be held in English. However, I would not get to finish that thought in my head, before he declares with the serenity of a Sufi saint that the degree was indeed conducted only in Belarusian. At that point, I need to make an effort to produce some sound that will help me get out of the stunned state his assertion threw me into. I suppose that if he had studied visual arts I could digest it, but if studying an anatomy manual is already a titan’s task in one’s mother tongue, I cannot conceive in my head the idea of someone approaching it in a foreign language, whose alphabet by the way, is not even that of his own language. I honestly don't know whether I'm missing something because of the fatigue or because of my flu-like state, but I certainly decide to stop digging about it. I do however give up my initial idea of asking him for suggestions on how to treat my congestion, lest he is going to recommend spreading anti-hemorrhoidal ointment on my chest.
The next day, before I leave, he invites me to a tour of his clinic, where an anteroom packed with women is already waiting since early morning. As he shows me around the modest facility with the air of a general hospital director in Germany, I fear for the lives of these patients. What disturbs me the most perhaps is the confidence and seriousness with which he conducts himself. He really does appear to be a doctor, so I decide to give him the benefit of the doubt and think there's something I did miss in our communication last night.
The Gambia is the smallest country in mainland Africa. It is smaller than Lesotho, Eswatini and Equatorial Guinea and since I have been talking about anatomy, it has the very strange shape of a pancreas (you do not need to know Belarusian to know it, just put a map and the image of the bowels of the human body side by side). It is so small that if I want to spend time in the country to get to know it (and let's say it, justify the investment of a $75 visa) I necessarily have to reduce the number of daily kilometers that I pedal. Otherwise, doing the usual 80 to 100 km, I'd cross the entire length of the country in 3 days, or its width in less than two hours. Because on each side of the river Gambia, which like a snake splits the country in half, there is no more than 15, sometimes 18 km to each border, there is only room for one road on the south side, and one on the north side .
Shortly after leaving Basse Santa Su heading west, I begin to experience a bout of boredom that only gets worse with every kilometer I pedal. The good condition of the asphalt contributes to the well-being of my lungs and the recovery from my flu, but it also serves all the buses and shared taxis traffic that travels through the southern half of the country. On the other hand, on each side of the road I see nothing but barren bush land and pale shrubs as a result of the sun and the lack of rain. If only I could cycle along the banks of the Gambia so I could stop to refresh myself every so often like I did in the Nile. But not even that! It must be less than 500m from the road and I can't even see it, if only to add some diversity to the landscape and give my head a distraction.
Here there are no snakes, monkeys, large animals, birds, or rodents in sight. Neither alive nor dead. At least not that I know of. However, I seem to be in the land of cicadas who, intoxicated by the high temperature, let off their steam in long canons of out of tune melodies putting music in my path. Not even the mango trees are near the roadside to shelter me from the tyranny of the sun and give my pupils a break from so much contraction, even behind my sunglasses. If it keeps going on like this, I'm afraid I'll die of boredom cancer before making back to Senegal.
Even though the experience of the road throws me into a permanent state of apathy and disinterest, in every place there is always something that has the power to change everything. What the Gambia lacks in natural appeal it makes up for in human appeal. Whether they are Fulani or Malinke, Jola or Soninke, the ethnic richness of the country is manifested in each village through the hospitality of African Islam, the warm smiles and the slow pace. No one lives in a rush in a country where the tea ritual takes up more cumulative time than half a day's work. And the women…the Gambians wrapped in their exquisite colored dresses make up for all the missing beauty in the landscape. From Basse to Farafenni I have seen the largest concentration of beautiful women in Africa. Senegal, Guinea and Angola are close, but nothing like the perfectly sculpted faces and luscious figure of the Gambian women, slender, willowy and sensuously curvy.
At the beginning and end of each day with the local people, drinking tea and chatting, is where I find the motivation to survive the dull landscape and the cicada stalking during the endless monotonous stretches of road.
In 5 days pedaling as slowly as the pace of African village life, I arrive once again at a new Senegalese border. It is enough time to take with me a beautiful memory of the Gambia, the pancreatic country, the one that contains within its borders the plague of boredom and the best of its antidotes; corrupt policemen and doctors who study in languages they do not know; the discolored bush and the killer cicadas. I am leaving the Gambia happy, taking with me the affectionate memory of its people. I am heading to Dakar, in search of a little rest and the earthly pleasures of life in the big cities.
