Moving around

Although moving around The Gambia is actually not a terribly complicated thing, understanding how things work can definitely be a daunting task.

Fresh out of the plane after landing in Africa for the first time we undertook the quest to hop on a taxi and head over to our headquarters .

Since we arrived past 1:00 am, I had been worried that we might have some difficulties finding transport. Well, I was wrong. Very wrong.

As it turns out, it seems that more than half of the cars driving around are actually bush taxis of some kind and it is almost impossible to not stumble upon someone trying to drive you somewhere. Really, those yellow and green colours are omnipresent!

So there we were, in a sea of people trying to offer taxi rides and eventually, we moved past the main crowd and chose somebody that looked trustworthy enough. Still a bit dazed from the flight, I decided I’d try my hand in haggling. You know, for sport and such. Or rather, to try to improve on the experience in Petra, Jordan where I was utterly crushed by both the local and by A in a kind of tag-team humiliation match...

“800 Dalasi'' the driver said. No way, that is too high! I said trying to work out how much that actually was in my mind. And then out of nowhere, some other driver comes with a laminated price list with the prices of the drive to all parts of town. Bugger me, how do I counter-argue an African taxi driver with a laminated price list at 1 am?! And so, somewhat disappointed at getting my rear end whooped again, we hopped in the back of what seemed like a pre-historical Mercedes from a time when seatbelts were not a feature and drove to our hostel in the hopes that the car wouldn’t break down and die in the middle of nowhere. And just so you know, that was a so-called “green taxi” which is said to be a better and more expensive option reserved mostly for tourists. What a real yellow local bush taxi is we were still about to find out!

To give you some context of what we were negotiating for, bush taxis like the one we took were, for the most part, old Mercedes that somehow found their way to Africa to avoid a well-deserved retirement. So in that sense, they were probably everything you may stereotypically think of what a taxi in Africa is. Beat down, with cracks on just about all windshields, door panels occasionally removed, seat stuffing not always fully available and occasionally functioning seatbelts. A lot of fun and somewhat dangerous as well!

That ride home on the first night in that bush taxi was hyper exciting! I mean we were actually riding a bush taxi in West Africa in the middle of the night!

We did, however and excitement aside, also manage to learn a couple of things from the experience.

We learned that in The Gambia most places don’t really have an address and if your taxi driver isn’t too sure about your destination you may be wandering about for a while until you get to where you need to get. This can be funny during the day when the driver starts yelling out the window or calls somebody for directions but in the middle of the night it is a bit tricky so beware and try to have GPS if you can. That being said, do not really bother showing the GPS to your driver during the ride or when trying to explain where you want to go. We tried that once and well… it was pretty useless as the driver was simply not accustomed to it and had no idea what we were trying to show on the map.

We also learned that A would be the one negotiating from now on and that we needed to take a tougher stance if we wanted to keep the budget under control. And negotiate she did!

By our second taxi ride, she took the leading role in discussing with the taxi drivers and it was super fun to watch. Pushy, assertive and straight to the point, she was demolishing those poor drivers left and right and it looked easy!

Here’s how it works: if you are white (or possibly Asian as well, we did not really see any Asians there though), then you will almost by default be offered a price at least twice what a local would pay. And if you know this then you can just adjust your negotiating style. Be firm and be ready to walk off if you’re not ok with the offer. Trust me, walking off works like a charm and most of the time it is how we (well she did with me looking severe in the background) managed to get better prices. We still have no real idea how much should be paid for any particular distance (meters are so not a thing!) but we were usually satisfied with what we paid and it was usually around 100 to 200 Dalasi which, let’s face it, really is not that much.

Also on the matter of negotiating, do make sure to always do that from the outside of the car. Don’t get into the transport until you’ve settled the price. Gambians like to negotiate and are very reliable in keeping with the deals they make but if you just jump in the taxi then you are just asking for a higher bill.

An example of this was a drive we took to the Serekunda market. We were not keen on overpaying so after some hard bargaining and after walking away from a few bush taxis, we finally agreed a price according to our expectations. After agreeing on the price, the driver seemed to realize (probably due to the amount of traffic on route) that he agreed to a price which was likely lower than what he should have. Regardless, and despite complaining about it a few times during the trip, he stuck to the deal. Fair on him for keeping his word!

Taxis can also be a communal experience though.

The idea is pretty straight forward, at certain junctions people gather to share taxis to predefined destinations. You gather a number of 4 or more persons (if kids are involved then you can easily double the number) and all hop together in a taxi splitting the fare. Same as before, do negotiate and clearly state the fare before hopping on, just in case.

We actually did this from Westfield to Banjul where the lady next to A asked her to hold one of the children for a while. Just like that, a stranger sharing a taxi had A facing one of her greatest Nemesis: children! Honestly, I do not know who was more scared, if the child looking at this strange person with straight hair or a panicking A forcing herself to smile through the experience. Either way, it was a fun experience… at least for me.

Bush taxis are the preferred means of transportation if you are in a bit of a hurry for relatively short distances but if you are moving around between towns then what you need are Gelegeles!

And just what is a Gelegele you may ask. It is the essence of travelling in Africa, is what it is!

They are essentially 9 seater vans which function as buses. They gather at a given starting point, assemble sufficient clients then drive off to a given destination dropping off and catching people on the way. All pretty standard if it weren’t for the specific way in which it is done…

For starters, in larger towns the starting point is in what they call a garage. Though experiences surely vary, these garages are the living embodiment of madness! I still get a smile on my face when I think of our experience at the Brikama garage and I can also still not wrap my head around any of it.

The garage was a large outdoor parking lot completely packed with vans, people, bush taxis, bicycles, motorbikes, street vendors and the occasional donkey cart, all trying to move around in any which way and all blocked in all 360 degrees.

With absolutely no kind of signalization, finding a Gelegele to wherever you want to go is an absolute adventure. To do it you need to ask people about the general direction you’re heading to and you need to keep an eye out for one of the dozens of “driver’s apprentices” who are tasked with finding clients for each of the vans. Because, yes, the vans themselves also do not have any signalization and so they rely on the age-old method of having “apprentices” (usually children or teenagers) screaming the direction to which the van is headed out the window to any passerby.

In Brikama’s garage there are dozens of people yelling directions out of parked, slowly moving or rolling vans. All of them honking at the people. Yes all of them, even the parked vans!

Added to these, there are bush taxis picking up or dropping off clients. And you guessed it, they are also honking at the people to get out of the way.

Also there are an array of street salespeople selling coconut pieces, water, boiled eggs and trinkets from treys they usually carry on their heads. Fortunately, these do not yell at you but their clients do yell at them for their merchandise so… yeah.

There as well are donkey carts carrying supplies which are loaded onto the vans. Luckily the donkeys do not bray out loud. In this, points for donkey kind over mankind.

And yes, there are clients, a lot of clients! People literally flocked there by the hundreds and depending on the place you’re going, you almost need to fight the crowd to enter the vans!

If you can imagine all of that together in the space of a parking lot then you have more imagination than I do… because I could not really have come up with that without having been there.

But getting onto the van is just the beginning of the experience, the actual ride is just as much fun!

You see, seating space and maximum load in these vans is a highly variable thing and you never know what is going to actually happen or just how much can actually be carried.

You may have read that these are 9 seater vans but that was just the manufacturer’s misguided idea when designing the van. Reality showed us that 19 people can easily fit in there! Well… maybe not necessarily easily… I mean 2 of the apprentices were hanging outside of the van standing on the rear bumper, human Tetris did happen at the moment of defining the seating arrangements and there were a lot of children on laps (including A’s!) but we did all get to where we needed to get. And just so you know, you can literally hop off anywhere you want just as long as you signal the driver by knocking the side of the van, which is, apparently, the equivalent of the stop sign.

I am not sure on which trip it was that the lady next to A started breastfeeding in the middle of the ride but yeah… it can get nice and familiar in those places.

Children wandered about A’s straight hair, people randomly asked us about our experience there and just about everyone was keen to help if they could. If any of you feel concerned about it being in any way unsafe, you really shouldn’t. People are great and if anything they are more likely to give you something than to try and take anything away.

The thing with the Gelegeles, though, is that they don’t just carry people, they carry literally almost anything on top of them as well. And I do mean it!

On one of our trips, besides the mandatory 19 odd people, we also carried fruits, luggage, a generator which was hauled to the roof by a couple of 13-year-olds (still have no idea how they managed to perform this African magic!) and 2 meters of PVC pipes. All of which is apparently was for amateurs! I actually saw a Gelegele drive by us carrying 5 (FIVE!!!!!) refrigerators on top of it. I nearly fell down when I saw that but besides me, nobody even seemed to notice. “Africa!” they said.

On a different note, the rides and fare system, though, are fairly organized.

With costs varying on distance but going from 10 to 25 GMD, all vans have a driver and at least 1 driver’s apprentice who deals with gathering people, sitting arrangements and loading and unloading merchandise. The apprentices also deal with the money, which means they inform the passengers about the price (do remember to ask before boarding!) as well as taking payments and providing change. This is another one of the peculiarities of this kind of transport. With so many people on board, we all have to pass each other the money so that it reaches the apprentice and then we all pass the change back to each other. All together and all perfect strangers just helping each other out. A rolling community.

The only ones who did not seem to contribute to this rolling community are those who swore to protect it. The Fuzz!

Though they seemed entirely not visible in the towns, occasionally we would see police in the entrances of villages in what seemed like small makeshift roadblocks. While driving through these places we failed to see the usefulness of any of it since most cars just rolled by with no issues. That was until we noticed that occasionally somebody would slip a bill into the police officers hand and realized that it was a way of making some money. Though it is inconsequential for tourists and travellers, it seems a shame to burden the community this way.

We also wondered what would happen if somebody decided not to pay. And to that, we got the answer as well!

On our way to Turntable (good luck finding that one on the map), we were stopped by the PoPo while gathering more passengers. As the apprentice, which unusually was not a teenager but in this case, an interchangeable driver was out gathering people, documents were requested by the Coppers, documents were given to the Five-O and we all waited with bated breath to see what would happen as the officers walked away. Upon returning and discovering that the first guy had handed over the papers, the second driver was visibly pissed and started quite the lively discussion in what we think is Mandinka. He was not happy and quite frankly I was getting a bit nervous too. I mean, we were in an overloaded van which complied with literally no safety regulation known to man and driven by people who might have been too poor to bribe the Law.

This being Africa, the solution was simple: we drove off.

We drove off and left both the car papers and the police officers behind. There was no speeding off, no dramatic looking back (well, besides A that was glancing over slightly confused), no chase, no nothing. We simply started the engine, re-entered the traffic jam on the street and literally crawled out of there 30 km/h. No f*cks given.

F*ck yes Africa, F*ck yes!