Pictures from The Gambia. As always, ignore the date stamp which i always forget to turn off when i replace the batteries.
Zak with Fiona and baby Elizabeth showing off some indigo colored cloth dyed by hand in the Gambia.
The fellas at the compound. From left to right Luke, Dave, Modou Saliou, Aliou, and Ziggidy Zak. The white outfit i have on was one of my fits made by Sana the tailor (see explanation below).
14 month old (queen) Elizabeth and baby mama.
Bakary on the right, Sana the tailor to the left, in Serrakunda, Gambia. Serrakunda is the main market town in the country. It's relatively small and manageable, but crowded, energetic and colorful. Cars enter from the edges but towards the middle the roads are filled with people, cars don't venture there! It becomes really like a farmers market/flea market atmosphere. Bakary is a family man who lives in a nearby suburb. In Senegal i did internet research about fabrics in Gambia: spinning yarn, weaving, dying, tailoring...i found an American woman who runs a business out of Gambia and when i emailed her for a contact in the country who could help me she recommend her good friend Bakary. I came to Gambia with 30 yards of natural hemp fabric, some hemp yarn, and some raw hemp fiber (purchased in the states). My intention was to find natural traditional indigo dyers for the fabric (and maybe mud cloth dyers in Mali), someone to weave the yarn on a hand loom (traditionally done by men), and someone to hand spin the fiber into yarn (traditionally done by women). Having had a long standing interest in fabrics, and especially hemp, i was curious to see if hemp could be used like cotton in these old style West African artisan crafts. However, i got completely immersed in other projects and never got started on this one. I am going to leave the materials here and return later to pursue this goal. I could easily find batik and tye dye artists in the area to play with the hemp, but they use store bought chemical dyes. I am searching for the holy grail, which is indigo and mud cloth dyes made from natural plants and earth minerals, which i will probably find in the rural areas of highland Guinea and back country Mali. Nonetheless, Bakary helped me locate and purchase cotton fabrics expertly dyed in local motifs, and introduced to me his trusty and expert tailor Sana, who tailored for me three outfits (top and pants) for 30 dollars (i bought the fabric separately).
Aliou, Dave (that's British military officer Major Dave to you) and Lamin, from left to right, on Daves motor boat near the ocean. Those are mangrove trees lining the river. I am currently staying with Dave and his wife and two children Luke and Elizabeth in the suburb of Kerr Serigne not far from Serrakunda. Aliou and Dave work together in car repair, construction, landscaping, anything they can get their hands on. Lamin co-captains the boat when he an Dave motor up the Gambia river to preach the gospel of Christ Jesus to anyone interested...
The fabulous fishing village of Gunjur in southern Gambia near the border of the region called The Casamance in southern Senegal. All the boats, like this one, are hand made from hand hewn timber. The planks are nailed and glued together. They paint the outside, mount a motor on the back, throw in some fishing gear and away they go. This boat is painted with the name and visage of an Islamic marabout.
Outside of Dave and Fiona's compound there was a street party one night. The neighbors hired this group of Sabar drummers to lay down some funky syncopated rhythms, but strangely only the little kids danced. A few weeks earlier down the block a group of about 60 women hired a group of Kutiro drummers (Kutiro are the drums of the Jola people) and those women got DOWN, dancing Linjin into the evening until the dust filled the sky...
Inspecting the morning catch in Gunjur. The boats come in with fish mid morning. They anchor as close to shore as possible, and then all the strong young women wade out with their buckets to collect the fish from the boats. The women carry the buckets of fish to shore, and for each bucket they carry, they get to keep between 3 and 5 of the fish each depending on type of fish, size, quality etc. They run back and forth, sometimes waist deep in the surf, all morning, and collect their own personal bucket of fish. The remaining fish are then sold by the fishermen to the fish merchants, who in turn hire the women to haul their purchase, the same exact buckets they carried earlier, to wherever they need the fish to be, and the women collect yet more fish. Is it beginning to sound a bit fishy? The village economy is fueled by the many smoke houses that line the shore. Everyone takes their personal stash of fish to their preferred smoker and pays for the fish to be smoked by the expert fish smokers. How many times can i say smoke in one sentence? The fish can then be taken to market, sold locally or even be exported out of the country en masse. The smoked fish in Gambia is considered to be of high quality. They pay a pretty price for it in the big cities of West Africa: Abidjan Ivory Coast, Lagos Nigeria. Fresh, natural, healthy fish.
Lamin De Costa proudly hanging out in the 16 meter deep well he dug by hand in just 12 days. This is in the village of Gunjur, back of the smoke house industry on the beach. Lamin carved out the holes in the side to shimmy up and down, unprotected by a rope. The dirt is hard pack and the water is clean and sweet. I added a bit of grapefruit seed extract to it just to be sure, and i had zero problems drinking this fine H2O.
This is my friend Dou in Gunjur, where he lives and grew up. I met Dou through bible study at Daves place in Kerr Serigne. Dou owns a fishing boat, a motor and nets, but doesn't go out much. He prefers to read the bible. He thinks he's a fisherman but really he's an intellectual bohemian dreamer who would rather kick back in a cafe with a smoke and a glass of attaya or red wine, reading the bible and quoting Christ to impress the ladies. I told him he should just sell the boat and go to bible school. Follow your heart! I like the way people build these wood fence walls between their compounds, creating narrow paths through the village. Precursor to the modern suburban gated community.
Dou on the beach in Gunjur with all the colorful boats.
I met this woman and her one week old baby at the baby's naming ceremony party in the village area of Sanyang near Gunjur. Her husband is a friend of Dave and Fionas. In West Africa the baby doesn't get a name for a week. Then the family throws a naming ceremony party and tells everyone the name. These folks grow fruits and vegies on a small plot of land and sell the produce in the market. This is a banana tree.
This is a papaya tree on the same piece of land.
And all those tall skinny green plants are not cannabis sativa. They are cassava, known as yucca root in California. Everyone grows cassava because it produces a hefty harvest of yummy and versatile roots that fetch a decent price in the market.
