Not a great start

Che Lucas
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I’d lost my Rastafarian wristband, one night at GatwickAirport and it had gone! My son, Sam had tied it in place the previous day, I’d told him that it would stay on until I returned and he could untie it for me. I looked at my wristwatch on my left arm, at least that was still there and it told me I had ten minutes before boarding began. The watch was a present from my father, some thirty-four years earlier and had been all around the world with me. It had survived my electrocution, during a monsoon downpour in Lucknow, which had seen me hurled into the sewer fed, flooded streets, the watch had taken about five weeks to dry out properly but it never stopped working. I had been “given” the Rasta bracelet in Jamaica, some years earlier by Bongoman, a beach bum in Negril, who bore an uncanny resemblance to my Gambian friend, Lucas, who I was flying off to meet. I’d thought at the time that Lucas could easily end up like this Jamaican if he could no longer keep up his arduous job as a palm wine tapper. I hated the thought of my friend having to hassle tourists for small change, so together we’d dreamed up the plan that he could become a tour guide to his homeland, Guinea-Bissau.

There is no backpacking culture in the Gambia, as it’s one of the easiest and cheapest gateways into West Africa, it should be an obvious starting point for eager gap year students on their way to Timbuktu and many other equally fascinating destinations. The plan was that Lucas could take me by local transport down to his home village, Cassalol, to meet his brothers and see how they lived their isolated rural lives. We needed to do the trip in about four days, as that would be the maximum time your average tourist would want to spend away from their pre-paid beach resort hotel. I volunteered myself to be a Guinea(-Bissau) pig and to road test the trip. 

I’d written to Lucas, to tell him not to meet me at Yundum airport as I’d arranged with Lamin Badjie at his Kadjendo guesthouse to pick me up, take me to his place via the ATM machine on Westfield Junction, Serekunda. On arrival I was met by a security policeman, with my name on a sheet of A4, who escorted me through Customs and Immigration, with the promise that my friend was waiting. Lucas is a personal friend of the head of airport security, so he couldn’t resist showing off his important contact. I asked him if he’d had my message about Lamin Badjie, “Yes, I have just been talking to him. He knows you are here!” “I’ll take you to him.” he continued.  Okay, I thought but this is a bit of a complicated way to do things, how had Lucas got here? I soon found out, when I was introduced to Moudu, our driver to the Kadjendo but what about Mr. Badjie, I could see his minibus in the airport car park?  Lucas assured me that I shouldn’t worry about him, as Mr. Badjie wasn’t a very nice man. What’s more, Moudu would charge me the same amount of money to take me to the Kadjendo and that I should just sit back and start enjoying my holiday. Needless to say I was in a rather tense mood on arrival at the Kadjendo, particularly after having to pay Moudu 400 Dalasi for the ride down; the ATM machine was only paying out hundred Dalasi notes and of course Moudu had no change. I made my apologies to Lamin Badjie, assuring him that I’d pay the 350 Dalasi agreed for the airport pickup. The transfer had cost me 750 Dalasi, the official tourist taxi only charges a 400 fixed rate fee for the same trip; not a good start.