The Calabash & the Wonjo
(page 2)
The Gambia, the smallest country on the continent,
has been described as the thorn in the side of Africa, dividing
Senegal into a large northern portion, an eastern area and a tiny
southern prolongation. The peculiarity of this arrangement stems
from colonial times when the practically minded British decided
that they only wanted a piece of territory that could easily be
defended by a warship moored in the river i.e. within the range
of a shell. Hence the largely wobbly appearance of the 'thorn'.
The hotel that we were to use as our base for the
next two weeks was situated on the Atlantic seaboard near the village
of Kololi. The surrounding area was a delightful microcosm of the
agriculture, vegetation and birdlife to be found throughout the
rest of the country, and the hotel gardens contained a variety of
non-indigenous tropical plants that was a delight.
The area north of the hotel was a curiously incoherent
but none-the-less beautiful mixture of fields, scrub, orchard and
pasture. Little Bee-eaters darted from exposed perches, zooming
around the undergrowth and back to their original perch. Egrets
accompanied cattle. A Hombill gathered mud from one of the puddles
and was sealing his mate into a hole in an Oil Palm. Ground nut
and couscous fields lay adjacent to open areas of low Borassus palms
and shrubs over which Glory lilies swarmed. Some areas had been
earmarked for building purposes. Dwellings were being erected with
brick walls and gleaming corrugated roofs but on more than one occasion
we came across tiny human dwellings made entirely from Borassus
constituents.
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