The landscape overall was determined by the vast
number of Oil Palms. Many of them had bottles at the top of the
trunks to collect 'jungle juice' (Yes, the authentic African colloquialism
and not a monstrous Eurocentric aberration!). An inflorescence is
cleanly cut off and a spout made from the woven leaves of the palm
frond is jammed on to the cut end. This then serves as a conduit
into the neck of the bottle. We were informed that the productivity
of the trees was determined by age, the older trees obviously yielding
more and bearing more bottles. After several years the tree is rested
for a period before collection is resumed. On several occasions
we watched men nimbly 'caterpillar' up the trees utilising rope
slings, leaning out precariously in order to achieve purchase, gaining
their footing from notches chopped out of the trunk with hefty knives.
At the crown they pirouetted from one bottle to another emptying
the contents of each into a container strapped to their waist, and
having completed their task, effortlessly 'absailed' down in a spiral
to the ground.
Further on by the stream at Fajara, we watched every
conceivable variety of heron that you're likely to see in The Gambia
stalk the banks of the rice paddies, oblivious to the women planting
the crop. At the Kotu Bridge, Rough-legged swallows and Spine-tailed
swifts winged their way across the Mangroves, and Pied Kingfishers
took fiddler crabs from the mudflat shaded by Senegal Date Palms
(Phoenix reclinata) which lined the riverbank. The date palms were
clustered by streams or in soggy ground. There were many handsome
specimens. None was more than a few metres tall. Many sported inflorescences,
but we only saw one seed. Stupidly I tried to get it. It was just
out of reach. Gill was trying to hand me the Swiss Army knife when
I over-balanced to be impaled on the palm's razor-sharp armature
and hypodermic leaf tips. Bleeding from multiple stigmata, I just
wished we'd packed a chainsaw. Lacking resolve, I left the seed
for whatever species that had eaten the rest.
The Calabash & the Wonjo 
