Football

This week has been a bit of a yo-yo in the world of Gambian football. It has all centred around the changing fortunes of the Gambian under-17 boys football team, who have been playing in the under-17 football world championship in Peru.

These boys won the African under-17 championship earlier this year (it was hosted in Gambia) under slightly dodgy circumstances ... This was the BBC report on the final played against west African footballing giants Ghana in about June.



I can't actually access BBC sports news from the MRC due to the blocking software, but basically, the young Gambians scored their winning goal in the final when a Gambian supporter ran onto the pitch and distracted the Ghanian goalkeeper. Not sure if the BBC article above conveys that.

If you think that is a slightly dodgy sounding basis for winning a tournament, you'd be even more shocked by the widespread view held here (mainly by the ex-pat community) that some or all of the "under-17s" are actually well over this age... The star player in the team is 6'5" tall (nearly 2 metres!) and plenty of others in the team looked suspiciously "mature" for teenagers ... but they all undeniably play sublime football, which seems to be the main thing as far as Gambians are concerned. See photo below... from yesterdays paper : do these look like teenagers to you ?



So, the week in Peru started off last Saturday with Gambia under-17 playing their opening match against the Brazil under-17, who are the undoubted favourites of the tournament. And against all expectations, Gambia beat Brazil 3-1 ...cue dancing in the street, all night partys, wild singing and drumming here until about 5am ... brilliant !



The next match was due to be played two days later, and a group of wealthy Gambians decided to charter a plane to fly out to watch the next game (against the relatively weak team Qatar)... but being Gambians, they left it to the last minute, and were going to arrive in Peru too late to see the game ... but they came up with a typically inventive solution : fake fuel problems with the aircraft so that they could land at an airport near to the stadium...but they were found out!
This actually made "frontpage" news on the BBC world service website !



The attitude in Gambia was understandably quite different to the affront felt by the Peruvians and pretty much everyone else : Gambians saw this as an inventive bit of problem solving ... See newspaper headline from frontpage of main paper here



Their airline that they had chartered was called AIR RUM ... not sure what that suggests about them, apparently the airline consists of just one plane...

Anyhow. The Gambia under-17s beat the Qataris on Tuesday, and last night played their final group-stage game against Holland. Which, very sadly, and despite much praying from the whole Gambian nation, the Gambians lost 2 - 0 , and by very bad luck, this also puts them out of the whole tournament because of complicated goal difference rules...

Basically, this is a bit of a national disaster : every Gambian was secretly hoping that these boys would go on to win the under-17 world championship, especially after the stunning win over Brazil on Saturday.

Part of the sadness also comes from the fact that most of these boys will now be poached by European clubs / nations , and are unlikely to stay in Gambia much longer ... they will earn more in a season in a 2nd or 3rd division UK side then they would get in a lifetime playing in west Africa.... Hence the Gambia "adult" side is unlikely to actually get many of these boys coming through to them...

So a very subdued nation this morning. But it has been an interesting week...
Hope all these photos and links work ... I can't actually check them!

Food (part 1)

As requested, I've been trying to get some stuff together about food in the Gambia. I think this is quite a big topic for any country, so I've started by looking at some of the "raw materials" that go into food in the Gambia.

Gambia's number one crop in terms of GDP earnings is the humble peanut. For those of you who, like me, don't know where peanuts come from (other than Sainsburys), the answer is quite often Gambia - it is a major world exporter of the things (see the BBC coutry profile if you don't believe me!). This is what the peanut plant looks like :



It's quite a non-descript thing really... The peanuts are the little bits coming off the roots. Local peanut-related products include peanut butter, peanut oil and a dish called domoda which tastes a bit like a curry but made with peanuts...

A second really popular crop here is maize : most compounds (=conglomerate of households) outside of the towns will have at least a small yard of these tall thin plants. The corn has just come into season in the last few weeks, and every street corner now has a little Gambian lady cooking corn on a miniature brazier. One cob is about 5 dalasi (10pence) and makes a good snack for hungry researchers like me...





The final key raw material for Gambian cuisine is fish : the best dishes I've had here have been very fresh fish... This is a photo taken from my flat of a local fisherman out in his pirogue early one morning.



Next time I'll try and do a bit more on the food retail and the actual dishes that are popular here ...

Cars

This week I have become the proud owner of my own Gambian car, a rather beat-up Suzuki jeep, which I bough secondhand from a Lebanese hairdresser, having conducted all the negotiations with him in my broken French.



As you can see, it isn't the prettiest of beasts: it is full of sand, has only one mirror, no handbrake and smells slightly of fish. Seatbelts ? Not a chance ! But it should be good for going on trips around at weekends, maybe as far as Senegal once I've got a few bits of it checked out by a mechanic...

On the good side, it is a 4 wheel drive car, which is pretty vital for most of the small roads here, especially now during the rains, when half of the roads are submerged in huge puddles.

So, I though I'd write a bit about the other vehicles on the Gambian roads...

The most common cars here are the ubiquitous yellow taxis:



These guys drive very bashed-up cars of various brands, all with this yellow plus green stripe paint-job and usually the loudest stereo they can get. The drivers enthusiastically tout for business by tooting their horn whenever they drive past a pedestrian... And will swerve across a line of traffic if they think there is someone wanting a ride...

Another fairly common vehicle is the donkey cart:



These are actually amazingly good at negotiating mud and puddles : I watched a cart like this one go through a huge puddle that a big landrover had just backed off from!

Finally: right of way rules in the Gambia seem to work something like this

1) If you can see any space in the traffic, you can go for it, no matter what problems this causes for other road users. Hence it is quite ok to drive on the wrong side of a dual carriageway if the other side is in a bit of a jam.

2) Small gives way to big : basically if you are going to come off worse in a crash, you let the other guy go first !

3) If you have guys with guns in your car, you have right of way over everyone else. This rule is mainly used by the President, who zooms around with a squad of "heavies" with big guns at all times, and usually a motorcycle outrider to shoo everyone else out of the way ...

Money

I've been dealing with various things to do with money this week, so I thought I'd write an introduction to all things financial Gambia-style ...

The Gambian currency is the Dalasi, at present the exchange rate to the GB pound is about 50 dalasi to the pound. The notes come in denominations of up to 100 Dalasi, which means that for any large transaction you've got to have serious wedges of notes:



This is about 500 pounds (25,000 D) which I was getting together for buying a second-hand car.

So, when buying stuff out here, there are a couple of things to bear in mind.

The first thing to realise about buying anything in the Gambia is that the price is always open for negotiation, with the possible exception of supermarkets and restaurants.

The second thing to realise is that the people selling things will adjust their asking price according to what they think you can or might pay. And being a white person (the local word is "toubab") automatically puts you into the "potential high price" category...

So as an example, this would be me buying some mangos in the market :

Me :"How much for one mango ?"

Old lady at market stall: "Fifty dalasi for mangos"

Me : (laughing) "What ! Do you think I'm crazy ? Thats a toubab price - come on what's the real price?"

Old lady: "Twenty dalasi for one mango"

Me : "That's too much, I paid 5 dalasi last week for two mangos, come on ... can you give me an MRC discount ? I am a doctor at MRC, you know, I work in the Gambia for six months, I'm not a tourist..."

(playing the MRC card sometimes helps - but can backfire if they decide that you must therefore earn lots)

Old lady (now amused by my frantic pleading) : "I give you two mangoes for 15 dalasi, these are very good mangos"

Me : (walking away now): "Sorry, that's too expensive."

Old lady (suddenly worried I might really leave) : "Wait, I'll give you two mangos for 10 dalasi, and you can buy some tomatoes too ..."

Which is about the normal price : mangos for 5 dalasi (=10pence!) depending on quality... The problems come when you don't really know how much something is supposed to be sold for. Generally stuff is very cheap :

Bottle of coke : 8 D
Taxi trip (short) : 5 to 10 D
Meal at restaurant : 150 to 200 D
New shirt (made by local tailor) : 250D
Overnight stay at luxurious beach hotel inc 4 meals and drinks : 600 D

In fact, you can live for next to nothing out here, which is good for me as I'm living off my savings for these six months, though the MRC are paying for my accomodation and for my airfares... So very good for cheap holidays if any of you are looking for a place for a bit of winter sunshine.

And finally...

Hello Catherine, Mary and Maria ... I'll be thinking of you all slaving away on NHS on-call rotas while I spend my weekends at the beach for the next six months...
Thanks for the lovely photos, you're all looking well ! When are the next engagements going to be announced ?