Senegal Oriental

It was not difficult to realize when you have reached a Senegalese town again, when you see the thrash, dirt and flies. Strange how close they are and how different they can be. In Gambia, they were told, the President declared the third Monday of the month was reserved to clean the place. Most people chose that day to wake up late but the place stays clean somehow. This does not apply in the rest of Africa!

They found a place outside Velingara and bush camped. Elismé made grilled chicken and mixed vegetables, and for pudding they had mango crumble. The sky was grey, Coen decided that they’d sleep in the car that night. So they took out whatever they required from the car and sat down to relax before dinner. The girls were all involved in the food preparations.

And the rains came down as dinner was getting ready. Thunder, lightening and some wind too. It sure cooled down the place. They had pulled the two awnings from the other cars open and they had dinner under there. It was a bit damp but they managed to go through the whole dinner process, after which the rain stopped.

They all had a shower of sorts and went to bed. Except for the occasional vehicle that passed on the main road, the place was quiet enough. It was a bit warm in the car at first but they opened the windows and sprayed the place against mosquitoes and got some sleep.

Ground hornbill

Hans wanted to see the park of Niokolo Koba. So this is where they headed the next day. They went into the town of Tambakouda to get supplies and fuel and some money and also meet with a tour operator to get more information about the roads.  They were told that getting a guide into the park is imperative – that made things less interesting; because of the way the cars are packed, there is no space for a guide. Some kind of arrangement was made but when they reached the gates of the park, there was no telephone network and the people were at a standstill on what decisions to take. So they waited for Hans to drive back into town to get network connection and make some calls again.  

Park entrance

This could easily be described as a ‘plan foireux par excellence’. When it was finally settled how much one pays for the entrance and the camping, we started the journey inside the park accompanied by a ‘guide’ who sat in a corner of Hans’ car. The road was long, bad and not very interesting. They saw a ground hornbill, a few warthogs, some baboons and some cobs.

Driving on this road was a mission, it took about 2 hours to get to the Simenti camp where there was a hotel with swimming pool (they were told) and camping facilities. Well, no, not really. It was the typical African scenario, a well appointed hotel that was falling apart, a swimming pool that has not seen any maintenance in ages, no electricity and practically no running water! The camping grounds were not much to go by either.

Lookout point

Since they were there and they had paid, they settled in as best they could and prepared for the evening: pitching tent, sorting the cars, while Mariana prepared food. They went to sit at the  ‘lookout’ point for a bit and saw nothing much. By the time food was served, they had concluded that they would ‘duck’ wash in the dark rather than use the shower that was opened for their use – there was no running water!

Clean and dry they retired for the night when the guide called up to say that there was running water in the shower. After that, there was a long loud argument among some men nearby, which lasted until late at night. Makes you wonder when they wrote about resting in the ‘symphony of the night’ on their advertisement.

Monkey war

In the morning, there was some washing to be done and someone had put the water pump on again. By the time they were having breakfast of coffee and biscuits, monkeys and baboons were visiting the camp to see if they could steal anything and went off with some bread and some cookies. Coen and Hans took out their catapults and war began. 

Bush coiffeuse

 The rest of the day was spent washing, doing maintenance and staying ahead of the heat and humidity of the place. There was some hair cutting to be done, some eyebrow shaping, some cleaning. Our car had to be put to dry because the water tank was partially open and had splashed some water all over.  

Brunch was prepared under the tree and after that some had a siesta while others wrote up their memoirs and read. It was agreed that they’d secure that room where they could shower before the group arrived. Imagine, in this crumbling place, they were receiving a group of 32 tourists from Gambia! Rooms and rondavels were being cleaned and the generator was put on. Not only was there running water but there was electricity too, along with the noise of the generator.

They chatted to some of the new arrivals – mostly people from Holland. That evening she made a tabouleh for dinner, there was ox tongue in Madera sauce as snacks and canned pears and local oranges for desert. They tried to make an early night of it.

The next morning, they packed up; a laborious affair. Coen wanted to take a shower afterwards but by then they had stopped the generator and there was no running water either. Anyhow, with their guide, they went on for a game drive. Well that was not much to write about either: a few ground hornbills, warthogs, baboons and cobs and that was it. There are no animal tracks to be seen off the road they took, no signs of any active sort of wild life whatsoever. 

It seems that they had to displace whole villages from the area when they declared the area as a park and put military to patrol there – which might explain the scarcity of animals…. And they chose to impose a guide on visitors so as to give the villagers some kind of additional work.

Hans went to drop the guide back in his village and they proceeded towards the border. The decision was to get to the next ‘big’ town, draw money, fill the cars, get whatever provisions they could and find a place to camp for the night. This they managed to do by 16h00 that afternoon. The road was good after Kedougou and they found a place on the old, disused road to camp.

For dinner the men made a braai and this was eaten with braai bread made of cheese, tomatoes, onions and asparagus while Elismé made up something with beans. It was quite early when they retired and very humid too. Earlier, Mariana had offered some cut up pieces of mosquito netting and they had put these on the windows of the car and kept the windows open. The breeze was not forthcoming but later on there was a slight breeze that made some kind of sleep possible.

Early in the morning the rains came down; with a bit of wind and it cooled the place further making a dosing off more bearable. When they decided to got out of the car, it was still drizzling steadily. With the usual last minute packing and coffee and biscuits they took to the road to the border with Mali. They had to stop in Saraya to do some customs’ formalities and proceed onwards to Moussala for the rest.

Saraya is a village almost and the customs’ officers were glad to have something to do and people to talk to. They were very helpful.