Serekunda: The good, the bad and ugly sides of Gambia’s de facto capital

The medium-sized Asky Airline whose magic wings had facilitated our four-hour flight from Lagos enroute Lome, Accra and Freetown put us gently down on the tarmac of the Banjul International Airport at about 004 hours, local time. After expeditiously filing through rigorous Immigration, Customs and passport formalities, including the “yellow card” checks, we proceed to […]

The medium-sized Asky Airline whose magic wings had facilitated our four-hour flight from Lagos enroute Lome, Accra and Freetown put us gently down on the tarmac of the Banjul International Airport at about 004 hours, local time. After expeditiously filing through rigorous Immigration, Customs and passport formalities, including the “yellow card” checks, we proceed to acknowledge the hospitable hugs and warm handshakes from airport officials, rippling with Wolof accent and welcoming us to the Gambia.
Like my previous visits to the Gambia, our next destination was Serekunda, the largest city in this ‘smiling coast of Africa’ located south-west of Banjul. Although Banjul is the Gambian capital, it is sitting on an Island making further growth difficult and thus changing much of the growth to Serekunda. Initially, it was said to have been a small village named after a local family (Serrekunda, meaning ‘the home of the Serre family’). It has become the primary transport hub and activity center of the Gambia. Little wonder Serekunda is euphemistically referred to as the de facto capital of the Gambia.
From the Kairaba Beach Hotel where the 53rd ordinary session of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights was held one could clearly see a riveting picture of Serekunda, especially at night, from a vantage viewpoint. Before you are the picture of a magnificent splash of light; assorted lights defining streets and rows of mostly flat roofed buildings. From the immediate vicinity, the serenity stretches to the surrounding Senegambia beach. The beach is littered with horse riding tourists and moored ships glistening with a kaleidoscopic shower of lights, giving the bathing resort the translucent ambience of a mammoth ampitheatre. The city of Serekunda is ensconced by the circular flow of the Senegambia beach.
With an estimated population of 335, 733, Serekunda’s climate is a sub-tropical one with two variations of distinct dry and rainy seasons. The dry season generally starts in October and ends around mid June each year. Travellers to this tourist destination usually plan their trip during the relatively cool months from November to February. The average daytime temperature is   32’ c and the temperature may drop to around 16’C in the evenings.
Chaotic, splitting-at- the seams, Serekunda is known for its market, the ever busy Serekunda market, its silk cotton tree and its wrestling arena. The nearby Atlantic Coast resorts of Bakau, Fajara, Kotu Strand and Kololi are where the sun and sea tourists flock. If you can manage to dodge the persistent ganja peddlers and beach ‘bumsters’ (touts and hustlers), this is a great place to spend long days on the beach and late nights on the dance floor.
In the daytime, what strikes a visitor most is that of a city locked in harmony with nature. The indications are everywhere: the small and major boulevards, even obscure streets, lined with trees on both sides, providing perfect shelter along the mandatory well-paved sidewalks, the individual homes buried in shrubs of flowers-ivies, climbing plants and trees.
The streets of Kairaba at Serekunda are ever busy, almost bustling with pedestrians. In the hotels, beaches and streets, the tourists roam in their exotic attires, their carefree and loose, suggestive dressing already noticeable in some of the young Gambian girls who imitate this outlandish fashion with uninhibited freedom. But in the main, the fashion world of the Gambia, including Serekunda, still retains much of the basic African ingredients: the women mostly tall and dark, their African skins unblemished by corrosive cosmetics, wear their hairs in tiny, matted braids which give a sharp focus to their small beautiful faces.
The dresses are mostly Senegalese and Guinea brocades, cotton prints or tie-and-dye cloths designed into beautiful gowns and flowing boubous, often sliced open at the upper rib-sides as if to reveal some of the inner parts of the body now and then. Like the women, the Gambian men are also tall and dark, sometimes gaunt, are either dressed in European attires or the male version of boubous: flowing robes thrown over inflated trousers with leather sandals to match.
As I take a stroll along the sidewalks in the steady flow of human traffic, I notice friends stopping to hug and kiss each other as a way of greeting while sporadic handshakes suffice in less affectionate situations. Thetraffic maintains a steady flow, tampered the traffic only by occasional signal of the electronic traffic lights or the police clad in brown khaki uniform, short sleeve jacket like the uniform of a Nigerian customs officer.
Although the streets of Serekunda are busy, they are not jammed with vehicles like Abuja and Lagos. The most popular cars are Renault and a sprinkling of painted Mercedes Benz cars which are used as tourist taxies. Despite the stream of cars, the bus stops in Serekunda are never short of people. Under the canopy of trees is microcosms of Serekunda; about a dozen or more locals are waiting for a vehicle; among them a white couple in small brown shorts clutching intimately at each other.
Approaching the couple with a seeming innocuous smile meant to draw attention to a set of gold-coated bangles is a starry-eyed dreadlocked youth with a conspicuous red tarboosh. A tout! Beside them is an elegant maiden in her twenties, dressed in cotton gown withbeads gathered around the waist; eating roasted corn bought from a local woman squatting in front of smoking charcoal fire. Two beggars stood beside them asking for alms. Some drop a few dalasi coins into the waiting arms of the beggars. Others are just too indifferent. From the endless traffic, a painted commercial bus drives towards the bus stop, discharging passengers while those waiting to board struggled their way inside.
In one of the fleet of luxury Renault buses plying nearly all routes to ensure an easy mass-transport system for the people; old or young, rich or poor, white or black. These luxury buses run by government-owned corporation are complemented by privately owned mini-buses and horse drawn carts, used to carry mostly passengers with loads. The passengers board, with unhurried ease, paying 100 Dalasis for a short drive and between 150-200 Dalasis for a long distance.
At the city center of Serekunda, you are likely to run into unpaved ground except the special rounded openings for trees and ornamentals. Within the city, you could conveniently transact business, walking about the sidewalks undisturbed by motorists or cyclists, without needing a shoe polish for days.
But then you have to contend with the ubiquitous hawkers, beggars and mere drifters looking for customers or benefactors. They sniff out the potential tourist from afar. In the lobbies of hotels, banks, stores and even coffee shops, the eagle eyed hawkers, mill around waiting. They stock every imaginable item: jewelry, wrist watches, bangles, belts, new and second hand clothing…indeed the list is endless.
“You Nigerian? …Nigeria? …” They guess easily, thrusting their wares before you, quoting their supposed cheap prices in Gambian Dalasis or USD, even as they walk after you. For the typical Gambian youth it seems the name Nigeria echoes with all the superlative attributes of America. Sometimes, some of the items are good enough to draw interest. But as soon as one begins to negotiate, the guide frowns. “That is not good, it is only made in Senegal!” the friendly Serekunda guide warns. “Yes that one is good, but it is too expensive because it was made abroad!” the guide explains in smattering English, haggling away enthusiastically in Wolof accent. The paradox strikes home: nothing good comes from home- Abuja or Banjul.
On a typical Friday noon (Fridays are declared as a work free days in Gambia), the city of Serekunda imperceptibly comes to a virtual standstill: the offices and commercial places close up, a huge traffic jam forms as people drive home for break. Businesses, you are informed, will not open again until 3 p.m. Less than an hour later is deserted as people empty into different homes located mostly in large housing estates.
There is never a dull moment at the Kairaba Beach hotel. After the opening ceremony of the 53rd ordinary session of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) hosted at the hotel, I decided to take a leisure walk to the Serekunda Bijilo National Forest Park. Also known as the ‘monkey park’, Bijilo located on a cliff beside the Kairaba beach is a small rainforest which covers an area of 126 acres and was open to tourists and the public in 1991.
Tairu, the forest guide, tells me the park receives an average of 23,000 visitors a year, pointing out that prior to this there was heavy de-forestation for valuable rhun palms and its resident green monkeys were persecuted by youngsters and stray canines. My guide takes me through a footpath with seating places occasionally along its length, meanders its way through varied woodland forest, shrub and tree savannah as well as sand dunes.
As I make my way through the footpath, primate species that inhabit the forest started emerging as if to welcome the visitor. They include the patas monkey, green velvet monkeys, red colobus and the galagos otherwise called ‘bush babies.’ Although there are signs asking visitors not to feed the monkeys as this will interfere with their natural behavior and reduce their fear of humans, my guide fetched a handful of peanuts from his pocket and handed over to me. As I followed his instruction by throwing some on the ground, the monkeys, especially the ‘bush babies’ came scampering.
The scramble for the peanuts is ‘survival of the fittest’ as the stronger monkeys overpowered the bush babies and picked the peanuts which they peeled and ate greedily…Among the flora found in the forest are lilies, wild orchids, salt-tolerant vines, magnificent silk cotton trees, palms and the odd looking baobab trees (also called upside down tree). At the end of my forty minutes adventure in this ‘monkey forest’, I became sufficiently schooled in the flora and fauna of the Serekunda Bijilo Forest Park.
Throughout my one week stay at the Kairaba Beach Hotel in Serekunda, I had my breakfasts at the hotel restaurant but spent my lunch time at the ‘African Buka’, a nearby restaurant owned by a Serekunda based Nigerian woman from Edo State. African Buka is the preferred choice for Nigerian tourists and visitors for obvious reason: it serves the regular Nigerian dishes that provide a relief to the typical Gambian food served in Serekunda restaurants. It is also patronized by some Gambian families who when engaged at lunch time give an insight into the image of Nigeria in the Gambia.
During one of my lunchtime I encountered Mariama, who together with her Nigerian husband had been living in Serekunda for over a decade. Mariama relieves their curiosity and accumulated stereotypes about Nigeria. Their questions revolve around the spate of violence in Nigeria, with kidnappings and the Boko Haram insurgency featuring prominently. “People say you can be killed or robbed even at the airport…don’t you have police any longer in Nigeria?”
Mariama is also interested in the Nigerian girls and their alleged sex trade export as well as their high level of liberation which, she heard, translates into extreme promiscuity “like the Liberian girls here in Gambia”; their expensive sophistication. “Are they very intellectual too?” she quizzed. Then our lunch-talk steers to economy and politics and Mariama, a holder of a junior baccalaureate certificate, the equivalent of secondary school certificate, surprises you with her grasp of the intricate nuances of socialism and capitalism, her preference for the former unconcealed as her scorn for the latter.
With Banjul as her canvass, Mariama paints the lurid picture of the evils of capitalism: neo-colonial exploitation by their elitist Europeans in Gambia; the Lebanese- their somewhat generic term for Asians- who speak Wolof enough to win them the hearts of the people as harmless creatures but monopolize the manufacturing, distribution, retail and service sector; the Gambian worker eking out a marginal existence at the mercy of those combined forces. She did not spare the Gambian elite who talks of socialism when he is poor but changes his garb when money stares him in the face.
Her grouse is understandable. She would have liked to secure a job to supplement the resources of her husband, but she cannot think of a meaningful one in Banjul, without a higher professional certificate. Neither can she go back to school for such qualification even though very willing to do so, because of financial constraint. People like Mariama are victims of Gambia’s high rate of unemployment, which has reduced much of the city’s youths to jetsam of the society, living on hawking, touting drinking and other irrelevances.
Is Mariam a measure of the socio-political consciousness of the average Gambian youth or more specifically, the woman? Is hers the voice of the welter of unemployed Gambian youths in Serekunda? Or the un-deciphered symphony of pain from the beggars of Serekunda who litter and sleep in every nook cranny of the city crying to an indifferent government? To these questions, Mariama who casts a Glance at her taciturn husband simply responded: “No comment!”
When I eventually left Mariama and her husband at African Buka, I decided to take a walk back to Kairaba. As I walked along the stretch of road that connects the Senegambia Road through “Duplex” nite club, a young man in faded clothes approaches me speaking musical English.
“Please are you a Nigerian?” “Yes”, I responded; “and you?”
“My name is Alex Kilonu (not real names) from Nairobi.” Alex then proceed to narrate his story: how he came to look for a cousin two weeks earlier; how the said cousin travelled and had to put up in a hotel until he ran short of money to settle his hotel bill and how the hotel seized his baggage…
“Why don’t you go to the Red Cross or your country’s embassy here,” interposed Tahiru, my taxi cab operator who unknown to me saw me leaving African Buka and walked towards me to cut the conversation short. I was left wondering whether Alex was in real difficulty or a sophisticated beggar as Tahiru suggests indifferently…
Back to Kairaba, the closeness of dusk in Serekunda is now emphasized by the heightening shower of light that baths the streets which are now peopled by leisurely couples walking down to various resorts and eateries. Suddenly my attention is drawn to the blaring sound of Wolof music.Upon inquiry I was informed the sound was coming from “Ali Baba”, a popular night club owned by a US based Gambian business mogul. As I approached the night club, nothing betrayed what lay ahead. The sound of music gave the impression of a carnival. Less than twenty five steps away from the gate, the cool breeze greets you. But it carries along with it the stench of cigarette.
“Ali Baba” is a microcosm of the night life in Serekunda, a city that never goes to bed. During the daytime a first time visitor would think it is a desolate place that is seldom visited by beer guzzlers and fun seekers. But by 1900 hours (Gambian time), the desolation gives way to a carnival-like atmosphere. The red lights on, fun seekers, among them European tourists, stream in and the call girls come out in their numbers. They are everywhere, walking in twos or in groups.
As I found out all serious issues such as the 53rd Ordinary Session of the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights, that was being hosted by the Gambian government, hold no importance at Ali Baba night club. With enough Julbrew (a Gambian larger), cigarette and sex, adequately paid for by their patrons and a place to lay their heads before the resumption of duty the following day most of these girls, some of them Nigerians, don’t care a hoot even if the Heavens fall.
After sitting at a corner to observe things at the night club, including the acrobatic performance of Wolof female dancer I eventually clutched my notebook and left “Ali Baba.” Back in my hotel room at Kairaba, my mind raced through my experience through Serekunda. My experience with the monkeys at the Bijilo Forest Park, the conversation I had with Mariama at African Buka, the encounter with the sophisticated beggar, the interesting public sessions of the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights and, of course, the suffocating stench of tobacco smoke and alcohol by beer guzzlers, including the wonderful performance by the Wolof female entertainer at Ali Baba nite club.