This past weekend the group took a little roadtrip upriver to Tendaba Camp, a lovely little nature camp situated on the banks of the river Gambia. The drive lasted about three hours and the first part of the road we were on was about as nice as the Jersey Turnpike. The last two hours of the the trip, however, the road was not paved. It was a dirt road with a gravel layer on top, which was ground into the roadbed over years of the traveling cars, bushtaxis, and old eighteen wheelers carrying way too many mahogany planks. Sitting in our hired bushtaxi while driving on this road was what I imagined being in a tank under heavy artillery is like. The whole frame of the van was vibrating, the shocks were nonexistent, the axles were creaking and all the windows were open (if they could open) because it was a solid 85 outside and the van had no AC, of course. So by the time we got to Tendaba, we were already a bit exhausted, covered in red African dust, and hot and hungry. Not to worry though because we packed meatpies for snack! :)
We checked into our rooms as soon as we got there. I was in a triple with two other girls, Sarah and Amanda. Our little room had one twin bed, a queenish sized bed, a plastic table and chair and a bathroom with a showerhead attatched to the wall! Our beds were concrete blocks with foam padding on top and were attatched to the concrete walls. They were actually more comfortable than they sound. Our bathroom was just as interesting. The showerhead was attatched to a wall and the water came out warm at first and gradually got cooler. There was no "shower" persay, so the the water from the shower ran all over the bathroom floor, which was taped down plastic flooring.
That afternoon we planned a boatride around the mangrove swamp at 4. It was still really hot at 4, so we were baking in our dugout as we crossed the river to get to the swamps on the other side. Once we were in the swamps it cooled down a lot. We spent about 2 hours floating around the mangroves. We had two guides with us: one to "interact" with the passengers (code for ask the women passengers where they were from, "America?? Will you take me there?"); the other to steer the canoe. We were with two older Dutch people and for the first hour we acted like typical Americans. We were loud, laughing and telling jokes, and talking about how awesome America is. Then we realized how loud we were being and quieted down.
But even though we were laughing we still saw some wildlife. We saw mostly birds like herons, egrets, and the African darter. Our guide swore there were hippos and crocs in the water. If there were, they stayed away from us. Maybe because we sang the whole Lion King soundtrack on the boat.
Once we were off the boat, we showered and sat around for dinner. Dinner at Tendaba was a nice mix between Western/European food and customs and African food and customs. It was a three course meal with a soup, main course, and dessert. The soup was an excellent fish stew that smelled, looked, and tasted exactly like crab bisque. Then, they served an African whitefish, bone in, rice, cassava stew and raw cabbage salad, which is a bit like coleslaw. It was amazing. I'm starting to realize on this trip how much I enjoy cabbage. Perhaps my mom will learn how to make it...... For dessert we had masserated grapefruit with sugar. Delish.
The next day dawned with cool weather and a nice breakfast of COFFEE!, bread with mango jam, and hardboiled eggs. Just the breakfast for a nice leisurely hike through the African bush. We left camp at 8 am and started for the Kolongding National Park. For the next two hours we saw the wetlands, some salt flats, and then we hiked some hills. My hamstrings weren't sure how to walk uphill. But they quickly remembered. After an hour and a half we saw a baobab tree with fruit growing close enough to the ground that we could jump and grab it. The fruit of the baobab tree is colloquially called monkeybread. I'm not sure about the scientific name. You have to bash it against the side of the tree to open it and the inside resembles a very dried out gourd or pumpkin. The fruit is white, very dry and and a little tangy, almost like a candy. You can make a juice out of the monkeybread, called baobab juice, which is also an opaque white, very sweet, and very much like a milkshake.
Sadly, we had to move on from the baobab tree. We entered a village, had to ask the locals which way was the park was and consequently picked up some new hikers. We finally reached the river and asked our village guides for the way back to Tendaba. They told us we had to backtrack and go the way we had come. Well, none of us really wanted to do that and Nagengast, our professor, swore he knew the way back to camp along the river. The guides told us there was a way but it was "not good." But, like the intrepid Americans we are, we decided to blaze our own trail through the bush along the river. At first we were doing well and following the river while keeping a cell tower near the camp in our sight. However, we could no longer follow the river as the bank became soggy so we had to go into the bush and literally "bushwack." At first it was just like going off the trail in Nolde and we had to climb over trees, push aside pricker bushes and avoid horse flies. Then I walked into a vine with thorns as long as my pinky finger. Only one thorn managed its way into my arm and there was little blood loss. I'm sure I'll make a swift recovery.
We kept bushwacking and we heard baboons ahead! Baboons aren't very nice and really aren't cute either so kept our distance. But as we got closer to them, they were silent and we realized it was Nagengast making the baboon noises at them. They were just staring at us. We kept on trailblazing and we began smelling a nasty odor, almost like roadkill. The odor got stronger and up ahead Nagengast found a wild bushpig head on the ground. Think Pumba from the Lion King. Well, we couldn't just leave on the ground and walk around. Nagengast put the head on a stick and walked around shouting "I am the leader of the pack! I have killed the beast!" Now think Lord of the Flies. It was funny at first but it really stank so Nagengast the Hunter had to leave his brave kill behind.
Our buchwacking experience was going well, we were heading toward our cell tower landmark and it wasn't terribly hot. We crossed over a small hill and were into the rice paddies, something our trail either had skirted around. We were getting close! We saw a nice green path that seemed to lead directly through the rice paddies to the other side. However, part of the path was under mud and water. A good ten feet of the path was submerged under mud and about a foot of water. Something we couldn't jump across and something we thought we could run through. Well, Sarah put her foot in the mud, it went down about a foot and when she yanked it out she was shoeless! The mud was closer to quicksand than it was to mud. So she got down on her hands and knees to dig her shoe out and in the process covered herself in mud too. About half of the group decided to make the crossing. They would get a running start, power through the mud, lose a shoe or two and make it to the other side with mud up to their stomachs and usually everywhere else. The other half of the group decided to keep their shoes and try to find another way around the swamp. We turned around and for the next two hours hiked through the salt flats. At some point we had to have been about a kilometer away from the other group, but we could hear them the whole time screaming and laughing as the crossed the swamp. Eventually, my group lost the cell tower so we had to turnn around. Once we found it, we realized the only toward camp was to cross the swamp. But we had gotten around the worst of it so our crossing wasn't even half as epic as the other groups. I had mud up to my knees and my retired Asics were absolutely soaked and soggy and I had mud in between my toes but at least I had my shoes. We met up with the other group about two hours later. Well, what was left of the other group. They were covered in mud, trudging in muddy shoes, and they were pantless. I guess their pants got so muddy and waterlogged that it made more sense to hike in their underware rather than chafe and trek in nasty clothes. They were also all limping. When we met up with them, they told us that part of the crossing was the home to mollosk beds. When they stepped into the mud, the shells cut up the bottoms of their feet.
We finally arrived back at camp at 2 in the afternoon, we were dehydrated, starving, and full of little cuts and bruises. The mud trekkers, however, looked like Nam and had to tend to their sliced-up feet. We sat them down and ran tweezers, alcohol wipes, toothpicks and soap through the wounds to get the dirt (and hopefully nothing nastier) out. Nagengast bought us some Fantas, we applied bandaids, and rinsed off in the pool and the group was almost as good as new....
At least lunch that day was good.
Standing in front of an old baobab near our house while sporting Matt's Nikes.
Doing work.
Monkeybread, the fruit of the baobab.
"Team Mud Conquers Africa" Tiereney Miller
Baobab out in the swamp.
The group mid-hike.
Tall grass on our boat tour through the swamps.
