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Saturday 19 November - Shopping in Banjul
- Albert Market
We went on our by now accustomed Saturday
morning trip into Banjul with the children from Kemo's compound.
Fatou, Ebrima, EB, Ian Talibo, Muhamed Lamin, and Kebba (a friend from
Jarreng who was staying for a family celebration). Kemo, Sandra and
Pippa all set off to walk into Albert Market for shopping! (Kemo's
wife Sonna, the new baby Malafie, Isatou and Bintou stayed behind
this time to help Kemo's mum)
The rules are that each person is given the Dalasis equivalent of £5
to spend – it can be quite a morning! Before the shopping trip,
Kebba had to have his photo taken with his 'welcome to Pageant'
pencil case, as he has just been sponsored, and Fatou looked so
charming in her new dress that she had to be photographed as well. Then we set off – but before shopping, we had
to visit the playground. This is the only one in The Gambia and is
very popular with up-country Gambian children who are visiting
Banjul.
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Kebba with his pencil
case |
Fatou in her new dress |
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the playground |
Now for Albert Market – a real maze of small
stalls selling almost everything you can think of. Sandra and Pippa left the children & Kemo
to do their shopping unencumbered by white tourists and went to the
craft market. Here, Sandra proved she could easily handle the
bargaining essential to any market transaction and proceeded to do
most of her Christmas shopping. Pippa bought some more
things for Pageant sales. We rather cheated on the £5 limit...
Some considerable time later, we all met up
again and walked back to our favourite lunch place, Michel's.
Muhamed Lamin was asleep by this time, but a large quantity of
chicken and chips was consumed by nearly everyone else – and an
almost equally large amount wrapped up to take home as 'doggy bags'.
As well as lunch, we enjoyed seeing what everyone had bought in the
market. Kemo then took the children home and we went
back to the hotel – and Pippa had a couple of hours by the pool for
the first time this trip!
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Sandra bargaining |
after a hard day's
shopping! |
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shopping is too much for
some people! |
more bargains |
Saturday evening was memorable for several
things: one was the complete lack of lights on the taxi that took us
to the Senegambia area for supper – and The Gambia is really VERY
dark on the country roads.... so we decided we would NOT take that
taxi home! Having recovered from our rather frightening drive, we
had a very enjoyable evening at the Taste of India (on Saturday
evening they do a fantastic buffet) with Wandifa, Kemo, Linda (who
had arrived the previous day) and another UK couple who had agreed
to meet up with us there. We had arranged this before our trip so
that they could get some help in distributing the large amount of
school materials that they had brought out with them. Wandifa made
plans to take them to a couple of schools that would really
appreciate the gifts and we understand that the visits went well.
After an excellent evening we took another taxi home and arrived
back at the Atlantic without any further scares!
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