It must be about fifteen years ago that my friend Jane and I spent ten days in the Gambia, by default, as it were.
We had actually booked to go to a remote part of western China, and I still have what I call my ‘China bag’, which is of the exact dimensions allowed on that fatally undersubscribed tour. With this holiday cancelled – not enough people wanted to see those rushing rivers and pointy mountains – we had a dilemma. Where should we go instead? It was in the Observer that Jane found the ad for our Gambian adventure.
The adventure could have taken many forms. Already in our late sixties, we could have had fun with the beach boys who followed us on our evening walks. We didn’t then know that this is what many ladies of our age came to the Gambia for. But that wasn’t what we were there for, and they never bothered us. Nor, as we walked along the boardwalk at sun rise one morning, were we pestered by the paper-thin youngster who suddenly appeared, as out of nowhere, and wanted to take us birdwatching. Anxious to get back to the hotel for breakfast and, in my case, continue with a novel in which the psychopathic killer closely resembled a prisoner with whom I was corresponding*, we said ‘Sorry, not now,’ and then spent the next couple of guilt-ridden days, trying to find him.
Which we did, and here is a list of the birds we saw or, rather, he saw on our two outings together.
This list, with its touching farewell, invoking the blessing of Allah, reached us just before the coach to the airport started up. Ebrima had not been allowed into the hotel to give it to us.**
Happily, the story doesn’t end there and although I have never seen him again – not even in photographs, as he has never before had access to a camera – we have kept in touch and, just the other day, I received this photo of his ten-year-old daughter: my namesake, in her school uniform.
The pictureless years, though, have been far from arid. During them I have learnt about marriage customs very different from our own, about the geography of a compound and about the disastrous consequences of the Ebola epidemic which has made Ebrima’s proud Official Tourist Birdwatcher’s Badge a sad relic.
And each year, when the festival which demands the sacrifice of a goat comes round, we think about Abraham and Isaac. Ebrima learnt long ago that in my religion, his name would be Abraham.
As for the blessings of Allah, which continue to this day, who knows if they haven’t helped me to live beyond my sell-by date.
*I was later to learn that my prisoner friend had tried to sue the well-known writer for attaching recognisable features of his case to a fictional character.
** Like my family in Soviet Estonia, who had not been allowed into the hotel in which we were obliged to stay. It was for foreigners only. In the Gambia, it was not foreigners that the hotel management was keeping out.