“Hello, sweet sister.
Welcome to the smiling coast of Gambia!”
It was a lovely greeting, floating up to the rail, where I stood looking out at yet another dock in yet another harbor.
Today we had an unscheduled stop in Banjul, The Gambia. We gassed up, and we took on some
medical supplies flown in from the US.
Our students have been warned, “Don’t play with the monkeys” in almost
every port since Japan, but—being of a Certain Age—they played with the
monkeys. And now some have to have
just-in-case treatment for rabies.
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| Maersk containers are omnipresent. |
In a similar vein, a student came to the office today to
find out just what would happen if he went over his points limit in
Morocco. “It’s the last port, so
they can’t throw me off the ship, right?”
(Students get points for various infractions of the
behavioral code. If they reach 10,
they are supposed to be sent home.
Naturally, there are appeals and exceptions, but we have offloaded a
few. Evidently, this one is
looking at one more night in the drunk tank pushing him over the threshold.)
Some of our students have the stated goal of being drunk in
every port. (Do they also have
aligned goals, like “DUI before 25” and “Passed out in a gutter before
50”? Better put “Friend of Bill W”
on the agenda, too.)
To be specific, this means they are planning to go into an
overwhelmingly Moslem, very conservative country and spit in the face of
cultural norms. USA! USA! I vote in favor of throwing him, literally, off the ship.
To be fair, most of the students on board share my opinion
of these party animals. Most of
the students do not play with the monkeys. They are the ones stressed out over their upcoming exams,
working too hard to taken time to socialize. They are the ones filling up classrooms for workshops on
resume writing, volunteering in Africa, and founding an NGO. And they are putting on the Drag Show
and organizing Crew Recognition Day.
There’s a lot going on aboard ship—too much to take in, really—and most
of the students are making the most of their days here.
Today, we stood still in The Gambia, the smallest country in
mainland Africa. It’s pretty much
the banks of the Gambia River, 10 miles on each bank, running upriver about 200
miles. Except for the mouth of the
river, on the Atlantic coast, it is completely surrounded by Senegal.
Because we had people getting off the ship, we had to go
through the whole process of clearing immigration. A dozen men came aboard, largely to drink juice and eat
pastries, since there was really nothing else for them to do. (In most ports, we have a face-to-face,
where immigration checks passports for each passenger. It takes hours.)
Outside, the locals called to us and tried to sell us their
wares. I suppose from their
viewpoint, it looked like any other cruise ship coming in to the harbor: immigration gets on, then people get
off. One enterprising fellow tried
to sell an IPad and an IPhone.
(Who knew there was an Apple store in The Gambia? Or, maybe not.) It’s sad that they had nothing better
to do than wait for people who could not visit.
One local did manage to make it up to Deck 6 at lunch. This moth was completely intent on my
lunch. Even as I moved my fork
closer and closer, it stayed on my plate.
The moth, too, was bound to be disappointed. The most interesting thing about the
food these days is the new names the kitchen staff comes up with for the same
old food. This was minced beef,
indistinguishable from meatloaf.
The potatoes are the best:
they are roasted, steak-cut, home fried, Lyonnaise, and present at
breakfast, lunch and dinner. They
are rarely mashed and I’ve never seen them au gratin, probably to keep them
dairy free.
Still, better than the alternative. Food cooked for you doesn’t have to meet
a very high standard, especially when someone else cleans up, too.
So add another country to the list. I’ve never been to The Gambia, but I can
see it from my window.
