The Gambia Diaries - June 2016 E-Book

Mark Williams

• Herausgeber: Mark Williams
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

The Gambia Diaries – short essays on life in The Gambia, West Africa, from the perspective of British ex-pat Mark Williams, international bestselling author writing beneath (mostly) picture-postcard blue skies in his personal paradise.

Leseprobe

The Gambia Diaries

––––––––

June 2016 - It Looks Like Rain.

Table of Contents

Title Page

The Gambia Diaries June 2016 - It Looks Like Rain

Thanks for reading.

Sign up for mark williams's Mailing List

Also By mark williams

Mark Williams

(c) Mark Williams 2016

◊

With the imminent arrival of July thoughts begin to turn to rain.

In fact, it’s rained four times this month. A thirty second shower kicked off the month, and two more showers of a couple of minutes duration have drummed on the corrugated iron roof since, each arriving a week or so apart between 4am and 5am.

In each case rogue clouds that drifted in from the Atlantic and left their calling card.

But in the early hours of yesterday morning it seemed for many the rainy season had arrived early, when we were awoke by the nostalgic sounds of a herd of elephants breakdancing on our rusting corrugated iron roofs, and the clash of branches and leaves as the big mango trees did Harry Potter Whomping Willow impressions.

The first rumble of thunder in nine moths seemed to confirm the worst. The rainy season had started.

But half an hour later the show was all but over, although the clouds hung about all day, in defiance of the sun’s best attempts to burn them off.

Here on the edge of the Sahara Desert the ground is shallow sand on a harder sandstone bedrock, semi-porous and unreliable in its propensity to soak up even small quantities of rainfall.

A day after the first real rain in nine months, walking the side streets is like walking on the beach as the tide goes out, replete with rockpools that may stretch the width of the road.

But right now there’s a freshness to the air we haven’t enjoyed since last year, and the early morning walk to the newsagent will be on firm, moist sand amid cooler air.

No, hold on. Newsagent? Old habits die hard.

No newsagents here. The daily papers – a handful of wafer-thin collations with clear pro- or anti-government biases that show in every story – are only available from street hawkers in the small “townships” (there aren’t really any towns or cities here in the way we westerners think of those terms).

◊

I live in Wellingara, a sprawling suburban village just a few miles from the sea, in the far west of The Gambia, so in the more developed area of the country, and close to the tourist zone. But there is just one blacktop road passing through, and that in serious need of repair.