Sambel Kunda The Gambia

The fisherman rides his bicycle out of the village and down the track, past the fields and the big baobab. The grazing cows look up as he passes, but quickly return to more important rumination. Lamín is a cheerful soul, with a jolly red hat, and he follows the trail down into the forest every day. Passing into the trees, the hot sun of the open field turns to cool, dappled green shade. Bright blue starlings take flight as he enters a clearing, to perch on the treetops to squawk a warning to the world. He cycles down a narrow path, spiky, red flowers tug at him as he passes and the lush plants in shades of green contrast the red earth. Suddenly, a raucous commotion breaks out high above him in one of the giant rainforest trees. A group of red colobus monkeys has started a riot. Screeching and yelping they chase each other. They leap from the topmost branch, into thin air, and bounce impossibly from the leaves of a lower branch, to fly gracefully a huge distance to reach the next tree. One after another, they follow the same route, scrambling along the branches, shouting and hissing, to disappear into the forest. Fighting, flirting or just playing, only they know. But they do it every day, as Lamín passes. Finally the path drops through dense, verdant vegetation and reveals the grey green greasy water of the Gambia River and a patch of sand.

Lamín is a fisherman. A man who fishes. He catches fish in his small pirogue, no wider than him, that is now pulled up on the shore. Some days there are many fish, other days few. But always there are fish. He paddles the pirogue close in among the overhanging palms to avoid the fastest current. A crocodile, resting in the cool mud and shade, blinks, then yawns as he passes. To reach his favourite spot he must cross the main river. Paddling harder against the strong current, he makes no forward progress, but creeps sideways, until he reaches the shelter of the far bank. Chimpanzees hoot from the impenetrable forest, on what is actually a large island.

He continues upstream until he reaches the place the other channel branches off behind the island. This is a good place to fish. He sets trap nets from overhanging trees, where the current divides around the island, then paddles into deeper water to try the hook and line. The group of hippos are enjoying the cool water in their usual place. They don’t cause him any worry, but he keeps an eye on them in case they come too close and disturb the fish. The line twitches in his hand. He has his first fish.

The sun is now overhead, burning like a furnace. The glare reflects and shimmers from the water surface. There will be no more fish today. Lamín checks his trap, and collects two more fish, taking his total to six. Better than usual, but never as much as he hopes for. Once he caught a crocodile, a small one. He took it home and killed it in his compound, but his wife and children wouldn’t eat it. He did. He ate a lot of crocodile every day for a week.

With lazy strokes of the paddle, he lets the current carry him back. The boat and the river know the way, back to the break in the forest wall he started from. The small vervet monkeys, scavenging on the shore, scatter as he approaches. But it is just the fisherman, so they soon return and ignore him as he pulls his boat up on the sand.

With his jolly red hat and bucket of fish, he takes his bike and cycles back through the forest. He hears the shouting, the scattering of birds and the headlong flight of a single grey baboon, before he reaches the cause. Three women, whooping and banging sticks. Two are armed with slings and the third with an armful of rocks. They are hunting the baboons who have been destroying the rice field. Lamín gestures in the opposite direction to where the baboon had gone, and the women set off in pursuit, hollering. He carries on his way through a copse of giant baobab, with trunks so wide, ten men could hold hands and still not reach all the way round. Between the great trees and small thorn bushes there is the occasional single round orange flower. And there, just off the trail, the main troop of baboons sit casually picking lice from their fur and eating them.

Sometimes Lamín comes down to the forest at night. Ghostly black and white shapes in the moonlight. The air is full of floating stars, the fireflies bobbing and weaving between the trees. Will o’ the Wisp lanterns, beckoning and luring him to follow them deeper into the forest. One day he will follow them to another world. Maybe there will be more fish there.