Commuting in The Gambia

Sooner or later I’ll get around to finishing off the entry on my daily life in Sare Samba and start in on one for Banjul/Kombo. But short of that happening I just wanted to put in a note about the commute here.

Side Note: I’m writing this, sitting in my house watching one of the peacocks that lives here preen it’s feathers. In case anybody doesn’t know, peacocks make the most god-awful sound. They make a rooster sound a delight for the ears and geese sound graceful in comparison. They’re beautiful, but all you want to do around 6am is shoot them.

Every morning and most afternoons (sometimes I find another ride) I have about a 1 to 1.5 hour commute. Not unusual by American standards. But this isn’t America. Here the commute means fighting for the right to get on a bush taxi (geleegelee in local parlance, past Kenyan travelers can think of a stripped down matatu). The problem is that there are too few geleegelee’s for the number of people that need to make the daily trip between the suburbs of Banjul (broadly called The Kombos, but Kombo is really a wider district) and Banjul proper which is technically an island city. In case you don’t already know, Banjul is the capital of The Gambia, and prices are sky high there so nobody really lives in Banjul, except maybe business owners who sleep at their business. At any rate, between gas shortages, a population explosion in the Kombo area, and other random factors that I’ve got no clue about it has become a universally acknowledged hellish trip to get from The Kombos to Banjul. It isn’t just my opinion – most every Gambian that you meet will echo the fact that it sucks. Many of them remember 5-10 years ago when the trip wasn’t such a big deal, and cost a fraction of the current price (6 D, or ~$0.22). But the money isn’t really the issue. The problem is that you can find yourself stuck for hours at any number of way-points fighting with young men who latch on to the geleegelee door while it is still moving in order to get that last elusive seat of the passenger who happens to be getting off. Oh, there are tricks, and since I have to go every day I’ve figured a number of them out. They include getting a gelee that is going the wrong direction and riding it past the stop. Waiting at little known locations where people tend to get off right before the gelee arrives. But none of these tricks are fool proof, and they either ensure you an increased fare or the possibility that transport will still take a half hour of waiting in the blazing sun and fighting off would be riders to catch. All of this to be packed into a vehicle originally designed to hold a maximum of 8 (tightly) that has been refitted to hold at least 13, and maybe more depending on the style.

So, those are the negatives. I’ve never had to commute in LA, but I’d probably take The Gambia over attempting such a thing. At the same time my daily trips have been full kindnesses. I watch as ex-students who have succeeded always pay for their teacher’s trip. Elderly people also often get their trip paid for, as do people with disabilities (who can fit on the transport at all). Young, attractive women also get a free ride as often as not, but that I wouldn’t put down under the list of kindnesses. Students are often given a lift on the back of pickup trucks. And once after a few of us had been waiting for about an hour at one spot and decided to grab a cab ride to a different location my fare (5 D) for the ride was paid for. I returned the favor by letting the person use my mobile to call the person he was supposed to meet to let them know he was late but on the way.

So even though transport is difficult people ban together in order to get around some of the difficulties and make things feel alright. For the first week I dreaded the commute, but at this point it isn’t all that bad. I walk part of it when I have the time, listening to BBC radio on my shortwave as I go, and getting some exercise into my day. Then I fight the fight of every potential gelee rider. But once that struggle is over the gelee is a highly civil and friendly place and the ride is no big deal. And honestly, the fighting over the gelee is no less intense than a fight over a bus during the winter at University during a class change was… amazing how similarly people react when resources are scarce.

Going to America

The other day I was talking with a friend/co-worker here and we got onto the topic of going to America. He’s been to the US three times and has returned each time, to the surprise of everyone he knows – whether that be friends, family, or co-workers. There is an expectation here that if you get a chance to go to the UK or the US (especially the US) that you’ll skip visa and stay. The thought being that any life that you could have in the US will be better than life here. His family here was angry with him for not doing so because there is the further expectation that you will be sending money home.

The thing is, a good “starting out” job here pays $2/day in the city. Many jobs pay significantly less. The average income is somewhere around $1/day, and since that is the average you know that many people make well less than $1/day. For instance the average starting teacher is paid somewhere around $0.50/day. I’m currently making $5.50/day, which places you somewhere in the middle class in this country, the thing is the middle class is very small. At any rate, all of these numbers have a point, and that is that a person who gets the most awful job in America can still send home what would be seen here as significant money, so the pressure to do so is pretty large. So large in fact that in parts of the Gambia more than half of all income comes from foreign countries (don’t just think the West, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, etc., hire significant numbers of foreign nationals). This is a pretty common; many countries even specialize and support such activities (all of this makes GDP an often useless figure when calculating real purchasing power).

But what my friend here noticed when he got to America was that every Gambian he met – whether there legally or not – was working as a security guard, janitor, or some other job like that. It didn’t matter whether they had a (developing world) PhD, they still were working janitorial jobs 9 times out of 10 because they didn’t have the language skills, or cultural skills, or connections, or any number of other reasons. Often when you get to the US you have to pay for costly retraining before you qualify for jobs, and competition if fierce for good paying jobs, so the slightest thing can make you unable to qualify.

My friend works in computers with me, for Gambia his computer skills are significant and get noticed very easily. But in America he’d be one of many people with similar skills, and probably has no greater computer skills than the one or two kids in high school you knew who were great with computers. Put on top of that a lack of connections, accent, and no formal degree (recognized in America at least) and he would pretty much be insured as a job as a security guard (in which he has experience). The difference between him and many people who go to America was that he saw all of those things, did the math, and decided that his job in Gambia was the better bet. He’d still like to move elsewhere, but he wants to enroll in a degree program and get recognizable employable skills in America before he does so.

More than anything else though his decision was influenced by one thing: he hates being a security guard. If he liked that job the move would be a no-brainer, as it is for most Gambians.