The Gambia’s largest and busiest anchorage lies 5 miles from the capital.
It is the same old Lamin Lodge. Here we are aboard Lady Mary, along with a couple of dozen boats left until next season and a handful of lone Frenchmen who have settled in the Gambia. There are five of them; the sixth and seventh Frenchmen recently departed for home. Apart from one, all the yacht-dwellers share one trait besides their nationality: they do not speak English. In an English-speaking country.
Captain Peter
The owner of this whole madhouse is Captain Peter. That is what they call him.
Captain Peter
Peter, now an elderly German, arrived on a sailing yacht in 1982 and stayed in the Gambia for good. After selling off some of his possessions in Germany, Peter built Lamin Lodge. There he welcomes guests, while also making a living from excursions, selling souvenirs, and all sorts of sideline odds and ends. The guests eat, chase monkeys, and set off on cruises around the creeks.
Farther upriver, near the town of Janjanbureh, Peter has another lodge—a tourist camp with a bar and somewhat neglected guest cottages linked by meticulously swept paths. Chickens and a lazy dog wander along the paths.
Peter has a wife. And his wife has a sister, a lively blonde lady of a certain age who paddles around in a kayak with her friend, a long-haired Gambian of about 25. Despite having both a wife and a sister-in-law, Captain Peter looks distinctly homeless. Judging by his torn, threadbare jacket and rather grubby cap, we initially took him for a white drifter. It turned out he was the boss.
Captain Peter’s lodge in Janjanbureh, central Gambia
Frenchman No. 1: The Unsociable Defender of the Oceans
Our nearest yachting neighbour is pushing sixty. For several years he has been cruising alone between the Gambia and Cabo Verde, spending six months in each place. He used to cruise with his wife, but then she died. Perhaps the loss made him withdrawn.
In the mornings our neighbour goes ashore for a run. He runs the 2 km to the village and back several times, then returns to his yacht. He hauls the dinghy aboard by hand, without a winch, and often does not reappear until the following morning.
Whenever he passes us in either direction, our neighbour turns his head away so determinedly that he risks wringing his own neck. We make a point of not staring, to reduce the risk. In a month of being close neighbours, we have not once managed to say hello to him.
The back of his T-shirt bears an inscription in French saying that its owner is a defender of the oceans. We respect that. But otherwise we know nothing about him.
The lone yacht of the defender of the seas and oceans
Frenchman No. 2: The Man from Casamance
This yachtsman is curly-haired, warm-hearted, and resembles a friend of our French friends from Senegal’s Casamance River. Jibo said he had indeed come from there while we were in the centre of the country. He is the most cheerful neighbour, though we very rarely catch sight of him.
The West Africa traveller’s yacht
Frenchman No. 3—the Normal One
Everything is just fine with this chap. At first we tried to anchor nearby. He said hello, but did not seem especially thrilled at the prospect of having us as neighbours. He probably danced the mambo when our anchor failed to set and we moved elsewhere.
That evening, catching sight of his bare backside in the cockpit, I thought he must have a date with a girl—apparently because he was pouring water over himself from a bucket. And sure enough, early the next morning, oars whispering, a little dinghy set off from the yacht, carrying a tall African goddess ashore. The chap then returned and paddled off in his kayak for oysters. Our neighbour goes kayaking every morning and also catches fish with a net. And the giggling goddess, who arrives about three times a week, fries the catch in the evenings and washes his socks in the morning. Sometimes they weigh anchor and sail deeper into the creek for a night’s fishing. He also takes down his astonishingly blue awning every evening, only to put it up again in the morning. That is evidently why his is the only awning in the anchorage that gleams with cleanliness. Everything is just fine with this chap.
Frenchman No. 3. Off for oysters in the kayak
Frenchman No. 4—a Retired Legionnaire
The cheerful bald-headed owner of the yellow catamaran waves an enthusiastic “Hello!” and always seems ready to smother us in kisses. He does not even say “Hello,” only “Bonjour.” Our seemingly good-natured neighbour once served in the French Foreign Legion.
Early in the morning, something between an animal roar and a bellow of “Com-pa-ny, wa-a-ake up!!!” can sometimes be heard from the cat. This is followed by an untranslatable combination of yells, snorts, and gurgles. (Washing his face? Clearing his throat?...) The bellowing legionnaire has also been spotted in front of a round shaving mirror. (Perhaps he nicked an artery with his cut-throat razor?)
The French legionnaire’s catamaran
The yellow cat has been in the Gambia for more than a month—its awning and windows are thickly veiled in brown dust from the desert... or from the pavements, except there are no pavements: only the main roads are paved here; everywhere else is sand.
The owner does not wave cheerfully to everyone, far from it. Our Jibo and his French-speaking friend once went over to him. “Perhaps,” they asked, “you need some help—water, fuel, anything...?” The legionnaire responded with a torrent of abuse, the gist of which was: “You and your water can go to hell, you damned baboons.” So the lads left.
Opposite the yellow cat is a boat that looks as though it has been left there for the winter—or the summer? It belongs to Frenchman No. 5. This one served in the police.
The hapless former gendarme’s yacht gathers African dust as it awaits its owner
And now for the long-awaited horrors—or goings-on—of our little town.
Who’s cooler—the skier or the snowboarder?—
The Story of How the French Gendarme and the Legionnaire Clashed
So, one day, two French subjects—a former legionnaire and a former policeman—meet at an anchorage in the Gambia. They reminisce about their youth, have a few drinks together... Whether it took long or not, something went wrong between them. Their friendship fell apart, and the neighbours became like Troyekurov and Dubrovsky. They nursed their grievances until matters came to blows, and the legionnaire ended up giving the gendarme a proper thrashing.
The gendarme calmed down quickly and did not shake his fists after the fight was over. Instead, he quietly went to the police and filed a complaint against his neighbour: such-and-such, he had threatened to kill him, he was shell-shocked, and he had threatened him with a firearm. There must have been a reason for the threats, you see. The bald villain was hiding weapons from justice.
Some strapping lads in police uniform arrived and seized three unregistered guns and about 500 rounds of live ammunition from the yellow catamaran. The legionnaire was ceremoniously escorted to a Gambian prison while his neighbour pulled faces at him through a porthole.
On the way to the lockup, the bald man managed to phone a friend. That was what saved him. He fed the bedbugs in an African prison for three months, but somehow managed to raise a million dalasi (€20,000), in return for which Gambian justice forgave our hero all his sins, voluntary and involuntary.
Meanwhile, in the most buoyant of moods, the former gendarme was returning from his ancestral homeland to his yacht. On arrival, he unexpectedly found his neighbour aboard the catamaran, alive and well and planning Operation Retribution. While the legionnaire dashed down into the hull for his speargun, the gendarme vanished into the mangroves.
And so, for several months now, the former French policeman has been living somewhere in the village of Lamin and has not dared show his face aboard his yacht. The legionnaire, meanwhile, sips rum, shaves with a cut-throat razor, grunts to himself, and polishes the barrel of his armour-piercing cannon.
Concerned onlookers await the outcome with trepidation. And we are sailing upriver. The river adventures begin here—
James Island. Sailing Through the Gambia
The legionnaire retrieves an old fish fridge that drifted out of the fishing harbour. Discovering that the fridge was no use, the bald Frenchman released it into the ocean.