h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

That's the choice, and we have a day or two to decide.

It's hardly a dilemma, and nothing of the nature of Paff's recent choice. It is quite an interesting one though, at least for us.

I've always loved Spain, and we lived in Tenerife for six months back in 2001. We had enough time there to really get away from the resorts and see most of the island, and there are some wonderful sights out there if you can drag yourself away from the awful tourist strips. Our life out there clouded our judgement for a while - bad bosses, poor pay, and sleeping with cockroaches, to say nothing of the later death of the future father-in-law, tend to do that - but we've come to forgive the Canaries. So one option is to head for Lanzarote for one week and Fuerteventura for the other; it's fairly cheap at this time of year, and we'll be able to travel around without any hassle. The more I read about the eastern Canaries, the more I love 'em.

It's odd that The Gambia would be more expensive and safer option than the Canaries, but that's how it goes. We know people out there, and we know how it goes - we even know what our friends need and what to take out for them. I feel I have some unfinished business there, too - I never got to do my three-night river trip up the river, and although we did more than most we didn't really get too far into it. Although it's almost 50% more in flights and accommodation, our living costs should make up for that easily - plus, the hotel we stayed in was exceptional. when I stay in a place and think 'my Nan would be happy here' - I know it's way above my station, and that's what we got.

The youthful, exuberant part of me that wants to travel and see new places wants the Canaries, simply for the novelty and new shinyness of it all. The more mature explorer who wants to learn and engage with people, and do some good while he's out there (my old clothes will be a great gift) favours The Gambia. I'm still not sure which part of me will win, as E has left the final decision to me.

The Gambia. No contest. Take it from me.

(please?!)

zdt

My recollection of my one visit to Norwich is one of non-plussedness.

Go to Africa.

Go to the Gambia - for me. I once planned a trip there, after taking a long time to very carefully chose a good place to go, before I was married and had a baby. I can't remember now why I didn't go, but just hearing 'The Gambia' takes me back to those carefree days of youth.

No idea, I've been to neither so far.

When I opened my PS this morning, I found what I thought an interesting conversation:
If I kill someone by accident whilst driving a car should I go to jail Canaries or The Gambia?

I thought by myself: hey, they're interesting options.
Only after I had signed in did I see that I was looking at two conversations.

The Gambia.

Do pass Go. Do collect £200 & a "get of jail free" card. The verdict seems to be unanimous.

Voila! Another problem solved by hootoo fiends.

Next?

zdt

I'd have to agree, if only because I've been to Tenerife and Lanzarote, and while they were nice, the Gambia sounds much more exciting. You can always go to the Canaries next year.

I'll be lucky if I fulfil my holiday wish this year of Torquay!



Wherever you finally choose, have a great time and we await your (journal) report and PR entries complete with photographs with salivation

Canaries.

Based upon the wholly ridiculous recollection that I had a lousy time when I was in Africa(*) and have no wish to go back any time soon. Therefore it has to be the alternative option.

Note:
1) It was 25 years ago that I went to Africa
2) I went to the Arab nation of Tunisia, which is the whole width and culturally a million miles away from the Gambia.
See, I did say that my choice was based upon ridiculous foundations...

I didn't ask where you lot would go, did I?

When we were having our morning cuppa today, I asked E where she would go if she had to decide right now. She didn't hesitate in her reply, and fortunately I agreed. The Gambia it is.

Unfortunately, by the time we got up the deal we were after had gone; they still had rooms, but no spaces on the flight. A frantic search of the web and a few phone calls later, and we found a two-week stay leaving on 31 January. It was a hundred pounds or so more, making it probably a little too expensive, but we'd made our minds up that this was what we wanted. So we booked it

I'm really looking forward to meeting up with our friends out there again. There's Adama and Fatima, who sold us our fruit; Karl Marx and Solomon who made our fresh juice right there on the beach and who taught me how to make attaya; Bob the Builder, our own personal security guard around the resort; Ibrahim the bird guide; and Jali, the kora player.

There are a few places we missed out on seeing last time that we'd like to go to, and we'd love to go back to Tumani Tenda (A19882218) again. I'd really like to take the (fairly expensive) river trip up the River Gambia, which we missed last year because the hotel didn't pass on their messages, meaning we the boat went without us. I'm also looking forward to seeing the wonderful birdlife again, and with a bit more time to prepare this year I've already ordered the guidebook.

Last year, we took a load of football shirts with us to give out as gifts, and they were well appreciated. We also bought a mattress for Fatima, who was sleeping on a concrete floor on rags in a shack with her seven children - her parents slept in the room next door, and the whole place was no bigger than our lounge - and a football for the kids. I'd really like to do something similar this year, and for a start we'll be taking a suitcase of old clothes for Fatima's family, and a portable radio for the lads on the beach.

It's nice to think we'll be a bit more prepared this year, and as you can probably tell I'm really forward to it.

If you missed them last year, the photos from our first trip are at http://skankyrichholiday.fotopic.net/c1188318.html

I'm sure you'll have a great time.

Jolly good!!!!!!!!!!!!!! For your good selves & The Gambia.

If you're taking stuff, in my experience, s are much appreciated, exercise books too, both are light & easy to carry & may make the world of difference between a kid giving up on school or not.

Have fun; send me a postcard!

zdt

Sounds like a cracking idea 'rich, although I can't think why you wouldn't want a nice bed and breakfast on't Blackpool seafront at this time of the year

Bracing? I should coco!

Blackpool? Why didn't I think of that?? You're wasted you should work as some kind of holiday adviser. Maybe get your own daytime TV show...

What to give is an interesting one, Terri. The problem with giving things out ad hoc to individuals is that it does encourage begging - Nepali villages ring out to the cry of 'bonbon-pen-one-rupee?' - and that the actual benefits are debatable. A pen and an exercise book given out at random probably won't actually be used in school, but will probably be sold or bartered - it's a small but valuable commodity to a poor family, particularly if eduction isn't compulsory, free or considered to be a priority. So I always feel there are better ways. When we went to Mingmar's village in Nepal, for example, we did take a pile of exercise books and pencils, but we gave them to the school's headmaster - along with, very colonially, a cricket set

In The Gambia, the situation is that children get free education between the ages of 7 and 13, but many families can't afford the cost of buying uniforms to take advantage of this. Fatima's family is a good example; she works as a fruit-seller on the beach, working from a sort of official fruit-selling centre with a dozen or so other women. It's very competitive, and she only makes a few quid a day in the tourist season, and nothing outside it. As a widow, she's supporting her seven children and two elderly parents on this, and she can't even consider buying anything beyond food. Hell, she didn't even have a mattress when we met her. So the kids don't go to school for want of nothing more than a few clothes. I have to admit that I cried after giving tem their football. They'd never had one before. I couldn't imagine a childhood that was so desperate. Boys kick footballs around. That's what boys are for. When I took the ball out of the taxi and kicked it up in the air, they just stood and watched for a moment, waiting for it to come down, then ran around the yard excitedly chasing it. And I thought to myself, '*now* they're children'.

I'm digressing. I think I might organise a couple of raffles in the hotel before we go and see if I can cobble together a bit of a war chest for them, so I have some money to spend on the family as a whole and some to spend on the children. But it's very difficult to sit here in the UK and imagine what they might actually need, because things like mattresses and footballs never occur to you when you yourself have far more than everything you need.

How very true. The only way to find out is to ask people, for instance, in Malawi, they were football crazy, but made perfectly adequate footballs from plastic bags discarded by idiotic tourits on the beach, apparently, such was the level of skill of the village football maker, he could provide different type balls for different seasons, dust, mud, barefoot or with sorta shoes etc..

But they really, really needed & exercise books, the schools were prepared to be negotiable on uniforms, so long as the colour was an approximation & the kids were clean & neat as possible (ie: taking education seriously: no room for time wasters in a class of 100 under a baobab tree!)

I don't know The Gambia, giving direct to the Headteacher works in a country which is relatively non-corrupt, in others, the Head is in the pay of Lord knows which gangmaster & would have the lot snatched & sold before any of the kids so much as saw them. It's really difficult when you're not permanently there to know what's best..

When i lived in Malawi, i had a housemaid (!!!!) because she met us on arrival at our "allocated house" & announced

"I am Lilian, i am your Nanny"

"But i don't have any children!"

"But you have a & ; i look after them"

"i don't have a or !"

"yes you do, the last guy left them behind, i've been feeding them, i also have to feed 7 kids, one of which was a from a previous employer, she's blond & needs to go to a "white" type school. Plus i live here. You will take me on please: one sack of mealie meal & pens & paper for my daughter."

Obviously, i did, plus her Uncle (), cousin (gardener) other cousin (general wanderer around/odd job boy) other cousin (watchman: ie; got to sleep in a nice warm hut all night)....they got paid what we would think was peanuts, but to the family meant the chance to educate the kids, keep their dignity & sleep well; knowing that they wouldn't starve if the crops failed (which they do, often)

But back in UK; i got all sorts of crap from "them down the pub" for exploiting the locals!!!!!!!! Quite the opposite in reality, the only way up for them is by working.

zdt

"the whole place was no bigger than our lounge"

You do have to admit though - you have a very large lounge! I think my whole ground floor would fit in your lounge (although admittedly I only have to share with J and I do have an upstairs.

Yes, I suppose it is more of a banqueting hall than a lounge

I'm glad you've chosen The Gambia.

When you said in your first post about "unfinished business there" I wondered if you meant driving there with a left-hand-drive car and getting it auctioned for charity. I've spent way too much time over the last few months wondering about a totally sane decision to _not_ do that (if you remember) and am following the field reports of the folk on http://www.plymouth-banjul.co.uk/ . I wondered if the Plymouth-Banjul would be cancelled like the Paris-Dakar has been, due to terrorist threats in Mauritania directly against the rally.

Which brings me back to "I'm glad you've chosen The Gambia". There are some places in the world where a football and a mattress can make a big difference, and you, Rich, are one of those people who gets on a goes to these places and makes a big difference, and I applaud you for it.

Paff

Yes, that's a bit of an ongoing mad idea, Paff. My cousin saw some thing with Ozzy Osbourne's son doing a similar trip to Mongolia, and suddenly the idea is a pretty cool one. So it might happen. He was worried about our lack of knowledge 'of cars', but I pointed out (quite succinctly, I thought) that you don't need to know all about cars. You just need to know everything there is to know about *one* car. Much easier

Mind you, some of those stories are pretty worrying, in a way. Losing two out of six cars in the desert, running out of tyres, that sort of thing. Tell you what, I thrive on that. Give me a crisis and I'll find a roadside to sit by, smoking a cigarette and making tea over a little burner until I think of something. If I don't think of anything, at least everyone's got tea. No panic.

I remember mentioning to Ðeep Ðoo Ðoo that the only reason I didn't get on with Cyprus was the people. They weren't unpleasant or unfriendly, but the line between visitor and local was very distinct. People were happy to chat to an extent, but I found them quite guarded, and I found I didn't really know anything at all about people despite seeing them day after day. The Gambia is quite the opposite; everyone wants to get to know you, and although that is certainly partly financially motivated, a genuinely friendly smile is quite a different one to that of a salesman. People do come up to you constantly around the resorts, trying to sell you stuff you don't want, trying to get you into restaurants and often trying to scam you, but you do get the sense that even without your money they'd still want to have a chat. Most tourists don't even give them the time of day, so if you sit on the beach and make attaya with them you genuinely feel you're making friends for life. It's also a great education; brewing attaya takes a good couple of hours, and so you sit and talk and relax, and other people see what you're doing and come along and join you for a chat and a glass. You just kind of sit and talk a bit and smile, but you get an immense sense of belonging just for sharing something so small, for having made a little time. It says something very exact and perfect about relationships with other people, and I'm not absolutely sure what. The nearest experience I've ever had to that has been times I've shared with good people around the campfire, and it feels like something we've almost lost. I don't feel the same in a pub or restaurant with my mates, and I can never put my finger on why.


'Which brings me back to "I'm glad you've chosen The Gambia". There are some places in the world where a football and a mattress can make a big difference, and you, Rich, are one of those people who gets on a goes to these places and makes a big difference, and I applaud you for it.'

Thank you, Paff. That means an awful lot to me, you know. There was a moment when it became 'unfinished business', when I realised that a lot of people don't have a clue. We'd been past a Spanish restaurant on a couple of occasions and, just out of interest, decided to give it a go one night. It was the same day we took the mattress and football around to Fatima. It was towards the end of our holidays and I was a little overwhelmed; I'd see kids scavenging on rubbish dumps on TV, but never in real life, and I was having a hard time marrying the beauty of the country and the friendliness of the people with the harrowing poverty just outside the resorts. We'd almost finished our meal, and were just waiting for the bill.

Anyway, behind me was a large family with a particularly loud matriarch who was quite happily and loudly telling the waiter how much she hated the touts. How they were scum, how they were always trying to rip her off, sell her things, take her out on trips. How she would never be coming back to The Gambia. How she's been all over Spain; to Mallorca, Tenerife, Benidorm, Torremolinos, and never been treated like this before. They were thieves, robbers and conmen, and she hated every one and wished she'd never come.

I mumbled something with low eyes. E looked at me, concerned; she hadn't heard me properly, but she knew something was up.

'They haven't got anything', I said, loudly. 'Nothing'.

As the table behind me quietened, I reminded E about *our* break. I told her about the good fortune we had in meeting Ibrahim, the bird guide, who'd been quietly studying birds since he was a small boy and had approached us on the basis that I appeared to have binoculars. As a result of our chat, we'd been all over looking at incredible birds, and E had even started to see the appeal of birdwatching. He could call over 300 birds, and had taken us to see ospreys fishing and eagles soaring - his expertise had been invaluable. All that from a tout.

And then there was Bob. Bob had never made a damn penny out of us - we never ate in the restaurant he worked for - but he kept an eye out for us in his local bar. The bar was right next to the hotel complex and wasn't much to look at. It was full of touts and bumsters day and night, but it had a slightly chaotic character, and we loved it. It was quite the opposite of the sanitised tourist bars. And because we'd said hi to Bob on the first day, he looked out for us. If anyone outstayed their welcome, he chased them off; or he'd walk us home 'just in case'; or he'd fix us up with cheap taxis. And so in what ing way had he ripped us off?

By this point, two of the waiters had come out to listen in, and the table behind us was silent. I had my audience.

I talked quietly about the day, about how excited Fatima had been about going to buy her mattress. And the taxi guy who had argued with the 'tourist taxi guards' who were meant to ensure that we paid huge fares for being white, and eventually got them to waive the excess after explaining our mission. I talked about how touched I was about Fatima's dignity and strength. How I couldn't imagine sleeping on rags on a concrete floor every night with every spare inch of floor space covered by a child. How I couldn't imagine facing the world for yet another day knowing I couldn't provide for my children, even in terms of just giving them food and clothing. How I couldn't imagine being 12 and never having owned a football. So if you have a chance of making a fiver from a European who has paid hundreds of pounds to come to your country, you're going to, aren't you? If the profit on a necklace you sell on the beach amounts to a days wage's, you'd give it a try, eh?

We left after a couple of complimentary brandies