The wondrous nature of people

Cake solves everything

The news, and the characters within, aren’t exactly charming me, right at this point in history. I have to select films about the world’s most dangerous jails on YouTube just to cheer myself up for a while.

Walking the vehicle deck of the ferry in the midday sun (pic: self)

I was talking with a photographer friend recently who was considering switching their creative focus from people to animals because animals just seem like, well, nicer beings. I do see their dilemma.

Sometimes.

I meant to tell them a story about the nature of people, by way of a tale I’m sure I shared when this podcast was called Reflections, or perhaps on one of my myriad other podcasts. I probably need a line of merch, a T-shirt that says, “Stop me if I’ve told you this before,” though I’m stumbling on as I hope they may hear (read) this, and I’m sure it’s fresh to them.

Whenever I am a bit down about people, my mind wanders to being savaged by a giant African wasp.

“How giant Neale, how giant?”

Alright, since you ask, it was as big as a modest professional camera drone, one of those types that carries a proper camera. It made the same buzzing sound level and was sporting a sting like a hyperwhatsit needle. It was so sizeable it actually cast a proper imposing shadow, so it did, in the high sun of an afternoon crossing on a ferry in West Africa.

This ferry crossing links Banjul, the capital of The Gambia, with a trading town called Barra on the north bank of the River Gambia. Past this point, it’s the wide-open waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

It’s been operating, they say, in one form or another for fifty or so years, and it transports all of life, for all the year.

Well, I say all, ferries occasionally stop running entirely, developing faults mid-passage, and trigger biblical queues stretching for miles in intense heat. There’s a certain amount of jeopardy involved, it seems to me, as a visitor, where this voyage of 30 to 45 minutes is concerned. And I love it.

It is one of my favourite things to do in this part of the world as a photographer; it’s intense, not just in terms of the heat, but by way of the sheer amount of travellers, lorries, cars, buses, motorbikes, goats, and chickens, the latter of which will occasionally break free and run in all directions.

The wondrous nature of people (pic: self)

It sounds a little like the sort of overly nostalgic experience you’d expect to find within some kind of Jules Verne narrative. I’m truly trying not to sound like I’m viewing this through the eyes of an alien who’d so easily say something rather crass, comparing it to a shiny new ferry I recently took three thousand miles away, routed between Southampton and the Isle of Wight, the kind of ferry that transports all of the above, only without livestock roaming the ship, and with a Costa Coffee shop and childrens’ play area on the second deck.

For many Gambians who use the Banjul-to-Barra ferry, it isn’t a novelty or a tourist attraction at all. It’s a lifeline transporting essential goods, which, otherwise, if taken by road, would be a 200-mile journey upriver, finding a suitable weight-bearing bridge, adding a further eight hours to the trip.

It also has, I think, its own micro-economy, this ferry, in that there are traders selling fruit, bottles of water, sunglasses, all manner of stuff that’s sugary, and I’m sure I’ve seen lotto ticket vendors too. Deals are done on the vehicle deck, also, I hear, particularly when it comes to the animals aboard. It can feel like a travelling market at times.

Photographically, it’s rich with pictorial gifts. On busy trips, which are practically every single one, you have to squeeze your way between buses and lorries, hoping that the brakes have been properly applied. People are standing, sitting and lying down on every deck. From memory, there are three essentially, when you include the subdeck between vehicles and the topside. It’s an intimate experience. English is the official language of The Gambia, and because there are several major languages spoken, including Mandinka, Wolof, Fula, Jola and Serer, English often becomes the shared middle ground, especially on this ferry, but, I did find that using the word “Abaraka,” was a universally understood expression of ‘excuse me,’ or ‘sorry,’ as you stepped on the umpteenth foot while trying to get from one end to the other.

On one of my crossings (I must have used this route now a dozen times), as I fired back and forth, making my pictures of life in the 45 minutes I had, I remember a man grabbing my arm firmly in what I thought was going to be an intense moment of negotiation and a thousand Abarakas.

“Come,” he said, “sit down with me, have some water, and tell me about your country.”

This is what I love about this ferry. The people. And this is where I am going with this story.

Oh, just in case it ever comes up in a pub quiz, there are now only two countries on the planet officially using ‘The’ before the country’s name. The Gambia, and The Bahamas. You may well hear The Lebanon, The Netherlands, The Congo, The Maldives and of late The Ukraine. Please feel free to correct all and everyone who does that.

Anyway, where were we?

Yes, people.

There is of course, always a balancing act for visitors from Britain, because history follows us whether we mention it or not, and in The Gambia you’ll sometimes hear white visitors affectionately, I hope, referred to as “toubabs,” a word used across parts of West Africa for Europeans or western foreigners, though usually with curiosity or humour rather than hostility.

While I’m loading you up for the West African round in your local pub quiz, “Toubab” has nothing to do with “two bob” in origin, an old English money term. That’s just one of those accidental sound-alike coincidences. The word already existed in West African languages long before modern British tourists started arriving with sunburn and cargo shorts.

That said, there’s probably a joke in there somewhere because “two bob” in old British slang meant something cheap or of low quality, and after a day in forty-degree heat trying to negotiate the Barra ferry, many of us toubabs do begin to look slightly two-bob ourselves.

So when somebody says, “Ah, toubab!” they usually just mean, “Ah, foreign white visitor.”

Children especially use it almost like, “Hey! Tourist!”

Anyway, where were we again?

“People Neale, people!”

Yes people. On one of my more recent voyages, in a particularly intense heat, having photographed across the ferry and only fifteen or so minutes from docking in Barra, I found a seat on the most populated deck of the vessel, real estate that isn’t always easy to find. I plonked myself down, saying “Abaraka” no doubt to the person my not insignificant posterior had squeezed up against, and surveyed all around me, taking in too, the salty mixture of sea smells, sweat, and the diesel-infused smoke of all the engines, both ferry and vehicles, starting up.

The scene was perfect. I was, it seemed, the only alien, as it were, and I felt I’d been accepted in that nobody was paying an ounce of attention to me, or my camera.

I removed my hat to fan myself in the relenting midday sun, and a mere second or three later, buzz, then BANG!

It was as if somebody had spent an hour sharpening an HB pencil into the finest point you could muster, and then, with clenched fist holding firmly on to it, driven it into the top of my head.

This was not a time to be brave and ‘toubably’ stiff upper-lipped. I simply wailed.

The man next to me jumped out of his skin, as they say, and started swatting the air, as this huge, horrible, angry, tourist-hating flying box of venom looked like it wanted more.

It was like an angry Millwall Football Club fan of the 70s hooligan era, shouting, “Come on then, Son, ‘ave a go if you ‘fink you can, you want some? You really want some?”

There was a lot of shouting in many dialects all of a sudden, and though some thought it quite funny that the toubab had been stung by a big wasp, that amusement soon turned to concern, so shown by their eyes widening as they saw a huge egg like lump rising up from the top of my bonce like the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey, (second mention this week), only pinker, sweatier, and with considerably less dignity attached to it.

I found a warm collective of people immediately, all asking after my well-being, though I couldn’t understand most of what was being asked.

Help was dispatched by my friendly neighbour, who seemed to be waving to someone.

That someone arrived quick-smart, and though I might have been expecting some kind of person sporting a first aid box, it wasn’t.

It was the cake lady. One of the vendors on board.

She seemed to believe, that cake was the answer and administered the largest bagful of cake she had on her, enthusing me to eat it, though I wondered also whether she wanted me to rub it on my wound.

I reached for some cash, and, feeling, by now, also a tad groggy, she simply pushed the money back to me, gave me another bag of cake, and shouted at someone to hand me a bottle of water.

We couldn’t converse in English, so we conversed in cake, it seemed, as she held on to one of my hands and cleared a space around me, in case I should, I guess, need a lie down.

As it happened, I didn’t. There’s still a level of stoicism I can sport, I felt.

We docked, and everyone departed, the ones more immediate to my seat, giving me a knowing nod, a few now chuckling too, pointing at the lump on my head. I waited, not keen to join the usual funny photogenic disembarking mêlée for once, and the cake lady sat with me, eventually leading me off the ferry and waving me onward.

Last week, as a by-the-by, I had a consultation with a nurse after one of my ‘well man’ meet-up appointments, as they, and this is for another day, guide me gently on the path back to eating more wholesome foods, quote: “For my own good.”

The practise specialist was guiding me through a do, don’t and don’t even consider it list of foods, and stopped at the column simply labelled sweet tooth with a question mark.

“This,” she said, “Is a column of foods I’d rather you stop eating for a while, unless it’s a special occasion.”

It was an everything in moderation conversation.

“Hmmm, cake,” I lamented, looking at it on the naughty list.

“Oh, you can have it now and then,” she said, adding something along the lines of, “There are times for cake.”

I thought at that moment, as I genuinely do often, of the cake lady, and the wondrous nature of people, as I am indeed once again today doing.

“Cake, it seems, solves everything.”

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