My trip to Gambia

https://youtu.be/oNcgb5IcAA8

Bakau village: Kachikally Crocodile Pool -Fishfactory - downtown Fashionshop (no pictures) - Djebméfactory

Bakau is a town on the Atlantic coast of Gambia, west of Gambia's capital city of Banjul. It is known for its botanical gardens, its crocodile pool Bakau Kachikally and for the beaches at Cape Point. Bakau is the first major suburb outside Banjul and the most developed town in the Gambia. Close to Bakau and Banjul is Gambia's largest city, Serrekunda. Legend has it that Bakau grew up around the holy crocodile pool in the central district of Bakau, Kachikally. Bakau itself was a small village at the turn of the 19th century and grew in importance as it became a favourite place for private residences of colonial administrators especially along the beautiful palm fringed beaches. Despite being a major town, the old village still exists and is run like any other in the Gambia with an 'Alkali' (similar to 'Mayor') and divided into Kabilos.Interestingly, there exists a much smaller village within the old village called Bakau Wasulung Kunda, indicating the migrant origins of its inhabitants. As people began to move out of Banjul, government allocated residential areas quickly sprung around the old village, acquiring new names in the process. What were farms of the local population became well planned suburbs filled with bungalows such as Fajara, New Town and Cape Point.

Kachikally Crocodile Pool

The Kachikally crocodile pool is located in the heart of Bakau about 10 miles (16 km) from the capital Banjul. It is one of three sacred crocodile pools used as sites for fertility rituals. [1] The others are Folonko in Kombo South and Berending on the north bank. The exact number of crocodiles is not known but it is estimated that there are about 80. All the animals are Nile crocodiles which can grow to 4.5 metres and live as long as a man. There have been reports of the presence of albino crocodiles, adding to the uniqueness of the place. Perhaps the most famous crocodile was Charlie, who like all other crocodiles was allowed to roam freely, and can be approached and touched by visitors. Crocodiles found in the wild are sometimes taken to and reared at the holy pools.

Fish Market Bakau

Much like the fishing village of Tanji, the fish market at Bakau is a vivid and sensuous experience, full of warmth and colour and is a glimpse into the authentic every day life of The Gambia. At the market you can watch the entire process, from the fish being brought into the market from the brightly coloured fishing boats, to the filleting process and eventually the smoking and packaging of the fish. And, of course, if you so wish, you can take some fish to be barbecued or cooked as you choose. As ever,  we also ask that you always maintain a respectful attitude towards the people and their work. You may find some people are against having their photos taken, so do ask before you start snapping away.

 https://youtu.be/0uecrCgVNqc

James Island - Kunta Kinté (Het eiland van de slavernij)

De tocht voor we aan kwamen op James Island, nam wel een paar uur in beslag... Vanuit Banjul namen de de boot (waarmee we 3,5u panne hadden op zee...), nadien reden we met een Jeep verder tot aan het eiland.

The first European visitors were Portuguese and they named it St. Andrews Island. The first European settlers on the island came from Duchy of Courland and Semigallia, a vassal state of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, who also had other colonial possessions in the area, though the English Crown had previously granted the island to two separate companies in 1588 and 1618. In 1651, the settlers built a fort that they named Jacob Fort after Jacob Kettler, the Duke of Courland, and used it as a trade base. The Dutch briefly held the fort from 1659 until the English captured it in 1661; the Dutch formally ceded the fort to the English in 1664.

Map of Fort James and James Island from 1755

The English renamed the island James Island and the fort Fort James after James, the Duke of York, later King James II of England. The chartered Royal Adventurers in Africa Company administered the territory, which initially used it for the gold and ivory trade, and later in the slave trade. On 1 August 1669, the Company sublet the administration to Gambia Adventurers. In 1684, the Royal African Company took over Gambia's administration. In 1695, the French captured Fort James after a battle with English sailors. In 1702, Fort James was definitively under British control. The fort was destroyed and rebuilt several times in this period, both in conflicts between the English and French and by pirates. On 13 June 1750 the Company of Merchants Trading in Africa assumed the administration of the Gambia. Between 1758 - 1779, the Gambia was part of British Senegambia

Ruins on the island

The Six-Gun Battery (1816) and Fort Bullen (1826), now included in the James Island UNESCO World Heritage Site and located on both sides of the mouth of the River Gambia, were built with the specific intent of thwarting the slave trade once it had become illegal in the British Empire after the passing of the Slave Trade Act in 1807. These sites along with the island itself were abandoned in 1870.

On 6 February 2011 it was renamed Kunta Kinteh Island to give the island a Gambian name.

Legacy 

As an important historical site in the West African slave trade, it is now listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, together with related sites including Albreda, Juffureh and Fort Bullen. James Island is suffering heavy erosion, and is now approximately 1/6 of the size during the time when the fort was active. Ruins of several of the British administrative buildings (including a single cell, apparently used to house the most troublesome captives), a small jetty and a number of skeletal baobab trees remain. The ruins have been stabilised and protected by a capping. Because the island is low-lying, during high tide and storms sometimes waves will beat against some of the surviving structures. 

Kunta Kinte, a character described in Alex Haley's book and TV series Roots, has become associated with James Island. He was one of 98 slaves that in 1767 the slave ship Lord Ligonier brought to Annapolis, Maryland

Story

Kunta Kinte (1750-1822; also known as "Toby Waller") was a Gambian–born American slave. The outline of his life story was the basis for the novel Roots: The Saga of an American Family by American author Alex Haley, and the television miniseries Roots,based on the book. Haley described his book as faction: a mixture of fact and fiction. After Haley's book became nationally famous, American author Harold Courlander noted that the section describing Kinte's life was apparently taken from Courlander's book The African. Haley at first dismissed the charge, but later issued a public statement affirming that Courlander's book had been the source, and Haley attributed the error to a mistake of one of his assistant researchers. The character in the miniseries was portrayed as a youth by LeVar Burton and as an older man by John Amos.

Kinte was born circa 1750 in the Mandinka village of Juffure, The Gambia. One day in 1767, while Kunta was searching for wood to make a drum, four men chased him, surrounded him and took him captive. Kunta awoke to find himself blindfolded, gagged, bound, and a prisoner of white men. He and others were put on the slave ship the Lord Ligonier for a three-month Middle Passage voyage to North America.

America

Kunta survived the trip to Maryland and was sold to a Virginia plantation owner in Spotsylvania County, Master Waller, who renamed him "Toby." He rejected the name imposed by his owners and refused to speak to others. After being recaptured during the last of his four escape attempts, the slave catchers gave him a choice: he would be castrated or have his right foot cut off. He chose to have his foot cut off, and the men cut off the front half of his right foot. As the years passed, Kunta resigned himself to his fate and also become more open and sociable with his fellow slaves, while never forgetting who he was or where he came from.

Family

Kunta married a fellow slave named Bell Waller and they had a daughter which they named Kizzy (Keisa, in Mandinka), which in Kunta's native tongue means "to stay put" (he named her this to protect her from being sold away). When Kizzy was in her late teens, she was sold away to North Carolina when her master discovered that she had written a fake traveling pass for a young slave boy with whom she was in love (she had been taught to read and write secretly by Missy Anne, the secret daughter of the plantation owner). Her new owner immediately raped her and fathers her only child, George, who spends his life with the tag "Chicken George", because of his assigned duties of tending to his master's cockfighting birds.In the novel, Kizzy never learns her parents' fate. She spends the remainder of her life as a field hand on the Lea plantation in North Carolina. In the miniseries, she is taken back to visit the Reynolds plantation later in life. She discovers that her mother was sold off to another plantation and that her father died of a broken heart two years later, in 1822. She finds his grave, where she crosses out his slave name Toby from the tombstone and writes his original name Kunta Kinte instead. The rest of the book tells of the generations between Kizzy and Alex Haley, describing their suffering, losses and eventual triumphs in America. Alex Haley claimed to be a seventh-generation descendant of Kunta Kinte.

Sources

Haley's sources for the origins of Kinte were oral family tradition and a man he found in The Gambia named Kebba Kanga Fofana, who claimed knowledge of the Kintes. He described them as a family in which the men were blacksmiths, descended from a marabout named Kairaba Kunta Kinte, originally from Mauritania. Haley quoted Fofana as telling him: "About the time the king's soldiers came, the eldest of these four sons, Kunta, went away from this village to chop wood and was never seen again."

Influence

There is an annual Kunta Kinte Heritage Festival held in Maryland.[Kunta Kinte also inspired a reggae rhythm of the same name, performed by artists including The Revolutionaries, and Mad Professor, and an album, Kunta Kinte Roots by Ranking Dread. There is also a song of the same name. In the Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Will Smith's character says, in regard to being punished, "Why don't you just do me like Kunta Kinte and chop off my foot?" On the January 19, 2002 broadcast of Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update sketch, host Jimmy Fallon, while reporting on ABC's refusal to show the Roots 25th anniversary special, gave a quick recap on the Roots story, stating: "For those of you who don’t remember Roots, it follows a saga of Kunta Kinte from young African tribesman, to slavery, to becoming literate, and eventually being the top of his class at Starfleet Academy".

Local pictures: visit and helping school(s), local people, etc.