South Gambia & Roots Tour
South Gambia
On this one-day trip to the south of Gambia, traveling in an open jeep so that you can see the beautiful landscape along the way, we’ll make five stops.
Our first stop in Tanji is for a camel safari along the beach. On arrival you’ll have a cold drink while you get acquainted with ‘your’ camel. Since even they have their favorite drinks, you can take a picture of one enjoying a Coca Cola. The safari, which lasts about 45 minutes, takes you past fishing boats and local people busy with salting and smoking the day’s catch.
Next stop a reptile farm with a large assortment of reptiles native to Gambia.
Then on to Paradise Beach on the beautiful quiet coast in Sanyang. Djembee drummers will entertain you while you lunch, and then you can plunge into the sea to cool off. There are changing cabins available, so be sure to bring your bathing suits!
On then to Tanin, an authentic fishers’ village. You’ll see how the fishermen bring in their catch and how it’s sorted by size. The catch is then loaded onto trucks for export or to be dried for local consumption.
Last stop is on the border with Senegal and then home.
Roots Tour (James Island)
On this tour you’ll follow in the footsteps of Alex Haley to see where the legend of Kunta Kinte has its roots, visiting all the places and monuments related to Gambia’s history of slavery. The tour starts at Juffure, Kunta Kinte’s birthplace, and goes on by boat to the ruins on James Island, end station for slaves before they were shipped to the Americas and Cuba.
James Island has been called the point of no return, the place where men were separated from their wives and women, from their children. Slavery took the lives of at least eight million of the thirty-three million Africans who were captured, tormented and sold like animals. Engraved into a monument erected in Juffure, to symbolize freedom and the hope that black and white can live together in peace, are a broken chain and the words “NEVER AGAIN”.
Since slavery played such a huge and terrible role in the history of The Gambia and, indeed, all of Africa, this is a tour everyone should take, whether their roots are here or not. Jermain Jackson, Michael’s brother, visited Juffure and paid for the dusty red path that leads to the village.
