In the Gambia, aka the Ganjier, it is not wise to leave one’s travelling partner unattended for too long. Invariably on one’s return, said partner is spread-eagled unconscious, or surrounded by bumsters, but fortunately, never both at the same time. Yet. It would be a simpler matter to motivate a junkie quadraplegic to become a cheerleader that to raise my half-Spanish, half-mad compadre after finding him surrounded by roaches.
But last night was different. I had gone for the daily massage, and topped it off with a new haircut, leaving Ramon alone for a staggering two hours. On my return to the palace we are staying in, I was shocked to find him awake, and in fine fettle, surrounded as he was, by empty beer bottles. All this before we were to go on a “Bar Safari” – a ruse by the tour operator reps to get backhanders from local bar owners in return for dragging pink and red Europeans into their establishments, one after another. Two coaches were provided to allow a “hassle-free” experience when moving between bars, i.e. to keep the bumsters at bay. Hassle eventually came our way from a bumster of a different kind. There was a noticeable colour polarity separating holiday-makers from the local hookers, and despite the crowd of pissheads being fiercely and overtly heterosexual, Ramon managed to get hit on by the only overt homosexual I have seen in Gambia. Ramon then palmed him off in my direction. Not literally, you understand, but rather by saying that I would be interested in talking to him. He had big muscles, but was not really my type, being a bloke and all.
After a bit of staggering between bars and buses, we were missing the attention of the local hasslers, and were plotting on better ways of dealing with touts and hustlers. Suggestions from myself included shouting, “That heroin you sold me last night was shit!”, or simply telling them to go away while burning the local currency. Ramon was a little more extreme, suggesting rounding them up and baseball batting them to death, or shooting them. It was probably best that he had worked his way through our stock of fireworks earlier in the evening, or there would have been ugly scenes with large bangers, burning notes, coin schrapnel, and bleeding beggars.
The morning found our palace a little sullied, and Ramon retching noisily in the bathroom between the hours of four and nine. After the cacophonous stomach-emptying had carried on for five hours, I awoke. Just in time for me to get on a quad-bike beach and bush safari, which thankfully did not involve shots in a series of bars, or smoking cheeba with chimps en route. The journey was quite tremendous for working off hangovers – both mine and that of a foul-mouthed Brummie from the bar-crawl, with the thoughtful attachment of a cool-box full of fluids to one of the vehicles. After four hours of dirt and spinning wheels, I realised that I had left Ramon unattended for too long, and returned. Luckily he was still where he was left, prostrate and moaning, half off and half on his bed.
I’m off to check on him now, to make sure he hasn’t thrown any explosives into the pool, and if I lose him at the airport later, I hope he doesn’t get carted away and destroyed by security staff with a controlled explosion.