{"id":774,"date":"2005-09-21T13:17:15","date_gmt":"2005-09-21T20:17:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/?p=774"},"modified":"2005-09-21T13:17:15","modified_gmt":"2005-09-21T20:17:15","slug":"trans-gambian-highway-revisited","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/2005\/09\/21\/trans-gambian-highway-revisited\/","title":{"rendered":"Trans-Gambian Highway, Revisited"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/newsimg.bbc.co.uk\/media\/images\/40825000\/gif\/_40825284_the_gambia_map203.gif\" border=\"0\" vspace=\"7\" hspace=\"7\" align=\"left\"\/> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.livejournal.com\/users\/lockehart\">Lane<\/a> pointed me to this <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/world\/africa\/4267846.stm\">article<\/a> on the BBC site talking about the famed (well, famed to me, anyway) Trans-Gambian Highway, which I had the &#8220;pleasure&#8221; of crossing a few times during my s\u00c3\u00a9jour in Senegal. <\/p>\n<p>Apparently there&#8217;s been quite a bruhaha going down across the River Gambia. (Senegalese newspaper <i>Le Soleil&#8217;s<\/i> latest <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lesoleil.sn\/article.php3?id_article=3137\">article<\/a> [FR].)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/world\/africa\/4267846.stm\">BBC<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p><i>The Trans-Gambian Highway, which runs further inland, has effectively been closed to cross-border traffic for over a month by Senegalese transporters protesting against the sudden doubling of charges to cross the river on the small and unreliable ferry. <\/p>\n<p>The BBC&#8217;s Elizabeth Blunt says that Senegalese hate the power Gambia has over them, and a clearly exasperated President Abdoulaye Wade this week suggested three ways to break the deadlock.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Gambia should build a bridge over the river\n<\/li>\n<li>Senegal could operate its own ferry\n<\/li>\n<li>Senegal could even, he suggested, tunnel right under Gambia &#8211; which is only about 35km wide.\n<p>He pointed out that there are plenty of much longer tunnels in the world, and claimed that China had offered to help build it.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><\/i><\/p>\n<p>Firstly, let me say that this is hardly a &#8220;highway.&#8221; This is a two-lane paved road that is so messed up in many spots that drivers would rather drive on dirt and brush than brave the 8,000 potholes that riddle the road.<\/p>\n<p>I got stopped at the border and had to pay 1000 CFA (about $2) as a transit visa fee. It&#8217;s quite possible that that was just a bribe, but the Gambian guard seemed pretty intent on making us pay. Even my Singaporean travel buddy, Lucienne, had to pay it &#8212; despite the fact that in theory members of the British Commonwealth don&#8217;t need visas to travel to the respective countries. <\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve crossed the River Gambia four times at this spot and never had a problem, although I will say that this place has the dirtiest restrooms I have ever seen. Once, when headed north I <i>really<\/i> had to go to the bathroom (#2). Being that toilet paper is something that isn&#8217;t very common in these parts, I quickly bought a packet of tissues (<i>mouchoirs<\/i>), which are readily available from the street vendors on the south side of the river. I grabbed them and took off for the bathroom. <\/p>\n<p>When I got barely through the doorway, the stench of feces was overwhelming. I looked around and across the stalls of Turkish-style (squatter) toilets were piles of shit &#8212; many of which had missed the hole by a good foot or so, and dozens of flies clearly having the time of their lives. I picked the least filthy one and took care of business, but it was pretty clear that it hadn&#8217;t been cleaned in at least several days, and perhaps longer. So all you people who think you&#8217;ve been in dirty public restrooms &#8212; go check out the one on the southside of the River Gambia.<\/p>\n<p>In other news, I had to send my iBook to the Apple repair facility in Memphis to get the screen replaced under warranty. I was expecting it to be out for a week, which for an Internet junkie like me is a lifetime. But I sent it out at about 4 pm on Monday from my office here in San Francisco, and off it went. About two hours ago it was returned to me, with a new screen and everything. Kudos to Apple for the under 48 hour turnaround time, including a transcontinental trip.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lane pointed me to this article on the BBC site talking about the famed (well, famed to me, anyway) Trans-Gambian Highway, which I had the &#8220;pleasure&#8221; of crossing a few times during my s\u00c3\u00a9jour in Senegal. Apparently there&#8217;s been quite a bruhaha going down across the River Gambia. (Senegalese newspaper Le Soleil&#8217;s latest article [FR].) BBC: The Trans-Gambian Highway, which runs further inland, has effectively been closed to cross-border traffic for over a month by Senegalese transporters protesting against the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5,7,147,169],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-aside","hentry","category-africa","category-apple","category-personal","category-senegal","post_format-post-format-aside"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4uks-cu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}