At the exact point where it surrenders to the Atlantic Ocean, the river Gambia narrows.
That's where we cross it, departing from the port of the Gambian capital, Banjul.
The ferry makes the connection between the south and north of the nation, divided entirely by the river, with 1100 km of extension, one of the longest and widest in West Africa.
As almost always, it goes to the pine cone, within a limit of people and cargo that, faced with terrible shipwrecks in its waters and offshore, the authorities were forced to respect.
On deck, passengers occupy every available seat, back to back, knee to knee.
They continue standing, playfully, against the threshold fences of the boat. In spite of the tightness, dozens of sellers go through the spaces between rows. They sell peanuts and cashews, sanitary masks, cell phone equipment and the like.
Others promote hairdressers and an incredible portable naturalistic pharmacy.
Half an hour of navigation later, already on the opposite bank, we see a fleet of pirogues, side by side on a sandy beach, below a hut that, at intervals, merges with a line of coconut trees, palm trees, and other trees. tropical.
On the northeast edge of the coast, we can still see the walls of a fortification.
Among massive baobab trees that the dry season has stripped, hides the emblematic Bullen fort.
Landing at Barra, on the other side of the Gambia River
A large portico welcomes us: “Welcome to Barra".
A crowd of passengers disembarks onto a walled road that takes them deeper into this town opposite Banjul.
Even written in English, the only official language in Gambia, the message incorporates the secular Portuguese name of the region: “Barra”, instead of the Niumi that preceded it.
It was the navigators sent by Infante D. Henrique, who were responsible for the Kingdom of Niumi existing around the mouth of the river Gambia, becoming known as the Kingdom of Barra, later, just as Barra.
In 1446, during his fourth trip along the west coast of Africa, with the mission to reach black Africa, Nuno Tristão entered at the mouth of a river in the area, there is still controversy as to whether the Gambia, or another further south.
For him up he ventured. While you could. About eighty natives (estimated to be Niumi) who followed in more than ten canoes surrounded and attacked the boat that had been transhipped, with twenty or so men.
They fired hundreds of poisoned arrows at the Portuguese.
Only four of the targets survived to, with great effort, return to Lagos and tell the tragedy. Nuno Tristão was not one of them.
With the ferry already preparing for the return to Banjul. We continue our own, incomparable, adventure.
Unsurprisingly, several “entrepreneurs” in the city approach us. Some are taxi drivers and sept-places.
Others, opportunists who profit from recruiting passengers toubab (read white) at inflated prices. We return to exasperation with the schemes of these "gambian men”, so known among outsiders for their business imagination and lack of scruples.
We got into an old VW Golf. We point to Albreda, 33km to the southeast and inland from Gambia.
And the Arrival in Albreda
There welcomes us Mrs. Aminata, the co-owner of the Kunta Kinteh Lodge where we were to stay overnight. Aminata is as white as possible. She has blue eyes, something Siamese.
Speak with a light british accent. However, dress grandmubas, traditional Gambian dresses full of frills and colors. And she's Muslim.
When we narrate to you the frenzy of garage (transport station) in Barra, Aminata says. “Around here, when they see white skin, they see money. It’s the same with me!”
Ms. Aminata, serve us lunch. A local guide doesn't even wait for us to finish. Sit down at the table. He does everything to get us to recruit him before others.
At that moment, we wanted to wander. Take in the visuals and atmosphere of the place. It's what we do.
We quickly found out about Albreda's double life, divided between the day-to-day life of the local fishing community and that of the residents who are dedicated to welcoming and accompanying visitors.
During the heat, a group of boatmen and guides chatted in the shade, next to the base of the pier that serves Albreda.
As we pass by, they interrupt the conversation to sell us their services.
We postpone them.
The UNESCO Memorial to the Slave Trade of Albreda
We appreciate theNever Again Monument”, an anti-slavery and modernist symbol with the head of planet Earth, the body of people and arms unfettered in the air.
Three erratic donkeys stop at its base, devouring a rare tender grass.
Four or five goats do the same, under two huge kapok trees. We pass by its roots, in search of the Slavery Museum.
We examine maps, explanatory panels and other items and learn a little more about the scourge that has haunted Africa for centuries.
Between Albreda and the ruins of São Domingos that we soon set out to find, we also go through the genesis of the European slave trade.
Lost in a riverside forest, these ruins and – although now almost imperceptible – those of the chapel in the center of Albreda, testify to the pioneering presence of the Portuguese in these lands, which the outcome of Nuno Tristão's expedition predicted would be treacherous.
The Return to West Africa and the Gambia River Exploration
Infante D. Henrique returned to the charge. A decade later, he sent two other navigators, the Venetian Alvise Cadamosto and the Genoese Antoniotto Usodimare.
In May 1456, avoiding too much exposure to the Niumi natives, they anchored next to a small island, about 3km off the coast of present-day Albreda.
There they will have buried André, a sailor who died on the voyage. After which they sought to establish contact.
In 1458, they were followed by Diogo Gomes.
Upon returning from a trip to the estuary of the Rio Grande de Geba (Guinea Bissau), the navigator from Lagos, anchored again on the newly named island of Santo André.
This incursion resulted in the acquisition of the island from tame (kings) local Mandinka and even his authorization for the fortified settlement of São Domingos.
The Portuguese bet on meddling in the gold routes that connected Timbuktu and the Upper Niger, through the Sahara, to the Moroccan coast. Instead of gold, they find slaves.
The Slave Trade Fostered by the Indigenous Kings
As they had done for centuries with Arab merchants and those from other parts of Africa, several Mandinka kings sought to trade prisoners of their wars with the Portuguese.
The Portuguese acceded.
Soon, they began to encourage the capture of African natives in greater numbers, for use by slaves in their different colonies, with emphasis on Brazil.
After the Iberian Union of 1580, the Spanish crown institutionalized the system of seating which enabled slave trade contracts with merchants from other nations.
In the XNUMXth and XNUMXth centuries, the French, Dutch, British, Kurdish, their private companies and greedy mercenaries took advantage of this breach in the Portuguese monopoly and annihilated Portuguese supremacy on the banks of the Gambia and on the surrounding coast.
the centered on Goree Island he was equally prolific.
Even so, until the XNUMXth century, pockets of Portuguese settlers persisted there.
The Refugees of No Return from the Guinean Civil War
Today, for different reasons, many inhabitants of the river come from the closest Portuguese-speaking region.
Returning from the ruins of São Domingos, we came across Mr. Eduardo, a Diola man, slender, dressed in an old Portuguese national team shirt and who still told the money in stories.
We understand each other in our Creole sketch and in Portuguese.
Eduardo explains to us that the Civil War of 1998-99 forced him to leave the north of Guinea Bissau.
Like so many other refugees in Senegal and The Gambia, he never returned.
Eduardo wanted to take us to the former island of Santo André. The tourist authorities assigned us another boatman.
Kunta Kinteh Memorial Island to Fort St. James
We reached the island in no time. There we wandered between the ruins of the fort and the naked baobabs that serve as sentinels.
In the following decades, like the river that surrounds it, the island changed its colonial power and often its name.
Until, in 1702, while consolidating their Senegambia, the British captured it and renamed it and the fort, St. James.
All successive colonial powers were involved in the slave trade.
In Albreda, partly under the large kapok trees, we come across the largest colonial building, the French-era CFAO (Administrator) building, restored, now used as a bar-restaurant which does not quite challenge the one run by Mrs. Aminata.
The British, who conquered the colony from the French, arrived in time to supply millions of slaves to the your West Indies and the USA.
Fast forward to 1807. The British voted to Abolish Slavery. They started to fight it.
For many years, slave traders of other nationalities sought to circumvent British anti-slavery action.
And, in Senegambia, in particular, the shots from the cannons of Fort Bullen in Barra with which the British aimed at the slave ships.
Fort Bullen is no longer just a tourist attraction. When we visited, not even that.
Three huge cows were frequenting it, lying among so many secular baobabs.
And yet, Africa suffers an unusual return of slavery. Migrants in search of Europe who find themselves trapped in Libya suffer it.
But not only.
