End of Rainy Season

Rainy season has finished now. It ended as quickly as it started. The humidity started to disappear and the heavy showers stopped. The downside is that the days feel a lot hotter to me now and the deep sand is dry and it is hard to ride my bike down some paths. It is nice however to have things stop being so mouldy. The power is a little better now but the black outs still happen regularly for long times. I still haven’t tried the internet in Brikama again which is why my blogging is much less.

The seasons in the Gambia seem to be even clearer than at home. I think the weather at home is more obvious – the Gambia seems to only have really wet or really dry and is basically really hot all the time. What is very distinct is the fruits and vegetables and the changes in seasons. When I first arrived oranges were everywhere! You could stop on any street corner and buy a peeled orange for 2 Dalasi and suck on it and squeeze the juice out. About three months after I arrived all the oranges disappeared and they have only just started to reappear. Bananas are around most of the time but there availability is noticeably easier or harder to get. At the moment there are plenty of bananas around but a few months ago it was more difficult to find them.

In late June Mangoes were everywhere and around late August a bitterer version of the mango appeared. It is smaller and with a runnier flesh and lots of smaller seeds. You fill it with sugar and eat it – it makes you screw up your face but the after taste is really nice. When they came out the mangoes suddenly became harder to find and now it is hard to find them at all.

During Mango season it was also really difficult to find tomatoes, it is just becoming easier and lettuce also has been hard to find for a while. Avocados came about two months ago but were only a very short season and the cool green webbing fruit that Lucia made the drink from has been around for about a month.

The peanuts are really interesting to watch. At first you normally could only buy shelled peanuts either roasted or roasted and salted. Now the fresh peanuts are being harvested (since about two months ago) and you can nearly only buy peanuts in the shell. There are a few different versions of peanuts – you can buy them fresh, boiled in their shell or roasted. They roast them in their shell in dished over charcoal by mixing the peanuts in with sand that holds the heat and helps to roast them. It is really interesting.

Pineapple makes an occasional appearance in the market but it must be imported as it doesn’t appear to have a season, as with apples. At the moment watermelon is very common. It seems to be imported in trucks from Senegal because the spots where you buy the watermelons are really easy to recognize by the enormous pile of watermelons which is usually covered in a layer of big black flies. You can buy watermelon in the market in slices, it is usually covered in plastic so it isn’t covered in flies. You can also buy slices of fresh coconut which is really nice as well.

One of my favourite things to get in the market is a ground peanut/ sugar desert. I think it is an Indian desert that the Gambians have also taken on. They also sell homemade shortbread biscuits singularly in the market which just melt in your mouth. They are lovely. If you are travelling you can usually buy small cakes in bags sold as a loaf, cupcake or love heart. The ladies carry them on their heads and they are really nice cakes. It is usually a surprise to find out if they are lemon, coconut, buttercake or sultana cake. The interesting thing is that the women don’t have ovens so the biscuits and cakes are cooked in homemade ovens made from clay pots and heated with firewood.

The state of the matter on the ground usually changes with the seasons too. In mango season you are constantly stepping over well sucked mango pips and now you crunch everywhere you go with all the peanut shells littering the place.