I had an incredible time visiting the Chimpanzee Rehabilitation Project (CRP) in the River Gambia National Park (RGNP) with Polly, her Gambian host brother Alieu, and Kevin who was visiting from Germany. Kevin lived with Polly’s family as a high school exchange student, and Polly’s two sons were able to be high school exchange students with Kevin’s family in Germany, and the families have stayed close ever since. Kevin, now 24 is a social worker, and was able to visit Polly at her PCV site before she completes her service next month. Alieu, also 24, is the oldest child in the family Polly lives with in the Lower River Region as an educational volunteer. He is very inquisitive, speaks excellent English, and wants to find a career path that will give him options besides farming. It is unusual for rural villagers to be able to travel and learn about their country as he did this week. I was elated that I could join them on their trip to two of the best tourist spots in The Gambia.

CRP founder and director, American primatologist Janis Carter, began relocating 36 captive chimpanzees to islands in the River Gambia around 1980. Currently there are about 120 healthy chimpanzees living in natural surroundings on wooded islands, called Baboon Islands. Each evening a CRP boat cruises around the islands, tosses food prepared from locally sourced produce onto shore, observes and records the health of each animal.  When there are guests, a second boat also cruises the shore so visitors can view the chimpanzees, baboons, monkeys, hippos, crocodiles and many species of birds. The oldest female at 46 is Melanie and we were lucky enough to see her with two of her offspring.

We arrived in the early afternoon, after a typical adventurous Gambian travel experience of having our first vehicle break down, transferring to a crowded gelly-gelly to the village of Wassu, getting a taxi to the boat dock, where we were picked up the CRP staff for a 20 minutes river trip to the lodge. We were greeted by Nadia Khan, project manager, and given a chilled glass or wanjo tea. Wanjo is a local favorite made with hibiscus flowers and sweetened with mango juice or sugar. We were then served a delicious lunch, which was most welcome after our morning travel adventures. There is a very stable staff of about twenty, all male except for Nadia, who has been at CRP since January 2018. The hospitality was first class, the men have been with the preserve for a decade or more, and creating an outstanding career opportunity for the local Fula villagers.

After lunch we climbed 117 steps to our safari tents on the bluff looking over the river. The view was breathtaking beautiful and extremely peaceful. It felt magical to be at a place in The Gambia where we were going to be pampered during our stay.

We returned to the Waterhouse at 4pm for a two hour boat ride to observe the chimpanzees at feeding time. We also saw many birds, Red Colobus Monkeys, Green Monkeys, Guinea Baboons and mostly submerged hippos but did not see any Bush Babies (they are nocturnal), Red Patas Monkeys (they do not live on these islands), crocodiles, manatees or snakes during our stay. The staff is very knowledgeable and shared many details about the wildlife and history of the islands. I have begun to record the birds I am spotting and was able to add 13 more to my list – there are over 500 hundred species of birds that call The Gambia home for all or part of the year.

Dinner was served at 7:30pm by candle light because all of the power is from solar or generator (which only is used when the guests are not around). The experience of being in nature without any light or noise pollution was a real treat for me since my PCV home is in a city of 40,000 with street lights and multiple sources of noises from the sirens, mosques, boomboxes and constant vocalizations of the sheep, goats, and donkeys. It was the dark of the moon time and the stars were all out before the clouds blew in.

Hot water and milk was delivered to our tents at 7am, so we could enjoy watching and listening to the birds as we prepared for our day. The first morning we met at the Waterhouse at 8am for a short boat trip up river, where we hiked a trail leading to the highest spot in The Gambia at 173 feet.  It is said that the last Gambian elephant, which used to be the country’s national emblem, was shot in 1913 at this location.

After breakfast we returned to our tents to relax until lunch at 1:30pm, then had more time to relax until the evening boat trip at 4pm. This boat trip to observe the feeding of the chimpanzees was interrupted by a storm, so they pulled the boat into the bushes by shore, and we waited it out. There wasn’t much rain, but there was lots of wind and the river became very choppy for about 30 minutes, before we continued our journey around the islands until 6pm.

Our final night we enjoyed another delicious meal, and the on site manager, Nadia Khan, joined us and shared some of her experiences working with primates in Asia and Africa for the previous 11 years. The next morning our 8am excursion took us along the bluffs to a lookout point over the rice fields and we watched the red colobus monkeys playing in the trees below us. I wasn’t able to get any good photos of them jumping from branch to branch, but they entertained us for at least 10 minutes with their gymnastics. We did see lots of green monkeys, who are not shy at all frolicking along the trail.

We departed shortly after breakfast because Kevin was flying back to Germany at midnight and we wanted to stop and see the Wassu Stone Circles before heading back to toward the coast. This World Heritage Site is another must see Gambian tourist sight. There are many stone circle in Senegal and The Gambia, and this site was surrounded by a block wall and had a interesting exhibition hall detailing a lot of the the history of the area.

I am so glad I was able to take the time out from my PCV work to travel to two exceptional sites in The Gambia. This is not an easy country to travel in, but I want to learn as much as possible about the culture and this region while I am here. I hope you can take the time to visit the highlighted website links, and also learn more about my tourist adventure.