A common African tradition is the “small boy” custom.  Perhaps I should say it is more a way of life. It goes like this: as an adult you can ask any child in the village to do something or get you something, as in, “Small boy, go fetch water. Small boy, go bring in the goats.” When I was there I soon discovered my favorite version of the custom…

“Small boy, go get us some beers.” If only I could get that to work with my two sons. 

I took a round-about path to the “small boy” style. My cousin, who is like a sister to me, was in The Gambia working for the Peace Corps. Teaching and managing a teaching resource center, she was based in Albreda close to the village where lived Kunta Kinte in Alex Haley’s book “Roots.”

My cousin’s father and I traveled to the Gambia to visit her for Christmas and New Year’s. It was left to my uncle and my cousin to coordinate the trip. I should mention he is another big beer fan, which may or may not be related to the fact he shared very little of her advice about trip specifics with me. He failed to mention her comments like, “Don’t rent a car.” “Don’t drive to my village.” “Just meet me in the capital.” Imagining I would be driving a part of the Dakar-Paris Road rally, I have the great idea of renting a 4WD in Dakar and driving across Senegal’s to the Gambia. What could possibly go wrong?. 

As soon as we land in Dakar, we rent an Isuzu Trooper. Our arrival is late in the evening and our first experience of Africa is driving through a pitch-black city where the vehicles all have those stupid, yellow French headlights. We saw little but yellow headlights and an occasional smile full of white teeth.

Dawn finds us in the desert of Senegal. Did you know they have almost no street signs in Dakar?  Did you know that the streets and highways are so similar that you can’t tell them apart?  Did you know that you can actually drive halfway to Mali before you can really identify where you are on a map? And the place where we were was… Kaolack.

Imagine a crappy, dusty little town in the middle of a huge salt flat. If images of the Road Warrior come to mind, you’re close to picturing it. I’m wondering if I’ll see that little feral kid with his razor-edged boomerang. We encounter a lone policeman standing on the street. He speaks only French or Wolof. We have a map. We get pointed in the right direction.

As we continue our journey to the Gambia we realize we’re in a bit of a fix. We each have only one liter of water. We have no food onboard. We don’t yet feel comfortable eating off the local economy. We need a beer.

We find ourselves on a road so dense with potholes that we actually have to stop after an hour to give our jostled internal organs a break. We finally come to the Senegal-Gambia border. After a few hours spent with very annoyed border guards holding large automatic weapons, we finally leave the desert and start getting into some real vegetation. 

After hours of bouncy driving, the jungle road delivers us to the banks of the Gambia River where a ferry is waiting. Decision time: do we take the ferry across to Banjul, the capital, or do we continue on another road that might lead to my cousin’s village? The smart thing to do would be to take the ferry to the capital and find the Peace Corps office. But then someone asks where we are going. When we tell him the name of her village he says, “I know where that is and I’m going there too! Give me a ride and I’ll show you.” He gets in and proceeds to hang his head out the window and ask every one we pass, “Hey, where’s Albreda?” He soon gets an answer and we are on our way.

We pull into my cousin’s village to amused looks on a lot of faces. Someone takes us to the school headmaster who is also the village’s headmaster. It is obvious we are interrupting his dinner. He agrees to talks to us. Occasionally peppering us with rice from his full mouth, he says, “Your cousin is waiting for you in Banjul. I will take you to the next village which has a radio telephone where you may call the Peace Corps office. We go. We call. We reach her. She is not happy. We should not be in her village. So we make plans to meet up the next day in Banjul.

The Headmaster takes us back to her village where he introduces us to the landlords of my cousin’s hut. They manage to pick the lock to her hut. So there we are, in a little hut with no water and only some junk food we had brought for my cousin. We settle in and as I fall asleep I hear my uncle saying “I can’t believe my daughter lives here.” He repeats it several times.

The next day we cross on the ferry and eventually meet up with my cousin in Banjul.  The scolding takes place immediately but we do end up driving back to her village – the damage was already done.  We feel much better with her there to help us navigate. In a few days the village celebrates our arrival with an entire day of festivities capped off with a wedding that had been delayed for two weeks so we could watch.

The day starts early in the village. Each of the village’s five tribes specializes in one particular aspect of feeding the people. One tribe fishes, one makes salt, one harvests palm nuts, another tends goats and one farms small crops. They take great pride in what they do and they practice their skills with much singing and dancing. Imagine around 400 people singing, dancing, waving palm fronds and following you wherever you go all day long. Just for us they demonstrated fishing, growing rice, harvesting palm oil and even cooking. It’s hot, dusty and the buzzards are circling overhead. I swear, some days we could look out the window of the hut and see not a single bird in the sky, but if we walked out the door, in two minutes a dozen vultures would overhead!

That last day, a day filled with songs, dances, and demonstrations, was hot, noisy and dusty, but it was so much fun. A big honor was getting to meet the village Witch Doctor. In the evening the villagers all went home for a while to get ready for the wedding. Finally the three of us are alone. The sun is low on the horizon when we walk down to the river. A young boy is sitting on the dock, fishing with a hand line. Of course we ask the small boy to get us some beers and we tip him when he returns, which we learn is not normal for adults to do for small boys. We are sitting on the dock enjoying a cold Jul Brew with the mighty Gambia River in front of us. The other shore is barely visible two or so miles away. As we sip our beers, we reflect on Africa. Though we are only four days into our African trip, it has already been an amazing trip. We met a witch doctor. We drove across the desert. We found my cousin’s village. And we have done it all with piss poor planning, a manner so typical for us.

Sitting on that dock with my cousin and uncle by the great Gambia River is one of the most amazing life experiences I have ever had… it was so peaceful under that beautiful African sky with the sound of water lapping at the river bank and a small boy quietly fishing like so many other small boys do around the world. 

What a great feeling to be there sipping a beer, not because of the beer so much as the things we saw and experienced that led up to sipping that beer at that particular time and place. It was the setting for a great story and the genesis for the idea behind this website. I have come to realize over the years that while I love a good beer, I really love the stories people tell that seem to always include a beer they have had along the way. I like sharing these stories and hope you enjoy reading them. If you have one of these stories in your life, I invite you to share it here.

Peace and happy sipping.