I wanted to ride the length of the country on election day, to see how things would work out so I set out early from Janjanbureh and headed west.
There were still lots of checkpoints, but everyone remained as friendly as ever. Along the route, I passed lots of polling stations, and every single one of them had huge queues of people waiting to vote (in the end, turnout was somewhere around 70%). While the current president did have supporters, the majority of people I spoke with said that they wanted a change, and a peaceful transfer of power.
I got back into Kombo late in the evening, and listened on the radio to the results as they came in. When it got to 11-2 for the opposition (with 14 remaining), the president ordered the counting to stop, but this was ignored (as apparently was an earlier order for the military to seize control of the radio and prevent the result being announced). As a result, the early hours of the morning saw the opposition coalition led by Adama Barrow named victors, and then most shockingly of all, Jammeh conceded defeat. The reaction on the streets was tremendous - cars overloaded with people were cruising up and down the main highway, horns beeping and flags waving, and everyone was talking about the New Gambia. Someone set up an impromptu set of decks and a speaker stack in the middle of the road at the top of the tourist strip, and people were blocking traffic, dancing around to reggae and smoking weed right in front of the disinterested army checkpoint. I got talking to the Swedish-Gambian owner of the restaurant we ate at, and along with her friend (who it turns out is the number one Gambian tv presenter in the world) we went on to a beach front bar where the celebrations continued along to a soundtrack played by legendary local reggae DJ Fireman.
After the jubilant celebrations there were some sobering reports the next day. Rumours were that members of the army loyal to the old president had gone to the house of the new president-elect, but had been talked down by local imams, and that the old president had ordered Mandinka troops (an ethnic group he had apparently upset recently) to be disarmed, but this was not done. No one was quite ready to believe that it could be quite this easy, so there was an eerie calm that descended on the place as people waited to see what would happen. While there was a definite increase in police and troops on the street, I couldn't see any signs of trouble and life seemed to be carrying on as usual.
I spent another few days relaxing in Gambia, visiting the crocodile pool, learning a traditional board game called Wuri and lounging around on the beach. I even ended up doing some consulting work for Acy (the restaurant owner) on ideas to improve the business, and had to fight the urge to go over the top with SWOT analyses, maturity matrices, financial modelling and all that guff and keep it simple.
As lovely as it would have been to stay longer, the call of the road was getting strong so it was off again, south to Senegal.
Postscript
Turns out that Jammeh is not so keen on handing over power and has now changed his mind about accepting the election result. At the time of posting it is still not clear what the final outcome will be.
There were still lots of checkpoints, but everyone remained as friendly as ever. Along the route, I passed lots of polling stations, and every single one of them had huge queues of people waiting to vote (in the end, turnout was somewhere around 70%). While the current president did have supporters, the majority of people I spoke with said that they wanted a change, and a peaceful transfer of power.
I got back into Kombo late in the evening, and listened on the radio to the results as they came in. When it got to 11-2 for the opposition (with 14 remaining), the president ordered the counting to stop, but this was ignored (as apparently was an earlier order for the military to seize control of the radio and prevent the result being announced). As a result, the early hours of the morning saw the opposition coalition led by Adama Barrow named victors, and then most shockingly of all, Jammeh conceded defeat. The reaction on the streets was tremendous - cars overloaded with people were cruising up and down the main highway, horns beeping and flags waving, and everyone was talking about the New Gambia. Someone set up an impromptu set of decks and a speaker stack in the middle of the road at the top of the tourist strip, and people were blocking traffic, dancing around to reggae and smoking weed right in front of the disinterested army checkpoint. I got talking to the Swedish-Gambian owner of the restaurant we ate at, and along with her friend (who it turns out is the number one Gambian tv presenter in the world) we went on to a beach front bar where the celebrations continued along to a soundtrack played by legendary local reggae DJ Fireman.
After the jubilant celebrations there were some sobering reports the next day. Rumours were that members of the army loyal to the old president had gone to the house of the new president-elect, but had been talked down by local imams, and that the old president had ordered Mandinka troops (an ethnic group he had apparently upset recently) to be disarmed, but this was not done. No one was quite ready to believe that it could be quite this easy, so there was an eerie calm that descended on the place as people waited to see what would happen. While there was a definite increase in police and troops on the street, I couldn't see any signs of trouble and life seemed to be carrying on as usual.
I spent another few days relaxing in Gambia, visiting the crocodile pool, learning a traditional board game called Wuri and lounging around on the beach. I even ended up doing some consulting work for Acy (the restaurant owner) on ideas to improve the business, and had to fight the urge to go over the top with SWOT analyses, maturity matrices, financial modelling and all that guff and keep it simple.
As lovely as it would have been to stay longer, the call of the road was getting strong so it was off again, south to Senegal.
Postscript
Turns out that Jammeh is not so keen on handing over power and has now changed his mind about accepting the election result. At the time of posting it is still not clear what the final outcome will be.