Tourism industry in The Gambia gutted by global recession

by Sean McLachlan on

We all know the global recession has hit the tourism industry pretty hard, but smaller countries off the beaten path are feeling it worse, and are less able to bounce back.

The Gambia is the smallest nation on the African mainland and has a modest tourism industry based around its beautiful beaches, serene river, and two UNESCO World Heritage Sites, including the mysterious stone circles pictured here. Unfortunately, Mr. Alieu Secka, president of the nation’s Hoteliers Association, says there’s been a 50% drop in arrivals for the 2009/2010 season. A quick check of several leading hotels revealed the figure to be more or less accurate.

Ouch.

The Gambia is not a rich nation, and such a plunge in the industry will threaten jobs and businesses, creating a knock-on effect as families have to support the newly jobless.

Is The Gambia the proverbial canary in the coalmine? Will other small nations get hit this hard?

Hopefully I’ll be going to The Gambia in 2010. My wife, who is very supportive of her wandering husband, gave me a flight there as a Christmas present, so assuming I don’t trade it in for a flight somewhere else to visit my friend as he motorcycles across Africa, I’ll be able to give a firsthand report. Perhaps I’ll bring along some extra money to spend. The Gambians deserve it.

In case you’re wondering, I got her an espresso machine. She didn’t want to go to The Gambia with me so I guess she’ll just sip espresso at home and read my blog posts.

East of Africa: Sapphire of Ilakaka

by Stephen Greenwood on

After hours of driving through untouched landscape, a speck of civilization appears on the horizon. It’s a sizable town; modest in structure, but full of activity and commotion -even at a distance.

A patchwork of low-grade wooden structures stem from a single main road. Electrical wires criss cross each other in all directions, connecting small shanty homes with restaurants and makeshift offices with pre-fabricated Zain mobile phone shops.

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The main road is filled with pedestrians. A man with a turkey slung over his back fervently tries to make a sale with a local butcher. Several children pile onto a improvised sled, transporting an oil barrel that’s adorned with a hand painted message in English: “God is Good”. Next to them, three Chinese men in business suits carry large black briefcases into a shiny building that is marked as a gem brokerage.

It feels like we’ve rolled into a strange, Malagasy version of the Wild West, minus the cowboy boots and the saddled horses. This is Ilakaka, population: 30,000, and home to Madagascar’s booming sapphire trade.

As soon as we stop on the side of the road a few hawkers approach us. I try to explain in French that we’re not here to buy anything, but they insist that I come see their shop. Curiosity gets the best of me and I follow them to a small stall where a few men are clutching tiny plastic zipper bags filled with purple and blue stones.

There’s nothing elaborate about the presentation of the stones. They clear a bowl of meat for sale off of the table and empty the contents of the bags for me to inspect. An aging Indian man with a long beard sits behind a metal grille and counts out the prices for the stones. When it’s apparent that I’m really not going to buy anything, the bags get packed away as fast as they were dumped out.

I’m told that the Sri Lankans, Indians, and Thais control most of the gem market here, with a majority of the mining done by poor Malagasy father-son teams. They are lured by the dream of making over $10,000 USD in one find; truly a temping proposition in a country where two thirds of the population live on less than a dollar a day.

In the past eleven years, Ilakaka has been subject to an expansion that could be compared to California’s gold rush of the 1800’s. Sapphire deposits were discovered in 1998, when only 40 people inhabited the area. Now, 50% of the world’s sapphire comes from Madagascar, and Ilakaka is at the heart of the fever. The current official reports document 30,000 inhabitants, but locals insist that there are closer to 60,000 people in the town…a number that’s hard to track amidst high turnover in workers and unreported children belonging to working families.

Walking further down the road, I notice that the diversity for such a concentrated population is striking. Apparently, each of Madagascar’s 18 ethnic groups are represented in Ilakaka; and businessmen from all over the world come here to buy Malagasy gems. But because of the profitable nature of the business, violence has become prevalent in the rogue town.

The word on the street is that one of Osama bin Laden’s relatives was gunned down last year because of his visible success in sapphire trading. Another victim was shot in his hotel room only months ago while carrying a sapphire worth nearly $25,000. The local police claim to be attempting to control criminal activity, but low salaries and high bribes seem to be getting in the way of any tangible results.

But the violence doesn’t seem to be keeping anyone from coming to Ilakaka just yet. There are bars, brothels, and casinos…plenty of economic activity. But there are no established banks or sources of electricity from the national grid. Most of the shacks that the miners camp out in have no running water or sources of light; which on one hand, is good news for the ToughStuff sales team.

Within an hour, they’ve negotiated several deals and have even captured the interest of some of the wealthy gem brokers. They say that Ilakaka will be a good opportunity for trade and entrepreneurial expansion; undoubtedly a familiar sentiment in this dusty, lawless town.

Catch the previous articles in the East of Africa series!

American woman prepares to row the Atlantic

by Kraig Becker on

Katie Spotz has big plans for the new year. The 22-year old American is currently in Senegal where she is completing the final preparations for her attempt to row solo across the Atlantic Ocean. If everything goes according to plan, she’ll set out on her journey on the first day of 2010, and won’t step back onto dry land for three months.

The young woman from Cleveland, Ohio will depart from Dakar, and cover approximately 2500 miles, with the hopes of arriving in South America, somewhere along the coast of Guiana, in approximately 70-100 days. While out on the ocean, she’ll face huge waves, massive storms, and endless days alone on the water.

Katie will be making her journey on a specially designed 19-foot long rowboat. The boat has a small cabin that can offer some shelter from inclement weather, and specially designed hatches will help keep her gear and equipment dry. Two freshwater tanks are used as ballasts, while offering an emergency water supply, and the solar panels mounted along the deck will help keep Katie’s communications equipment charged, so that she can stay in touch while at sea. She’ll be making updates on her website, and sending back dispatches on her progress once she gets underway.

While the ocean row will be a challenge unlike anything that Katie has done before, she isn’t doing it just for herself. She is using the opportunity to raise funds and awareness of the Blue Planet Run, an organization dedicated to financing projects designed to deliver clean drinking water in remote places across the planet.

To follow along with Katie’s adventure stop by her website where you will find more information on her ocean row and read updates as she prepares to hit the water. Then return in the New Year to track her progress and watch her make an attempt on history. If she is successful, she’ll be the youngest person to ever row solo across an ocean, and the first American to row from Africa to South America.

Good luck Katie!

Peace on earth, goodwill toward men: two places where it worked

by Sean McLachlan on

We hear a lot about peace and friendship over the holidays, but the reality is that different religions and peoples are constantly fighting. It seems we can never get along.

Or at least that’s what the history books would have you believe.

History focuses on change, and change usually means conflict, but there have been many times in the past when different religions and ethnic groups have lived in harmony. Here are two UNESCO World Heritage Sites you can visit that are testimony to the idea that people can achieve great things by working together.

Toledo, Spain

For most of the Middle Ages Spain was not a country; it was a patchwork of different states fighting amongst themselves and staving off invasions by the Muslim Moors from North Africa. There was a centuries-long war between Islam and Christianity, with the Jews being stuck in the middle as second-class citizens in both societies. But under the Caliphate of Córdoba, which ruled much of the Iberian Peninsula in the tenth and eleventh centuries, the three cultures lived and learned together. Córdoba and Toledo were the two main cultural centers. Many books from ancient Greece and Rome, lost in Europe during the Dark Ages but preserved in Arabic translations in the Middle East, were translated into Latin and Hebrew and helped start a rediscovery of Europe’s Classical heritage.
The Christian kingdoms were slowly pushing out the Muslims, however, and in 1085 King Alfonso VI captured Toledo. He realized the relationship among the three cultures, called La Convivencia (“The Coexistence”) was a good thing and kept it going. He even established a translation center to copy books from each culture into Latin, Spanish, Arabic, and Hebrew, so everyone could benefit from each other’s learning. Philosophy, astronomy, architecture, mathematics, and a dozen other arts and sciences flourished.

%Gallery-80891%It didn’t last. In 1492, when the last Moors were kicked out of Spain, the Jews were kicked out too, and any non-Christian who wanted to stay had to at least pretend to convert. But La Convivencia left an enduring intellectual an artistic legacy for all three cultures and some impressive monuments that can still be seen today.

Gonder, Ethiopia

On a different continent in different century, people came to the same conclusions that the people of Toledo did. In the northwest of what is now Ethiopia is the city of Gonder. It was founded by the Emperor Fasilides around the year 1635. Ethiopian emperors traditionally moved from place to place to watch over their people, but Fasilides saw an advantage to having a capital city for his empire. Soon a large urban center had sprung up, with palaces and castles and places of worship.
Gonder became the center of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, but it was also home to Muslims and the Beta Israel, the Ethiopian Jews. Artisans and thinkers from all three religions flocked to Gonder to work in the market or palace. The Beta Israel were often craftsmen. Because only a Christian could sit on the throne, the Jews often served as trusted advisers and bodyguards to the emperor. The Muslims, with their connections to the Red Sea and other parts of Africa, set themselves up as merchants.
All three cultures worked together to make Gonder a center of art and learning, just like in Toledo. The ruins of some of the castles and palaces are still visible today and many people call Gonder “Africa’s Camelot”. The most famous monument is Fasilides’ castle, shown here. Check out the gallery for more attractions in Toledo and Gonder.

Let’s not romanticize these civilizations. Neither of them were progressive democracies. They were authoritarian kingdoms where the common people had almost no rights, and both ended up being replaced by less tolerant cultures. Yet they managed to figure out something–it’s not your background that’s important, it’s what you can contribute to society. The people of Toledo and Gonder discovered they could do more together than they could separately. It’s something many societies have realized. In fact, despite all the bad news on TV, religious and ethnic violence is the exception rather than the rule. Most streets aren’t erupting in gunfire. Most people live in towns made up of a number of religious and ethnic groups. They may not be best friends, but they’re not killing each other either.
Maybe Toledo and Gonder have given us more than pair of interesting tourist attractions.

East of Africa: the Road to Tuléar

by Stephen Greenwood on
I sneak a glance at the side-view mirror to try and catch a reflection of my face; I’m trying hard to look at ease, but my tight grip on the door handle suggests otherwise. It certainly isn’t the worst road I’ve been on in Africa, but it seems that our driver is intent on moving as fast as the laws of physics will allow; navigating hundreds of hairpin turns with haste so that we can get off the road by nightfall.

Our driver recognizes my apprehension, shouting “Don’t be nervous!” before reaching to turn up the Jerry Marcoss album that’s playing in the truck. I take a deep breath and focus my attention on the scenery around me. It’s stunning.

We’ve been on the road for nearly 8 hours, and the mountainous highlands of Antananarivo have given way to sprawling golden plains that are fringed by large rock formations and orange-red dirt. There are unfavorable clouds in the distance, which causes our driver to shake his head as he slows down for the first time of the trip. A light rainfall begins to hit the windshield.

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The road to Tuléar is a voyage that remains unexplored by most of the tourists that come to Madagascar; it takes two full days of driving (at top speed) with a midway night rest in Fianarantsoa. The route is a grueling stretch of reasonably well-maintained asphalt that spans almost 1000km from the highlands of Antananarivo to the plains of the island’s Southwestern coast. It’s a two-lane road that often converges into a single lane for bridge crossings, but traffic is so sparse that there’s rarely an issue with oncoming traffic.

I scan the landscape for the simple mud huts that I was familiar with in Tanzania, but all the houses seem to be well constructed, two-story structures made of mud, brick, and wood. Their orange color matches the vibrance of the earth that they sit on, with most capped by neatly thatched roofs. They are by no means comfortable, spacious, or in many cases even wired for electricity; but so far there are no signs of shantytowns in the countryside. While Madagascar is still one of the poorest nations in the world, it seems that the standard of living in the rural areas is relatively higher than that of other places I’ve been to.

Every small town that we pass through has several staple elements: a large central catholic church complete (steeple and all), a diverse selection of roadside cafes, and painted signs with bold blue letters that spell out “CECAM” – apparently one of Madagascar’s largest micro-finance lenders.

On the outskirts of each small town, young boys stand near the road with a small hand extended. Next to them are shovels and mounds of dirt, which they have been using to patch potholes in the road, and which they hope will earn them a few hundred ariary. We oblige; it’s an impressive display of entrepreneurship for a service that is welcome and necessary.

The landscape continues to change; the golden plains and green hillsides turn into dry mesas. It’s like driving through the entire range of California’s landscape in a matter of hours; which makes it believable that Madagascar houses five percent of the world’s plant and animal species. For the most part, the land appears untouched and unsettled, the most beautiful of which has been claimed by the national park system. When Ravalomanana was president, he promised to protect over 60,000 square kilometers of land; a step up from the 17,000 square kilometers that are currently protected.

One of the larger reserves that we pass is Isalo National Park; home to 82 species of birds, 33 species of reptiles, 15 species of frogs and 14 species of mammals. The most dramatic sight from the road is Ranohira Mountain; a rock formation that almost appears to be monolithic, but is actually part of a small range called the Isalo Massif.

There’s enough time to briefly get out and take some pictures, but the driver emphasizes that we must get back on the road if we want to complete the last several hundred kilometers in the light; we have one last stop in a town called Ilakaka, where the sales team hopes to generate some lamp & panel sales.

I hop in the truck, thankful that the windy mountain curves have transformed into long stretches of road, and hopeful that we’ll only have to listen through the Jerry Marcoss album two more times.

Catch the previous articles in the East of Africa series here!