Gambia

I came to Gambia on March 5th of 2008 and I stayed in this country for 2 weeks together with my parents and my girlfriend Karolina. I wanted to show my parents Africa and that is why I bought them this trip. Gambia is very small country and it is just the area around the river Gambia inside of big state Senegal from which it was separated also with the help of British goverment. Gambia is full of british people who finds there very good and cheap holliday and mostly the older ladies which finds there also very easily something else than just hot and sunny weather. I really loved Gambia because it is very cool country with no rush, no stress and from all african countries I visited it is the most safe one as well. People are very cool and even the custom officers at the airport they just talk with you, make fun and all is always cool and fine. Like they say: ,,In Gambia no problem!,, They are more like in carribean countries, they love to dress rusta dresses, they smoke a lot of ganja everywhere and they even have a special clubs where you can legaly smoke marihuana (at least they told me this, though I unfortunately did not try any ,,legal,, bar). They call it ,,chill out,, and their main idol is Bob Marley. Reagge music commes from everywhere as well as a lot of rusta man trying to talk to you just to explain you how beautiful you are and after that they try to invite you to their restaurant or to sale you something, which is fine but after few days you have enough. Another thing is that I have never seen so many beautiful black girls anywhere before I visited Gambia! They are just amazing and I just dont need to say anything else about them, maybe just that my girfriend wanted to go home about 3 times because I just could not stop stearing at them. Really, Gambia is just great and I personaly had a lots of fun there and we have also been so lucky that our security on the beach was so friendly and he showed us most of turictic attractions for free. His name is Essa and Iam very sorry for that that he does not live here because I know that we would be very good friends. He showed us a lot of nice places and told us a lot of things about Gambia, people that live there and other things. He never wanted anything for what he did for us, but he always use to say that it was his pleasure to show or to help us because then we will say only nice and good things about him and about Gambia which will attract more people to his country and which will help the economics of his country and will also help the life of the people, which is absolutelly true and I wish everybody would be and think like him. Anyway I gave him a lot of things on the last day which I did not want to take back home as well as I gave him some money as well, from my heart, just like he said: ,,My friend I will never ask anything from you, I will take from you anything what you give me from your heart!,, I remember his words even today and I have to say that he was very smart and good man.
If it comes to butterflies and moths, Gambia is very small country and only a few species occurs there and it was also dry season there when I was there so everything was very dry and arid, so only a smal number of species were on the wing during that time. The rain season is quite short in Gambia, it starts in late July and finishes at the beginning of October, the rest of the year is very sunny hot and dry. Essa told me that in rain season everything changes to green and all the forests just wake up and changes colour from yellowish green to bright green and there is a lot of butterflies and moths everywhere. I believe that because I visited some forests and they were very similar to those I saw in Kenya and I can imagine very good night moth catching on the light in the middle of Bijilo forest or in Abuko forest.
I can reccomend Gambia to all who wants to visit very hot and sunny beaches, nice food and cheap hotels. Mixure of something like Africa with reagge life, nice people and no problem with anything! And also Gambia will be very good in August - September time for butterflies and moths and ubsolutelly undiscovered, because I could not find anywhere on internet that which species occur in Gambia. I only know that it is the border of palearctic and afrotropical region where species from both regions occur together.

Martin Jagelka