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The Gambia is known for busy beach resorts and cheap safaris, but Kevin Rushby unearths a new breed of retreat that replenishes forests while delivering style.
We all know how to make a hotel green, don’t we? You put a pile of white fluffy towels in the bathroom, then place a neat little sign next to them asking guests not to use them for ‘environmental reasons’. A hotelier in the UK once said to me: “This green stuff is all nonsense, but it saves us money.”
In the developing world, that blend of cynicism and green is just as readily available. When I first visited the Malaysian island of Langkawi, I trekked to a remote beach through jungle. Two years later I found that jungle replaced by a golf course resort. Asking for a look around, I noticed that in every bathroom was one of those neat little signs: “Please do not use towels unnecessarily – save our planet!”
Tropical beaches are especially vulnerable: torn out of the hands of fishing communities, they are buried under development – the kind where ‘environmentally sensitive’ means the concrete pillars are clad in tropical hardwood. And that’s just the non-human part – what about giving jobs to the locals? Dig a bit and you usually find the real locals are all gone and the waiters have been shipped in, along with the sliced white bread, the soft drinks and the flushing toilets.
So there I am, sitting in a wood by the sea in the Gambia with the sound of insects almost masking the sound of the waves having followed the path of Maurice Phillips, pictured below, right, and Geri Mitchell.
They first came out to the Gambia in 1996 from England. They had an interest in African ways of living plus some idea of alternative technology, but no plan to become hoteliers.
Within a year they were running Safari Garden, a small urban hotel favoured by aid workers and independent travellers.
In 2003 Geri chanced upon the village of Kartong, a place with a beautiful beachside location but without running water or electricity – no cash economy at all, in fact. Within a few months she and Maurice presented cola nuts to the elders, the traditional preamble to a proposal.
The present was accepted and Sandele Eco-retreat was under way. Cham Jarju, a local man, showed me around the site which has just opened after three years of development. “We make our own bricks from the earth,” he explained, introducing me to a gang of men labouring over a mechanical soil impacter.
Maurice had gone to Auroville in India to find this simple piece of kit and the results are astonishing: fine yellow bricks that are sealed with beeswax and, unlike normal block-making processes, require only a tiny quantity of cement powder. “Already outsiders are coming to buy these bricks,” said Cham proudly, “We have ordered more machines from India, so it must be Kartong’s first successful industry!”
Further into the woods we came across Tombelu, local shaman and fisherman, now turned nightwatchman with a mobile phone on a string around his neck. “Geri and Maurice planted 4,000 trees here,” he tells me – Cham translating from Mandinka.
Maurice and Geri have a knack for nurturing talents like Tombelu’s. When it came to building Sandele, Maurice simply gave a book on early Islamic architecture to his local team and, with some help from a British architect, they have put up a fabulous array of pierced domes, pointed arches and hollow ziggurats, designs that allow cool air to circulate without the need for air-conditioning. All this is done without heavy machinery, tons of cement or outside contractors.
I was there a few days before the first guests arrived, but when Sandele settles down to normal running the net result will be a set of tranquil forest lodges, each pair sharing a cool plunge pool. Comfortable as the place is – and the food is excellent – for me the real pleasure was wandering the curving paths, bumping into the staff who are going to be the real stars of Sandele.
Down at the kitchen I learned that Fatu, one of the cooks, was from a local family of griots, traditional musicians and storytellers. While lunch was cooking she and a colleague, Mbasi, did an impromtu song and dance performance.
Later, out on the deserted beach, Tombelu was keen to instruct me in the art of throwing a fishing net while telling tall tales of weird and wonderful creatures that lived out there in the deep.
Then I sank into a deckchair under a thatched shade and drank a cold drink while the sun set over the waves. Sandele’s deeply green approach to an upmarket hotel is, I reckon, going to be an inspiring example for others.
For further information contact the Gambian Tourism Authority: visitthegambia.gm
