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The Gambia - warning about Gambian guides!

Published by Attila Simay (pterocles AT freemail.hu)


I'd like to warn everyone planning an independent birding trip to The Gambia that some - maybe most - of the guides are simply useless!

We used the "help" of a group who's stake out is situated in or around Kotu Bridge. We hired them because they seemed to be real birders and they are apparently members of The Bird Guides Association. Namely they were Malick Suso and Lamin Sidibeh, the latter is the chairman of BGA! This group cares for nothing but your money!

Malick was all right though many times he misidentified birds and was not always helpful. One night he simply refused to take us out for owling!

The worst guide I've ever met was Lamin Sidibeh despite he identified birds well.
I never met someone who made me feel that I am nothing more than a walking moneybag! He always refused to start early! He wanted to finish at 6 p.m. though it is great time for birding! One day when I refused to leave the site he shouted at me, cursed at me and almost hit me ! He had at least three joints by noon every single day!
If these things hadn't happened I wouldn't have mentioned that he drove the car crazy, he left us in the car many times for a long time.

If you still want to hire a guide at Kotu Creek, ask for Pa Jallow, who know the sites, a nice guy, and knows that something has to be done for the money we pay for him!

Good luck!

Attila Simay


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By Adrian Pitches (adrian.pitches AT bbc.co.uk) November 2, 2006

There's a list of recommended guides on the Gambia Birding website. http://www.gambiabirding.org/guides.html Sering Bojang has been recommended to me.

By BOB BIGGS (bob AT rpbiggs.fsnet.co.uk) November 4, 2006

I'm going out there at the end of this month. I'll be using Tijan Kanteh again [as in 2003]. He was excellent then and I have no reason to think otherwise now.

By Ian Hargreaves (ian.hargreaves9 AT btopenworld.com) November 18, 2006

I returned yesterday, (17th November) from a two week holiday in Gambia staying at the Kombo Beach Hotel (next to Koto bridge) and I was surprised to read the earlier comment by Graham Masters. I travelled with my wife and another couple that had been here previously. Our guide was Ebrima Korita (ebrimakorita@hotmail.com) and he had been used previously by our friends in March last year. We had no problems with changes to agreed prices and Ebrima proved to be an excellent choice with superb skills for picking up birds by call and sight. He seemed to be very well known wherever we went and was able to use his network of contacts to access up to date information on some of the scarcer or more difficult species. The trip was very much a compromise between birding and holiday and so we only birded the coastal region and didn't venture up river this time. Despite this we still saw over 200 species and without Ebrima's help at 'calling-in' the birds it would have been far fewer. Ebrima was also quite happy to combine a birding outing with a visit to some of the more touristy attractions. When we visit the Gambia again we will have no hesitation in using Ebrima's services.