Tanji: sunset at the fish market

Tanji does not have a fish market the way a town has a market hall. Tanji
has a beach, and at the end of the day the beach becomes the market – the
whole of it, from the surf line to the road.

We arrived as the sun was going down, at the exact hour the place runs
hottest. Pirogues – long, painted, heavy – sat out on the water and nosed
in through the waves, and everything they carried moved up the sand in
buckets and basins balanced on heads. The catch landed on big round
tables where women sorted, gutted and argued the price of it in the open
air. Behind them stood ranks of woven baskets and the frames of the
smokehouses, and over all of it hung a low, wheeling crowd of gulls that
clearly knew the schedule better than we did.

Nobody performs anything here. This is a working beach at rush hour –
the country's biggest fish landing –
and the crowd is fishermen, traders, porters and buyers, plus a handful
of dusty rally drivers walking the lane between the tables trying not to
be in the way of actual commerce. The light was doing that West African
sunset thing, gold through the haze, and the whole scene ran on smoke,
salt and shouting.

We were at the end of our first day in The Gambia by then. Since morning
the country had given us a border argument, a ferry ambush, an empty
capital, a shrine full of crocodiles and a forest full of monkeys. Tanji
at sunset closed the day with the thing none of those had: noise, crowds
and hard work – the country with its sleeves rolled up.

If the coast's beach resorts are where The Gambia rests, this beach, an
easy drive south, is where it earns.