Kachikally: the crocodile pool you can touch

Kachikally is a crocodile pool in Bakau, a few streets behind The Gambia's
resort coast, and it is a shrine – people have come here for generations
to pray, and the crocodiles are the residents, not the attraction. That is
the local understanding of the place. Ours took a while to catch up.

We came in off the Barra ferry, a few hours into our first day in the
country, and found tens of crocodiles – on the sand, under the trees,
beside the path, everywhere – with no barrier of any kind between them and
us. You simply walk around them. You can crouch beside one and lay your
hand on its back.

I did, and my comfort level never matched the local one. Everyone around
us moved between the animals as if they were fallen logs. I was walking
among crocodiles in a country I had entered that morning, quietly doing
the maths on my distance to the gate.

The explanation, when we asked, was one sentence: the crocodiles are fed
enough, and a fed crocodile has no reason to touch anyone. What did we
know? We took the keepers at their word – carefully, one eye open, the way
you accept any rule whose test you would rather not witness.

The pool itself lies at the centre, green from bank to bank under a solid
carpet of weed, crocodiles resting along its rim like part of the
masonry. No show, no feeding time, nothing performed for anyone – an old
sacred place going about its business, with you and your nervous system
invited to walk through the middle of it.

It was, as first afternoons in a new country go, a fairly effective
introduction.