NOTE TO PROSPECTIVE TRANSLATORS:
These short diary essays will be released for $0.00 via Babelcube. No royalties therefore but these essays are a great way to get a quick translation credit for your own portfolio for very little work.
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The Gambia Diaries – short essays on life in The Gambia, West Africa, from the perspective of British ex-pat Mark Williams, international bestselling author writing beneath (mostly) picture-postcard blue skies in his personal paradise.
Genre: TRAVEL / Essays & TraveloguesHas reached #1 in category on Amazon free sector.
NOTE TO PROSPECTIVE TRANSLATORS:
These short diary essays will be released for $0.00 via Babelcube. No royalties therefore but these essays are a great way to get a quick translation credit for your own portfolio for very little work.
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With the imminent arrival of July thoughts begin to turn to rain.
In fact, it’s rained four times this month. A thirty second shower kicked off the month, and two more showers of a couple of minutes duration have drummed on the corrugated iron roof since, each arriving a week or so apart between 4am and 5am.
In each case rogue clouds that drifted in from the Atlantic and left their calling card.
But in the early hours of yesterday morning it seemed for many the rainy season had arrived early, when we were awoke by the nostalgic sounds of a herd of elephants breakdancing on our rusting corrugated iron roofs, and the clash of branches and leaves as the big mango trees did Harry Potter Whomping Willow impressions.
The first rumble of thunder in nine moths seemed to confirm the worst. The rainy season had started.
But half an hour later the show was all but over, although the clouds hung about all day, in defiance of the sun’s best attempts to burn them off.
Here on the edge of the Sahara Desert the ground is shallow sand on a harder sandstone bedrock, semi-porous and unreliable in its propensity to soak up even small quantities of rainfall.
A day after the first real rain in nine months, walking the side streets is like walking on the beach as the tide goes out, replete with rockpools that may stretch the width of the road.
But right now there’s a freshness to the air we haven’t enjoyed since last year, and the early morning walk to the newsagent will be on firm, moist sand amid cooler air.
No, hold on. Newsagent? Old habits die hard.
