The Gambia is the smallest country on mainland Africa, a thin nation wrapped around a single river and nicknamed the Smiling Coast. Here are the facts worth knowing about it.
The land
A country built around a river. The Gambia is essentially the River Gambia plus the land along both its banks: a long, thin nation pushing inland from the Atlantic, wrapped on almost every side by a single neighbour, Senegal. We are a river with two banks, and my whole people are on them.
The smallest country in mainland Africa. Around 11,000 square kilometres, home to roughly 2.5 million people. You can drive across its width in well under an hour.
The Smiling Coast. The nickname is for the country’s curved shape along the river, and for a temperament: The Gambia trades on being one of the friendliest, most welcoming corners of the continent, and it earns it.
Its people and story
Home of Kunta Kinteh. The ancestor at the heart of Alex Haley’s Roots was taken from a Gambian village; the island where captives were held now carries his name and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. For many in the diaspora, a Gambian village is where the search for roots ends.
A place of many tongues. English is the official language, a colonial inheritance, but the streets run on Mandinka, Wolof, Fula, Jola, and Serahule, often three or four of them in a single conversation.
The land of the kora. The Gambia is a heartland of the griot and the kora, the twenty-one-string harp that has carried our history for centuries and now tours the world’s concert halls.
A birdwatcher’s paradise. For such a small country, it hosts a startling number of bird species, which is why the ecotourists arrive with their long lenses and their patient faces.
So that is my country: small, warm, loud with languages and music, wrapped around a river, easy to miss and impossible to forget. There is a country called The Gambia. Now you have heard of it. Come, and I will show you the rest.
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