Janjanbureh

The island in the middle of the Gambia River was settled long before the British arrived, and the megalithic circles nearby show that the middle river supported organised societies more than a thousand years ago. In 1823 the British captain Alexander Grant acquired the island from Kolli Camara, king of Lower Niani, in exchange for annual payments, and named it MacCarthy Island after Sir Charles MacCarthy, governor of Britain's West African territories. The purpose was a settlement for freed slaves, guarded by a new fort, and by the 1840s it was the furthest upriver post the colonial administration controlled.

Liberated Africans taken from intercepted slave ships were resettled here, and a Wesleyan mission was established among them. From the 1830s the town grew around the mission as a trans-shipment point for groundnuts, rice and other crops sent downriver to Bathurst, and it became an administrative centre and the site of the country's main prison. Armitage High School, founded in 1927 to educate the children of colonial chiefs and wealthy families, is one of the oldest schools in the Gambia.

The town's importance waned as roads replaced the river as the main route east. It was renamed Janjanbureh in 1995, and today its ruined trade houses, its ferries and the wildlife of the surrounding river are what draw the small number of visitors who make the long trip east.

The town sits at a meeting point of Gambian peoples. Mandinka is the dominant language of the middle river, with Fula herders and traders, Wolof merchants and Serahule families, and the descendants of the liberated Africans who were settled here in the nineteenth century, some of them Christian. Islam is practised by the great majority, and the mosque, the Friday prayers and the two Eids set the shape of the year, while the Methodist church keeps a small congregation of long standing.

Village etiquette is more formal than on the coast. Greetings are extended and obligatory, elders are deferred to, and a visitor to a village is expected to present themselves to the alkalo. Hospitality to a stranger is a matter of pride even in poor compounds.

Music and ceremony here are less commercial than in the resorts. Griot families play the kora and sing the histories of lineages at naming ceremonies and weddings; drumming accompanies the harvest and the initiation seasons; and masquerade figures such as the kankurang, a masked protector associated with Mandinka initiation and recognised by UNESCO as intangible cultural heritage, appear at certain times of year. Photography of ceremonies is not always welcome, and permission is asked first.

Janjanbureh is a small place, the capital of a local government area of well over 100,000 people but itself only a modest town, and the atmosphere is rural rather than urban. Most households farm: groundnuts as the cash crop, rice in the low ground along the river worked largely by women, millet, maize and vegetable gardens, with cattle and goats kept in the compounds. Fishing the river adds protein and a little income, and a few families make a living from the guesthouses, boats and guiding.

The town's administrative role keeps a modest number of government jobs — schools, a health centre, the local council — but the departure of the river trade left little else, and young people leave for Serekunda, the coast or, in some cases, for Europe. Money sent home by relatives abroad supports many households. Electricity is intermittent, water comes from boreholes and standpipes, and the bridge and the ferry are the town's lifelines.

The day begins before dawn with prayer and work in the fields, pauses in the punishing midday heat, and resumes in the late afternoon, ending with the evening meal from a shared bowl and rounds of attaya brewed over charcoal. The market, the ferry landing and the shade of the big trees are the places where the town gathers and news travels.

Upriver cooking is plainer than on the coast and built on what the fields and the river produce. Benachin, rice cooked in a tomato and fish or meat sauce with vegetables, and domoda, a groundnut stew poured over rice, are the two staples, made here with the groundnuts grown in the surrounding fields. Superkanja, an okra stew thickened with palm oil and smoked fish, and plain rice with a leaf or groundnut sauce fill out the week.

River fish is the everyday protein: catfish and tilapia caught nearby, and dried or smoked fish traded from the coast and used to season sauces. Away from the river the millet foods of the Sahel appear — chere, steamed millet served with groundnut or other sauces, and findi, the fine grain also called fonio, boiled or steamed. Mangoes weigh down the trees in the early rains, and cashew, baobab fruit and wild fruits are gathered in season.

Breakfast is often akara bean fritters or bread with a bean or groundnut filling, and tapalapa, the dense local baguette, is baked in wood-fired ovens. The social drink is attaya, the three sweet rounds of green tea brewed slowly over coals in the shade, with wonjo made from hibiscus, baobab juice and ginger drinks sold chilled at the market. Alcohol is scarce in this Muslim area and mostly confined to the river lodges.