Makasutu Cultural Forest: Exploring The Gambia’s Sacred Forest
There is much more to The Gambia than beaches, hotels and the busy tourist areas around Senegambia. Travel a little further inland and the landscape changes surprisingly quickly.
One of the best places to experience that different side of the country is Makasutu Culture Forest, a protected area of woodland, palm forest, mangroves and wetland close to Brikama.
Makasutu is somewhere I have visited myself, and it is difficult to describe it simply as a tourist attraction. There are boat trips and wildlife, certainly, but there is also music, dancing, palm-wine tapping, traditional beliefs and a conservation story that stretches back more than three decades.
There are also baboons.
Quite a lot of baboons, as it happens.
And they do not necessarily appear to have read the section of the tourist guide explaining that they are supposed to remain discreetly in the forest.
What Is Makasutu Culture Forest?
Makasutu Culture Forest lies around five kilometres from Brikama in The Gambia’s West Coast Region. Covering approximately 405 hectares – about 1,000 acres – the reserve surrounds part of the Mandina Bolong and contains an unusually varied collection of habitats, including mangroves, palm forest, hardwood forest, savannah and wetlands.
The name Makasutu is generally translated from Mandinka as something close to “sacred forest” or “holy forest”. As with many names carried through oral tradition and then translated into English, slightly different versions can be found, including references to an ancient or deep sacred forest. The important part is the idea of the forest as a place with significance extending far beyond its trees.
That sense of somewhere slightly apart from everyday life is still part of Makasutu’s atmosphere.
It is not difficult to understand why.
From Forest to Bolong
One of the pleasures of visiting Makasutu is the contrast between the different landscapes.
Paths lead beneath palms and through woodland, but water is never far away. The Mandina Bolong winds through the reserve, bordered in places by dense mangroves whose exposed roots emerge from the muddy banks.
In The Gambia, the word bolong is commonly used for the creeks and tributaries connected to the River Gambia. They form a network of waterways that are important both to wildlife and to the communities that have lived beside them for generations.
And one of the best ways of seeing this part of Makasutu is from the water.
Visitors can travel along the bolong in a traditional pirogue, leaving the paths behind and moving quietly between the mangroves.
It is a very different experience from travelling along one of The Gambia’s main roads. There are no bush taxis squeezing into impossible gaps, no horns and very little hurry. Instead there is water, vegetation and the possibility of spotting birds and other wildlife along the banks.
The waterways are also a reminder that Makasutu is not simply an isolated patch of attractive woodland. It forms part of a much larger ecological landscape associated with the River Gambia.
I strongly recommend taking a trip aboard one of the pirogues. There is something about drifting quietly along the bolong between the mangroves that seems to lower your blood pressure by several points; by the time you climb back out of the colourful boat, you are likely to be considerably more relaxed than when you stepped aboard.
The Story Behind Makasutu
The modern Makasutu conservation project began in 1992, when British travellers Lawrence Williams and James English became involved with protecting the forest.
Williams later described how the pair first came to The Gambia that year. What followed developed from a relatively small project into an attempt to halt deforestation, regenerate woodland and create a place where visitors could learn about Gambian culture as well as the natural environment.
Tree planting became an important part of the regeneration work, and contemporary accounts later described more than 15,000 trees having been replanted. Makasutu Culture Forest opened as a day-visitor centre in 1999. Go and read Report_01287.pdf to find out more.
There was an important practical element to the idea as well. Conservation is much more likely to survive when neighbouring communities gain something from protecting their environment rather than being expected simply to stop using it.
Jobs were created in guiding, tourism, crafts and other work connected with the forest and the nearby Mandina development. The wider aim was to make the living forest economically valuable without destroying the thing that made it valuable in the first place.
More than thirty years later, that remains one of the most interesting parts of the Makasutu story.
Meeting the Baboons
However worthy the conservation story may be, I suspect many visitors remember something else.
The baboons.
Makasutu is home to Guinea baboons, one of the westernmost species of baboon in Africa. They live socially in groups and are very much wild animals, although some individuals around areas regularly used by people can appear remarkably relaxed about the presence of human beings.
Sometimes rather more relaxed than the human beings.
They may appear beside paths, around buildings or, apparently, wherever they have decided is the most convenient place to spend the afternoon.
Looking upwards is therefore occasionally worthwhile.
On my visit, they provided some of my favourite photographic opportunities. Watching a single baboon is interesting enough; watching the relationships within a group is better still.
Parents carry and protect young animals, juveniles investigate their surroundings and adults sit observing proceedings with expressions ranging from deep philosophical contemplation to mild irritation with the entire human race.
They are magnificent photographic subjects.
They are also considerably stronger than you are.
The sensible approach is to enjoy them without attempting to turn the encounter into a close-up selfie session.
And, every now and then, you’ll hear Makasutu staff somewhere in the forest making a terrific racket to persuade a larger troop of baboons to move along — a reminder that, despite their relaxed appearances around visitors, the baboons have absolutely not agreed to any formal rules about where they are supposed to be.
Makasutu supports other wildlife as well. Green monkeys, western red colobus, monitor lizards and numerous bird species have all been recorded within its varied habitats, although, as with any genuine wildlife experience, there is no guarantee that a particular animal will appear simply because somebody has arrived carrying binoculars and an expensive camera.
The baboons, in my experience, were rather more cooperative.
Palm Wine: A Tradition Among the Trees
One of the most memorable demonstrations at Makasutu is palm-wine tapping.
Watching an experienced palm-wine tapper climbing a tall palm using a simple belt is enough to make most visitors reconsider any confidence they may previously have had in their own ability to climb trees.
The technique involves making a climbing belt from strong fibres, ascending the palm, making carefully positioned cuts and collecting the sap, traditionally in a container such as a gourd.
The fresh sap can be consumed before substantial fermentation takes place. Left to ferment naturally, it develops into palm wine.
But the practice is more than something demonstrated for visitors.
The cultural importance of palm-wine tapping in The Gambia has recently received international attention. UNESCO has supported The Gambia’s National Centre for Arts and Culture in work preparing palm-wine tapping for possible nomination to the List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding.
The project highlights not only the technique itself but the traditional knowledge surrounding it. It also identifies threats including deforestation, bush fires and the declining transmission of skills from one generation to another.
Seeing somebody halfway up a palm at Makasutu therefore becomes rather more interesting once you understand that you are looking at a skill whose continued survival is not guaranteed.
A Forest of Stories and Beliefs
Makasutu has long been associated with traditional beliefs and stories.
Versions of local tradition refer to the forest as sacred and tell of events and supernatural beings connected with it. One particularly persistent story involves the Ninki Nanka, the legendary creature found in Gambian and wider West African folklore.
Whether taken literally, metaphorically or simply as stories passed between generations, such traditions help explain why the forest has a cultural identity as well as an ecological one.
That side of Makasutu also led to one of the more unusual encounters during my own visit.
I met a fortune teller.
I shall not tell the whole story here.
Partly because it deserves rather more space than a paragraph in an article about Makasutu, and partly because encounters involving me, Lamin and West African fortune telling have a habit of becoming complicated.
However, I will say the tale involved a mirror, a strangely cold breeze and four candles. If that has piqued your curiosity then look out for Chapter 20 of Travels With Lamin when it eventually appears at Travels With Lamin: Stories from The Gambia and West Africa | Building Futures in the Gambia
Whatever your personal views about fortune telling, marabouts and traditional beliefs, they form part of the cultural landscape of West Africa. Visiting Makasutu offers an opportunity to encounter some of those traditions rather than viewing The Gambia solely through the lens of beaches and tourist hotels.
Drums in the Forest
And then there is the music.
Traditional music and dance have long formed part of the visitor experience at Makasutu, and they fit naturally into a place intended to bring together environment and culture.
The drums begin and what had been a fairly peaceful clearing can suddenly become considerably less peaceful.
In a good way.
West African drumming works through layers of rhythm. Different drums play interlocking patterns rather than everybody simply hitting the same beat at the same time.
The dancers respond to those rhythms, and the musicians respond in turn to the dancers.
It becomes a conversation.
A loud one.
For anyone interested in Gambian music, this is another reason why Makasutu is worth visiting. The culture being represented here does not sit neatly in a museum display case. Music, dance and rhythm remain part of everyday Gambian life.
To find out more, go and take a look at Music in The Gambia: Traditional Instruments, Rhythms and Culture | Building Futures in the Gambia
More Than a Day Trip
It would be easy to describe Makasutu simply by producing a list.
Boat trip. Baboons. Palm wine. Forest walk. Fortune teller. Drumming. Dancing.
All of those things may be part of a visit, but reducing the place to a checklist misses what makes it interesting.
Makasutu works because those different elements belong together.
The mangroves connect with the bolong. The palms connect with the traditional skills of the people who use them. The wildlife depends upon the forest. The forest survived because people decided that protecting it could have value. Music, stories and traditional beliefs give the landscape a human history as well as a natural one.
And somewhere above your head there may be a baboon sitting in the roof.
Visiting Makasutu Culture Forest
Makasutu is close enough to the main tourist areas of The Gambia to be visited as a day trip, but it feels very different from the Atlantic coast.
It lies close to Brikama, south of the principal coastal resort areas. Guided visits have traditionally included combinations of forest walks, wildlife watching, cultural activities and trips along the bolong by pirogue. The exact programme can vary, so it makes sense to check current arrangements before travelling rather than relying on prices or schedules published several years earlier.
I have deliberately avoided putting admission prices into this article. They will change.
The forest probably won’t.
Comfortable footwear is sensible, and anyone interested in wildlife should bring binoculars or a camera. As everywhere in The Gambia, the experience will also be better if you allow yourself enough time to stop looking at the itinerary and simply look around.
Sometimes the thing you remember afterwards is not necessarily the thing somebody told you that you were supposed to see.
Discover Another Side of The Gambia
For many visitors, The Gambia begins on the coast.
There is nothing wrong with that. The beaches are beautiful, the hotels are comfortable and areas such as Senegambia provide an easy introduction to the country.
But they are an introduction.
Makasutu Culture Forest is one of many places showing how much more there is beyond them.
Within a relatively small area you can move through forest and mangroves, travel along a bolong in a pirogue, photograph wild baboons, watch a palm-wine tapper climb a tree, hear traditional drumming and encounter beliefs and customs that have existed in The Gambia for generations.
It is nature, culture and conservation sharing the same landscape.
And if your mental image of The Gambia begins and ends with a beach and a sunbed, Makasutu is a very good place to widen it.
For more reasons to leave the comfort of your sunbed, go and take a look at 15 Reasons to Venture Beyond the Senegambia Strip | Building Futures in the Gambia
If you enjoyed discovering more about Makasutu, you might also enjoy the many articles about Gambian life, culture and education which can be found at…
👉 Discover The Gambia | Culture, Food, Music, Places & Stories
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👉 Travels With Lamin
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👉 Help Build Brighter Futures in The Gambia
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