A warm welcome

“You’ve problems with your relationship,” he explained through our translator and guide, Mucki Bojang.

“You don’t listen. You need to start giving to charity. Take some presents home for your family.”

He was holding the palm of a curious Westerner in his left hand. In his right hand, he had a wooden ivory tusk shaker which he rattled to call the spirits. The sweating patient gripped a mirror to help the shaman inspect his wrinkles and lines.

The witch doctor stroked the fluffs of white hair on his chin and rubbed his wool hat. He patted down his blue shiny dress, wrapped his white linen shawl tighter, then cast out an inquisitive stare.

“Well, it’s true I argue a lot,” replied our guinea pig, rapidly becoming self-analytical as some chickens scuttled away from baboons nosing about the bamboo shack.

“He’s right, though. I’ve got to get my partner something. Now, how much do I owe him?”

We were in Makasutu Forest, in the west of The Gambia, a few hours’ drive south of the administrative capital, Banjul. Once the site of a bloody tribal battle and still haunted by demons and devils (there is a dead king buried somewhere beneath the cashew trees, apparently), the area is now notable for its playful monkeys who swing from trees like children in a jungle playground and splash about in the tributaries of the River Gambia.

The place is not so isolated that old Papa Sang can’t receive post. The savvy man of 90 or 91 rains (no one can remember, especially not him) has his own PO box number. But such is the privacy available here Lawrence Williams, an Englishman who has travelled to every corner of Africa from Sudan to South Africa, is trying to turn the 1,000-acre forest into a cultural hideaway.

He first visited The Gambia as an uncertain tourist 20 years ago and fell for Africa’s second smallest nation – bordered only by Senegal and the Atlantic Ocean – immediately. Now he owns a bunch of exclusive floating residences, Mandina Lodges, not far from Papa Sang’s hutch.

“It’s the only place in Africa I didn’t feel like an outsider,” he says.

But Williams is no khaki-clothed colonial. The giant expander earrings and butterfly hand tattoos (surely to local jewellery tastes) suggest a love of street culture and art.

As well as the luxury lodges, he runs Wide Open Walls: an art project whose first installation saw eight Western graffiti artists empty 1,000 cans of paint on Kubuneh village in the hope of beginning a trail whose profits will be reinvested in health and education programmes.

The dream is to establish art-led tourism in a country where cultural pursuits are scant. Good luck to him. Few come here for anything other than sun. But when it’s virtually guaranteed, why would you?

Well, to add to the intrigue and isolation, there is the varied and myriad wildlife: more butterflies than a keeper could count; rare birds, lizards and monkeys; and, in the cocktail bars on the Kololi strip, the wonderful syrupy Guinness you only find in Africa.

To reach Kubuneh, take a wooden canoe down river, past the upside-down amber mangroves which have oysters (smoked to make fine soup at Jo Jo’s restaurant in Kololi) clinging like leeches to their roots.

Before setting sail, though, try the palm wine. The thick white goo, with its bitter lemon and lychee taste, can be drained and drunk immediately, while after three days’ fermenting it comes in at a fruity 13%. The locals call it zum zum juice: drink the lot and your head goes zum zum. Once we’d lowered ourselves into the slightly leaky vessel, my head was humming something.

Things cleared up back on dry land at our hotel, Coco Ocean, where staff outnumber guests by three to one. It’s the biggest employer in the country and its aim is luxury. The presidential suite – popular with Moroccan royalty and Nigerian capital Lagos’s high society – is yours for 1,900 euros per night.

Whether it’s thanks to the pools and spas and beachside service or perceived threats outside the complex (the “bumsters” who befriend visitors in exchange, they hope, for money), tour guide Mucki said most visitors keep to the hotels and their immediate environs.

Shame. Almost every soul you meet – at Brikama market, with its rainbow colours and withered but GM-free aubergines, in Serrekunda, beside the silk cotton tree and wrestling arena with contenders in loin cloth, in the local schools filled with mischievous children so adorable a couple from Bognor were moved to pay for their new school – wants only to find out about you and your world.

The Gambia is a flat, watery country whose name comes from the main river British colonialists once mistook for the Nile. We dragged ourselves away from Coco Ocean on the southern bank for a blissful three-hour catamaran (£55 per person) journey over the River Gambia to the North Bank.

As we sailed on to another scruffy paradise, Sitanunku, the only sound was the swoosh of dolphins riding the bow. With only plump baobab trees and modernist huts to distract from the beachside plunge pool, Sitanunku is the place to write that novel. For inspiration, there are kayaks to reach uninhabited Dog’s Island. But most people come for the fishing.

Living off shore are captain fish, barracuda and yellowfin tuna so large they’ve stopped counting world records.

It sounded like a fisherman’s tale worthy of Hemingway, but Alhagie Sarr said he once spent 12 hours fighting a tarpoon. There were four men in the boat and at 7am the beast was hooked. By 7pm, after a series of long, exhausting shifts, the crew landed a fish as big as the boat and as wide as three men. Still, there was no regret when he wriggled out.

There is a café where the chef will cook your catch or serve you one of the meaty white fish such as benachin or butter-fish that seem to be on every menu.

Fishing is the last thought over at Sanyang beach, where the Atlantic is warm, if never calm, and the long stretch of sand seems to wrap its way around the entire coastline. For £45 West African Tours will drive you there and organise a beachside buffet lunch, before securing you an invitation to a traditional family compound, be it brick or mud, containing up to 40 people.

Lamb, sacrificed and spiced for the most important day in the calendar, Tobaski, was dished out at the compound we visited.

And because sharing is the essence of the feast, which commemorates Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son for Allah and the end of the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, we all sat round with greasy fingers and big smiles.

As we drove back to the hotel and on to the airport, past hundreds of skinny goats left over from the festival, the words from Papa Sang Jatta rang around my head.

I contemplated giving one a new home, but instead reflected how my own spiritual journey was over.

* The Gambia Experience reservations: call 0845 3302087 or visit www.gambia.co.uk

* A seven-night stay in a junior suite at Coco Ocean Resort & Spa is from £1,097 per person (April 13-30) and includes B&B, flights, hotel transfers and airport taxes. www.gambia.co.uk/cocoocean

* Three, seven and ten-day holidays are available on a half-board basis at Sitanunku Lodge and two-centre stays combining Sitanunku with another Gambia Experience hotel are available. www.gambia.co.uk/sitanunku

* Mandina Lodges at Makasutu. www.gambia.co.uk/mandina

* All excursions are bookable locally through Gambia Experience hotel reps with West African Tours. Visit www.gambia.co.uk/excursions