Buying a Bed in The Gambia

I am now safely ensconced in a new home in The Gambia but getting to this point was has not been an easy process.  I will post more on that later but one of the things I needed was a bed.  I did not realize that this was going to be a difficult thing to find but it was.  A Peace Corps driver took me shopping in the Serrekunda market which deserves a whole post on its own.  We drove around looking for beds on display on the side of the road and found several used twin sized beds.  However Peace Corps had said to bring queen sized sheets so I wanted to get a bigger bed then twin sized.  Finally the driver spotted these beds on the side of the road.  They at least were big enough and were 1500 dalasi -- $50.00.  So I said fine.  Then the driver had to go find the man who had made the beds.  He turned out to be a white haired man who looked to be about 70 or more.  After we said that we wanted the bed, he had to nail boards onto the dies of the bed to hold the slats,

Then he had to cut the boards that served as the slats using a handsaw.  If you look closely at the picture below, you can see that some of the boards end with a diagonal cut.  What you can't see is that  the ends of a couple of the boards were lying in a puddle of urine.  I was starting to back out of this because I could not see how 7 boards were going to support a mattress when the carpenter said we needed to buy a "cardboard" to fit on top of the boards.  This could be procured at the mattress store across the street.  

The cardboard turned out to be a thin sheet of masonite so the mattress would be evenly supported on the cross boards.  Then it was time to get a mattress.  The mattresses are made of foam and I don't mean memory foam ala Tempurpedic.  I made the mistake of getting a thicker one so that my sheets would fit better.  These are super memory foam, in other words they don't forget.  There is a big crevice in the mattress from where I have been sleeping and another from where I sit on the side of the bed.  Not to mention that the foam is sweat inducing.  Thank goodness on some very sage advice, I purchased a wonderful fan that will build up a charge while it is plugged in and run off the charge if the power goes off.  So far I have always had enough charge to run the fan while I sleep.

Anyway,  my total cost for the bed, "cardboard", and mattress was 3400 D or $113.33.  Just for grins I went into furniture store and priced a bed.  Now any furniture store in the Gambia caters to foreigners and wealthier Gambians.  I was looking at a bed that had a mattress, box springs, and headboard with built in side tables.  I asked the salesgirl how much it cost and she said 75000 D or $2500.00 US.  I am sure there was bargaining room there but obviously not enough room to meet a Peace Corps volunteer's budget.  After sleeping on the foam I am a little jealous of the innerspring mattress though.