Gambian Furniture

Gambian furniture is not exactly what you will see in the United States.  First of all it is hand-crafted (unless you  purchase from one of the expensive furniture stores) I have already talked about my bed buying experience.  But just the furniture itself is pretty interesting.  The scale of most of it is quite large.  Then it is made with the same foam that is in my mattress which makes sitting on it a heat inducing experience. Some of the design is down right confusing -- how can it be considered comfortable to have a big bump where your head should go and a big bump where  your knees bend.  I have seen this "feature" in more than one place and have included an illustration below:

I recently stayed in the "governor's residence" in one of the regions.  There are six regions in the country with a governor of each region.  However the governor's residence is not where the governor lives.  It is a guest residence. They did say it is where President Jammeh would stay if he came to this region's headquarters.  I figured I would include the pictures of I took there as examples of furniture.  This was the bed in my room.  Including mirrors in the hed boards is rather common.  All of them have rather ornate carvings even if they don't have a mirror.  

Adjoining my room was a common area for the two bedrooms that make up the top floor of the residence.  Here is a chair -- to me it looks like the chair is angry.

This is the matching loveseat.  There was actually an even bigger sofa but I could not get it all in the picture.  You will note that there is carpeting on the floor.  This is not really a good idea here with all of the sandy, dusty dirt that is everywhere.

The furniture is definitely hand made.  There are no furniture assembly plants in The Gambia.  This is the style that sells and you can see many of examples of it for sale alongside the road.  I won't be bringing any of it home as a souvenir.