Small scale, eco-friendly lodge with 8 en-suite guest rooms and camping facilities. The bar/restaurant serves honest food and we offer a range of workshops like drumming, woodcarving & dancing.

Directly on the endless beach next to a small fishing village and surrounded by typical West-African nature with palm trees, baobabs and bushes. No traffic noise, no busy resorts, supermarkets and night club in the area.

If the sun shines enough we only use solar power. For back up we have a small generator.

As we run on solar we have only 12 Volts in the rooms and we use special energy safe bulbs. In the main building we have 220 Volts which can also be used, during daytime, for charging phone, camera’s etc. We use freezers with low energy consumption. We encourage our guests to be energy conscious by asking them to switch off lights when not needed.

We currently only grow herbs in our garden. We do not use any chemicals on them.

We try to buy as many local produces as possible from local suppliers. If the supply is low we are sometimes forced to buy imported goods, which we again buy from local suppliers.

We separate the food waste from the other waste. This waste is collected by locals who use it to feed their animals. Waste management is not easy in the Gambia as not much is in place. We separate the waste and try to recycle as much as possible. Plastic bottles are given to the locals who can use it for storing water and other liquids. Bottles are used by gardeners to make separations in their gardens etc.

Most cleaning products are chemical as these are the only ones available. However we try to buy products that have a minimal damage on the environment.

We pump our water from our own well into a tank. We just ask our guests to be careful with the use of water.

Our water is natural clear and it is filtered by the pump. The waste water is filtered before going back into the environment or into the septic tank

We support several projects in our neighbourhood like the tree planting plan from The Integrated Coastal and Marine Biodiversity Management (ICAM) which is a medium size project of the Government of The Gambia (GOTG) under the Department of Parks and Wildlife Management (GEPADG) of Gunjur at community level. We offer guests the possibility to join the team on their tree planting exercise by joining them and paying for a tree

Awareness. When we started hardly anybody in our area had ever considered preserving the environment. Gambians are good at using the sources nature offers them but are not interested in the long term preservation of the nature. By simple actions like placing rubish bins, giving good example and explaining we see small improvements, although we have a long way to go.

See 14 and 13

We are a small scale lodge and we strive to give all our guests a personal service so although the key-issues are addressed in the information pack that is in the room we talk it through with our guests upon arrival whilst showing them around.

Keeping our eyes open and keep reminding staff and visitors about the need to respect nature and our environment.

Most feedback is verbal and suggestions are always considered and addapted if possible. Other ways of feedback are our guestbook on the website and via other sites.

We encourage our staff to be environmentally friendly, educate them on the damage waste has on our environment and we also try to make the locals aware of their environment by showing how to take care.

We have not joined any schemes yet, we started the lodge in January 2006 and we had to put a lot of energy and time in getting the existing lodge back to an acceptable level. We feel that by next year we can reach our target. After that we can start investing more energy and time in green certification.

Please provide as much documentary evidence as possible.
Please provide 2 references, preferably one from the local or national government tourist authority or a registered NGO (Non-profit Non Governmental Organization) locally, and the other from your certification scheme if you are in one.