By Rose SkeltonThu May 18, 8:47 AM ET
The young Gambian man in the yellow string vest calls out to a European woman walking along a wide golden beach shrouded in a fine sea mist.
"Hey nice lady! Nice lady, I want to talk to you," he yells. She keeps walking.
"It's nice to be nice," he grumbles as he returns to his friends, his matted hair escaping from his cap.
The young man is one of Gambia's "bumsters," youths who offer to walk with tourists as they visit markets and beaches in this tiny West African nation and who fend off the attentions of rivals for a small fee.
What is left unsaid but understood is the possibility of a more intimate relationship, that could be a ticket, however temporary, out of poverty.
A week-long relationship could mean three
hot meals a day for the Gambian man and a luxury hotel bed to sleep in, plus money for beer or cigarettes.
"I experienced one time when there was a young boy who was trying to get me to his house for 'the real Gambian Experience' as they call it," said Wilma, 35, from the Netherlands.
"It was very hard to get rid of him. Yes, he was trying to sell himself," said Wilma, who did not want to give her surname.
In many African countries, it is common to see older white men with young local black women, but Gambia, along with some resorts in neighboring Senegal, has earned a name as a place for older European women to meet young African men.
Now a British hotel manager is working to get the bumsters off the beaches and into legitimate jobs in order to improve Gambia's image.
Precise numbers for the sex tourism industry
are hard to get. A 2003 report by UNICEF said 60-70 percent of visitors to one of the main tourist areas near the capital Banjul were there for "sun relaxation and cheap sex."
Flights from Britain regularly arrive with a high proportion of women traveling alone, often visiting younger Gambian men they met on previous visits.
A lasting relationship can mean continued financial support -- invaluable in a country ranked as one of the 25 poorest in the world -- and, if all goes well, a visa to live in Europe.
For European women, it is a chance to have a young and potentially attractive holiday companion.
But for those not interested in a liaison with a local man, being approached in this way can be unpleasant -- and that was what spurred British hotelier Geri Mitchell to create jobs for the men annoying her guests.
Mitchell, 52, who manages The Safari Garden Hotel, a leafy oasis in the Fajara beach area near Banjul, selected a group of young men and sent them to train as tourist guides.
They now charge tourists a set rate of 30 Dalasi ($1) an hour or 50 Dalasi ($1.75) for a one-off trip. The hotel offers them a formal introduction to the guests.
The project, which built on a previous government initiative to train reformed bumsters as guides, has provided much needed financial relief to Lamine Bojang, a guide in his mid-twenties. Bojang's father died when he was young and so he is the family's chief earner, and has to pay his siblings' school fees. "In my family, I play a big role," he said. Before becoming guides, Bojang and his friends used to collect firewood in the forest and sell it to make ends meet. Now, they say, they are able to make a basic living and they have earned the respect of the hotel and its guests.
