By Momodou Ndow
I’ve been doing a little digging into the history of the mosquitoes of Banjul. We landed on the mosquitoes; the mosquitoes didn’t land on us.
Long before the British arrived in 1816 and renamed the island Bathurst, before the city lights, before cars rolled through its streets, and before Banjul became the bustling city we know today, the island belonged to the mosquitoes. They were already there, thriving in the humid air of the River Gambia and ruling the island with an iron fist… or perhaps, more fittingly, an iron proboscis.
They rose from the mangroves at timiss, drifting across Half-Die, Oyster Creek, and the muddy shores where fishermen pulled in their nets. They hid in stagnant pools, inside hollow baobab trees, beneath the roots of towering cotton trees, and in every flooded corner of the island.
The people who came to cut bamboo knew them very well. Fishermen knew them. Farmers knew them. Travelers knew them. The mosquitoes were tiny, but they behaved like they owned the island; because, frankly, they did.
When the British established Bathurst as a colonial settlement, they assumed they would conquer the island the same way they conquered territories funeka – with laws, guns, maps, and flags. The mosquitoes weren’t impressed.
They didn’t recognise the British Empire. They already had an empire of their own, and unlike the British, they didn’t need ships to invade. They simply waited until timis.
At first, colonial officials had no idea what they were fighting. Soldiers, merchants, missionaries, and administrators arrived full of confidence, only to spend their evenings shivering with fever, sweating buckets, hallucinating, and, in many cases, dying. Malaria and yellow fever spread through the city quietly.
For a while, they blamed the swamps. Then they blamed the bad air. Then they blamed the smell. Eventually, science interrupted the guessing game and pointed to the real culprit: mosquitoes. That discovery changed everything.
By the early twentieth century, the colonial authorities launched systematic mosquito-control campaigns. Sanitary inspectors marched through Bathurst inspecting compounds, draining puddles, spraying chemicals, and counting mosquito larvae. Homes were numbered. Compounds were inspected. Suddenly, mosquitoes became the number one public enemy.
The British even described it as a “constant warfare against insect pests.” The mosquitoes accepted the challenge. Frustration reached a boiling point in 1935. Believing that water-filled hollows inside silk cotton, baobab, mahogany, and other large trees were prime mosquito breeding grounds, the administration ordered thousands of trees cut down across Bathurst.
To the British, it was sanitation. To many residents, it was blasphemy. Those trees provided shade from the relentless sun, and many believed the Ginays inhabited the forest. The community saw the destruction as an attack not only on nature, but also on their spiritual heritage. The trees fell anyway.
As a compromise, the administration planted ornamental trees that were less conducive to breeding mosquitos and in line with the modern, bourgeois lifestyle the British and the Bathurst high class were trying to introduce in the city. They envisioned a city that was modern, orderly, and controlled.
The mosquitoes, however, neglected to attend the meeting where they were supposed to surrender. Instead, they simply found somewhere else to breed. So, the British escalated the war; Sulfur dioxide. Paris Green. Gammaxene. Then came DDT. Entire neighborhoods were fogged. Walls, drains, compounds, and streets were sprayed.
For a while, it seemed the British Empire might finally win. The mosquitoes had other plans. One surviving female mosquito could lay hundreds of eggs. Swarms returned almost as quickly as they disappeared. Every apparent victory was temporary.
They referred to them as “The Gangsters Among the Insects.”, Mosquitoes were compared to organised criminals terrorising the world. The comparison wasn’t entirely wrong. Except these gangsters had no headquarters. No king. No castle. No command center to bomb. Just millions of tiny recruits reporting for duty every evening at timiss.
The British defeated kingdoms, drew borders, imposed colonial rule, but they never truly defeated the mosquitoes. In many ways, the mosquitoes mirrored the people of Bathurst themselves. They survived floods, disease, overcrowding, poverty, colonial neglect, and hardship. They adapted, rebuilt, endured, and carried on. My Grandmother, Mam Kumba Joof, used to tell us stories about the “Afdie” floods.
And so, the mosquitoes became woven into the very fabric of Banjul’s history. No Banjul story is complete without the mosquitoes making an appearance. They witnessed colonial rule. They witnessed resistance. They watched a small island grow into a capital city.
Even today, when timiss arrives in Banjul and that familiar buzzing fills the air, you’re hearing echoes of a story that began centuries ago. Because long before Banjul belonged to politicians, merchants, or colonial administrators, it belonged to the mosquitoes.
We landed on them. They didn’t land on us.
But history didn’t end there. Every great legend eventually needs its heroes… and its villains. By the mid-1980s, the scattered gangs of Banjul mosquitoes finally got organised. From the swamps of “Afdie” emerged a bold, fearless, and flamboyant mosquito named Baba. Chosen to unite the buzzing masses, Baba became the first Boss of a legendary crew known as The Mischievous Mosquitoes of Banjul.
The British had long gone, but the mosquitoes were still running operations at timiss.
Their adventures – filled with mischief, humor, teamwork, science, technology, and lessons about the world they share with humans, continue in The Mischievous Mosquitoes of Banjul book series, where history gives way to imagination, and the legends of Banjul finally get to tell their side of the story.