Guinea

Halloween 2008

I’m somewhere in the mountains of Guinea. After buying our tickets two days ago, Steve, Jordan and I waited by the phone until this morning to hear that the car was full and ready to depart Kedougou. We were lucky enough to get cabin seats as we were the first to buy tickets. A last minute phone call telling of a family tragedy kept Steve in Kedougou, so Jordan and I were on our own.

They put two grown men up front with the driver, then Jordan and me in the back seat with two women and a medium child, then they crammed ten people into the tiny bed of the truck on small wooden benches.
At times we had to get out and walk because the road was too steep and rocky for the truck to carry us up. Once we had to stop and dig underneath the truck because we were stuck in a muddy ditch. We stopped for dinner in a village along the road, where we bought rice, sauce, and two large pieces of chicken for $1.80 each. The mountain views are spectacular. We often go up and down small hills, but spend much time on plateaus surrounded by peaks.

The girl sitting next to me in the cab is named Aissatou Diallo. At first she barely reacted when Jordan and I joked with her in Kedougou – a little cold. But now she puts her arm around me a we drive, not for affection, but for necessity.

We stopped because it started to rain so the driver dropped tarps around the cage over the bed so the people in the back wouldn’t get wet, then we pressed on. With the windows closed up front and the engine working hard, the cabin was sweltering. But as the raid faded and the front windows dropped, a lively breeze revived us. But Jordan has a fever so he got the chills and had to put on a sweatshirt.

At about 11:00 we stopped to let the other lady from the cab out (not my snuggle buddy), and the driver decided we’d stop for the night. I pled, “But you told us we’d drive through the night and make it by tomorrow morning, we’ve been waiting for three days to get into this country!” “I know I told you that,” he said, “But I’m tired.” Tough to argue with that. So he showed us to a hut with a couple stick beds and we drank a little Jameson and went to bed. We continue at sun-up.


November 3, 2008

We made it to Labe at about noon the next day, just in time to find people waking up from the Peace Corps Halloween party the night before. We decided to spend a few days with the Guinean volunteers in Labe, which is a large town tucked into the mountains. Despite its size and amenities, Labe has no running water. The streets are hilly and crowded and often smell as bad as Senegalese market streets. The Guinean volunteers were more than welcoming and showed us a great time. They seemed to be down to earth, down to work, and down to party.

This morning we left and got a ride in a Peace Corps vehicle to Doucki (resist the chuckle... OK go ahead). The village of Doucki is home to a campement run by a guy named Hassan who speaks five languages, one of them English. He’s a great guide and has multiple hikes with names like ‘Wet and Wild’ and ‘Chutes and Ladders.’ Today, shortly after arriving, we went to ‘Indian Jones World.’ A hike through narrow passageways formed by cliffs and ravines took us into the rainforest. We swung from vines and climbed to the tops of rocks.

Trees on top of the plateau 100 feet higher sent roots down the rock faces to drink water from the pools below. At the end we swam in a pool fed by a stream whose source disappeared into a cave. We watched monkeys fly from tree to tree and gazed by at the rocky maze to wrap it up.

Jordan and I have decided to spend the rest of our trip here at the campement. We have a limited amount of time and don’t want to waste it on the road. And transportation in this country is... testing. With the recent drop in oil costs, the Guinean government announced that they would be dropping the state-controlled price of gasoline, but not yet. So stations are refusing to buy from their suppliers until the price drops, causing a sever shortage of petrol for the cars that go from town to town. Here’s hoping we make it back to Kedougou.


Election Day, 2008

I woke up early but kept on dozing because at this time of year in the Guinean mountains, mornings are chilly: a rare treat. At about 8:30 we set off on our day’s hike with Jill, our British travel writer companion, and Abdoul-Rahim, Hassan’s brother and our guide for the day.

The hike began with a walk through meadows of dew-drenched grass, greeting Pulaar women harvesting fonio as we went. The wet fields made for treacherous terrain at times as we slipt and sled down the gently hills, but we arrived at the edge of the canyon unscathed nonetheless. We then traced a waterfall down the face of the cliff, many times crossing the shallow water on slick stepping stones. We stopped to rest at ‘Bob Marley’ Stage,’ a flat rocky lookout over the Green Grand Canyon. The view was breath-taking, but the moisture in the air formed a haze that dulled the colors and contours of the other side. So the faraway mountains and peaks faded into the sky like blurring clouds.
We pressed on, down into the valley where we trekked through fields of rice and sorghum, greeting more Pulaars along the way. We stopped to eat some freshly cultivated rice and sauce with some men who sat with rifle in had to protect their fields from animals and received the common gift of fresh peanuts from a woman who sat straight-spined shelling them on the ground.


We began our ascent gradually at first, as we entered the woods. We came to a falling river with a stick bridge across it and stopped on a rocky platform to rest and eat lunch. Our guide had been carrying a big pot of beans and squash in a backpack ince morning. Before we ate, we swam in the many pools created by the boulders that the water massaged as it swept by.













After a swim and a meal, we set out to seek our task of the day. The cliff whose foot we had tiptoed along for a few hours pinched at one point to form a narrow gorge, home to a segmented waterfall that fed our playground of pools.

For over a hundred years, villagers have built ladders to ascent the steepest part by lashing vertical logs together with bark. There are eight ladders in all, and the constantly trickling water from above keeps them less than easy to grip.Finally we arrived at the top, after stopping to drink some water that had filtered through hundreds of feet of rock. We found ourselves back on gently rolling meadows, but on the other side of our departure village. So we walked along the ridge, through a few more villages and stopped to lie in the hammocks in the home of our guide’s cousin.

We made it home in time for a quick bucket bath and a meal of fonio and mafé tiga (peanut sauce). The owner of the campement brought out a shortwave radio so we could turn on the BBC World Service. We realized everything would be speculative until deep into the night, so exhausted, we hit the hay quite literally; our mattresses are stuffed with straw.


November 5, 2008. 6:00 a.m.

Jill, Jordan, and I strain our ears to listen past the high-pitched whine coming from the radio. We hear that Barack Obama has won, and in a clip of his acceptance speech, he references “those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of the world.” We cheered. Some corners are better left forgotten.