Often you know when a journey will be difficult, when it with wear you out, when it will numb your bum and tire your mind but hell it will be memorable and etched in your head and so this was one – one, of 100s – that I’ll remember (assuming that a mind-rotting disease doesn’t kick in) but hell for now it’s here. But how did it begin …? I forget.
NOTE: Presently I am in Labé in the Fouta Djalon region, the lush, canyon-ed high plateau of north-eastern Guinea, writing this on battery by candlelight … and I’ve drunken several beers at a friendly, hole-in-the-wall bar shortly after the Ramadan fasting came to an end today.
So where was I? Remembering … Okay, let me listen to my audio diary and get back to you …
Koundara: just been talking to Captain Thomas and friends – very drunk soldiers, missing teeth, red berets slopped everywhere. They came into this shack-bar/disco/hotel where I was staying – few other choices … the boss-chick has just gone out to appease them; I fucked her when I arrived – in the morning & in the evening … don’t know where to start … this was on the eve of Ramadan, drinking amid drunk, ragged, aggressive soldiers in a scene from a twisted movie.
- Lone hut in the early morning light
This is a country that is rumoured to be the next failed state – here a history of dictatorships and coups and economic mismanagement despite it being a major Bauxite exporter and having other vast mineral riches – Guinea is driven by a general who for the last 20 years has succeeded in keeping himself in power by cheating at the ballot and by changing the rules to suit himself, and who was last shot at in 2005. Even his soldiers, after a pay revision, revolted, but he survived despite an artillery siege at the presidential palace and then after an agreement there followed the sudden execution of mutineers. Today Conte still rules; this is another banana republic that we don’t know or care about. (And I read on the internet this morning that the soldiers just this week are threatening violence again unless pay owed from the late-1990s is paid. But I also hear that nothing will happen until after Ramadan).
There is no running water; electricity is either occasional in major towns or more likely not at all unless supplied via private generator. And, most roads are appalling.
Which brings me back to the roads – the journey … a test of the will, or at least this western will. Not the most difficult but (that was yesterday on route to Labé – shattered roads that are red clay hard ruts, deep festering holes, thick mud eating trucks; to avoid holes one side of the car driving along road’s outermost edge and other down lower along the mud track, car riding at a sloping 45 degree angle – branches hitting windows. Fucked up but … the mountain slopes often the best traction – less erosion uphill apart from some deep rain ruts that channel down; early in the day passing thatched huts and long green red-tipped grass then and later jungle and grouped chimpanzees on huge rocks seated calmly in dusk light as we struggle uphill. Followed by cattle and goats across the track – kids waving – when I wave at then – astonished at my white presence – Foto, they call – meaning white in the local tongue. Women with bowls on heads going nowhere obvious but greenery all around and our journey slow, bumpy, broken; painful.
- On the road towards Guinea
I woke at 6:30 AM in dark, waited till 7:30 for the car to fill and we arrive in dark at 9:30 PM; we have only covered 265 km … we have 4 people in the front including the driver, 3 in the back – only cos I paid double for an extra seat/space, and then 3 more cramped in the boot-bench-seat of the Peugeot 505 over the rear wheel, and one more in the tiny actual boot and two more on top of the heaped baggage on the roof-rack. And so a humble 5-seater hatchback is a 14 seat slave … But this particular journey of Guinea is another story.
So I forget, I forgot, my mind is rotting … back to this day, this journey: Her name was Monica, 3 babies at age 25, tribal slit cut down along the rims of each ear-lope; when I arrived she offered me sex … fingers placed together then the in-out motion is understandable in any language – especially mine, her washing the rooms – dusty, concrete, lino-clad floors, spider web corners, sunken thin mattress, showers equal water in a bucket, a fan when the generator kicks in at 7 pm … She got on top of me. Twice … actually, five times by the time it was over that evening.
Anyway before that there was the border crossing between Guinea-Bissau and Guinea in a crammed car, no room for legs or arms or beer bellies … that lasted checkpoints and past villages to the now searing mid-day heat of the frontier, where the Immigration officer in a small tatty concrete office was pleasant, decent, friendly but the Customs across the dirt road made me empty my backpack. But I threw off his ambitions of a full search straight away by showing him my dullest aspect of my bag first – here’s my towel, my books, my toothpaste, my … after wanting something from me – he got nothing, he actually thanked me, keen to have met a New Zealander, a nomad who had nothing but his bags – for he understood slight English and I explained my life to him. But then the soldiers in the thatch hut wanted me to enter … Alert: nasty dumb fucks ahead.
- River crossing on route to Labé; the barge was broken, so cables welded for 2 hours and then we crossed … by two men turning a wheel we were pulled along the cable to the other side
They tried to intimidate me: 5 of them; unfriendly. They didn’t acknowledge my greetings in English, Islamic salutations, or French. They wanted me to empty my backpack and day-pack on the dry dirt floor and I realized there was some real danger here of a huge bribe or other hassle. I got shitty, growled – fuck this shit, having already deflected the same nonsense minutes earlier at customs and so said loudly and slowly each item. I got out my towel and mentioned its name – like a teacher – and demonstrated drying myself. Then I got our my tooth brush and brushed, my book and I read … trying to delay the search of my valuables – a Nikon SLR D80 with expensive lenses, Sony video camera, lightweight powerful laptop with extra hard drives, MP3 player, etc, etc … I got out my toilet paper – “here’s my toilet paper, this is for wiping my butt” – and held it high and started to wipe my arse – and they cracked up! That was it, I could pack my pack, and out … they asked my nationality and were pleased to meet me – although I’m sure they knew nothing of where I was from. Even the mention of Australia washed over them – but no more search. No money paid; nothing lost.
The next stage was much easier: but no vehicles were going from this deserted border post to the next deserted border post. There was only one other traveler. A guy from a Guinea, as the others in our shared taxi had raced off into a waiting friend’s 4WD, and that left us with 10 seats to fill; just 2 people and not a person or vehicle coming within hours to complete the journey and so I offered to pay the bulk of the distance: 45 km = over 1 hour of rutted track to get us to the next village and there next shared taxi probably awaiting passengers – as maybe you don’t know: but taxis, cars, buses in Africa don’t leave until full: there is never a timetable for departure – just when a vehicle is full, which by my previous experiences of Africa can mean mercifully just 30 minutes or even less but usually up to several hours waiting … so I paid nearly-the-complete taxi fare which, in this case was nothing – $10, but often it can be too much, as in 10 x $10 +/-.
When we arrived at the Guinean border – about 1 km away – I hopped over the wire that stops traffic – like there’s any – and the soldier go shitty, didn’t understand what he was saying but realized I had to go around the now limp wire down on the dirt – Not over it, like I was walking on the flag or something! Got to the Immigration shack where lines of tired Africans were waiting and was stamped immediately, without fuss. Wow. Thank you. Then as our taxi was rearing on – the Customs guy on the other side was calling to the driver to stop – but he could not hear – as we were walking on to the next post – I also ignored him while urging the local with me to stop shouting to the driver to stop … and so we cleared Customs by ignoring them.
- Truck on the road in the mountains of Fouta Djalon, Guinea
The next soldier post was gentle. And that was it, across more broken mud tracks – too easy, with seats to ourselves – for an hour towards the town of Saréboido. And then it was back to cramming – should have paid a few bucks extra to avoid this but … got in the back – as in 3 people crammed in over the rear wheel for another hour of banging heads, crammed legs room, scarping shins.
And so I arrived in Guinea, in the sleepy town of my chosen stay in Koundara, found a “hotel” and gotten laid within minutes of arrival, had endured hours of cramped spaces over rough roads, had defused greedy soldiers and gotten drinking with deluded others to realize that indeed it was a lucky day; a relatively easy journey.
(PS: in Part 2: Leaving Guinea to Sierra Leone was just as crazy – soldiers, bribes and bad roads abound.)
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