Blogs from Guinea-Bissau, Africa
I don’t travel in kilometers I travel by hours.
Published: May 16th 2011Africa » Guinea-Bissau » East » Gabú
May 6th 2011
People say “Oh how many kilometres is it to so’n’so?” or answer back when I ask the question, “How long will it take?” “Oh about 245 kilometres.” … That is not what I asked. I travel by hours not kilometres. Travelling by kilometres is useless in Africa. There are so many variables that give you a fluctuating timeframe. What vehicle is being used? How many stops it will make, if there is a spare seat halfway through the trip, are they going to stop and try and pick up another passenger? Does the driver have errands to run? How many trucks will we be caught behind? Also how good does the vehicle climb up hills? The state of the tyres and most importantly the road. Has the road been upgraded since colonialism? In the case of ... read more
April 14th 2011
I was sitting next to possibly the best cleavage I have ever sat next to from Senegal to Guinea-Bissau. 3.5 hours and I couldn’t get a look in. I was cooped up in the back seat with her but it was not what you are thinking. It’s the back row in the trunk of a station wagon and I am too tall for the elevated seating. I try my darndest to get a look through the corner of my eye. But I am forced to lean forward to my knees because the roof is too short. Gosh travelling Africa can make the world seem a cruel, cruel world. I started to think of my continuous travelling of this scrunched up nature and thought. ‘You know locals don’t travel this hard on a bi-daily basis’ People and ... read more
November 7th 2007
I’d lost my Rastafarian wristband, one night at Gatwick Airport and it had gone! My son, Sam had tied it in place the previous day, I’d told him that it would stay on until I returned and he could untie it for me. I looked at my wristwatch on my left arm, at least that was still there and it told me I had ten minutes before boarding began. The watch was a present from my father, some thirty-four years earlier and had been all around the world with me. It had survived my electrocution, during a monsoon downpour in Lucknow, which had seen me hurled into the sewer fed, flooded streets, the watch had taken about five weeks to dry out properly but it never stopped working. I had been “given” the Rasta bracelet in ... read more
September 13th 2007
Oioioioioi, hvor skal jeg begynne denne gangen. Jeg faar bare hive meg uti det og haape paa det beste. Turen fra Bubaque tilbake til Bissau var alt annet enn kjedelig. Klokka kvart paa seks soendag morgen sto vi i bekmoerket paa kaia i Bubaque, uten noen slags form for lys, og ropte desperat paa Emma, vaar nye svenske venninne. En hyggelig mann med lommelykt var snill og hjalp oss i feil retning, men til slutt fant vi riktig kai, og der var det flere mennesker og ventet, blant andre Emma. Baaten gikk saa klart ikke foer klokka sju, og da skulle det vaere plass til sikkert hundre mennesker paa baaten. Og hver passasjer hadde med seg masse pikkpakk. I tillegg var det med sikkert seksti hoener, femten gryntende griser, noen haner, og en stolt kalkun (som ... read more
September 8th 2007
Hei alle sammen, naa har the norwegian traveling circus kommet seg ut paa Bubaque, en idyllisk og tropisk liten oey bare noen timers baattur utenfor hovedstaden Bissau i landet vi naa er i, Guinea-Bissau. Allerede paa grensa skjoente vi at dette var et land vi ville komme til aa stortrives i. Vi ble hilst velkommen av en skokk grensevakter, og her snakker vi skikkelige sleggedamer i uniform som ikke har stort annet aa ta seg til enn aa gjoere narr av de som kommer inn i landet. Og lo gjorde de, saa hele grensestasjonen rista naermest, og vi maatte bare le med, der vi stod og venta paa passene vaare. Grensestasjonene her nede er veldig morsomme, det er smaa skur med et lite kontor, der det sitter en vakt og stempler pass og passer hoener og ... read more
July 9th 2007
On the map, Senegal and Gambia look like the profile of an open mouth where the former are the jaws while the latter represents the tongue. Made exception for the short coastal strip, the Gambia is totally wrapped in Senegal, hence whichever direction one wants to leave the country -south in my case- he have to necessarily enter into the territory of its francophone neighbour. I have understood by now that in this part of the world even the most insignificant trip can take a whole day and that therefore one must show up at la gare routiere (bus station) at the most indecent morning hours so to avoid the chance to be left stranded at dusk in some god forgotten border shack. The reason why travelling before dawn is perfectly fine while do it after ... read more
August 11th 2006
We have just returned after spending a week on the decently remote Bijagos, the archipelago islands off the coast of Guinea Bissau. We were told by one of our hotels that we were the first Americans they'd seen since 1998. Much traditional village culture still exists there, as it has for hundreds of years...except with a few additions like plastic buckets and oversized American T-shirts under the grass skirts. But they live well there, with a tight community, strong tradition, village elders and chiefs, and lots of good spontaneous singing and drumming. We arrived by pirogue, which is kind of like somewhere between a canoe and viking ship, at least in my interpretation. We got to the dock in Bissau early, as we had been instructed, and the boat was loading when we arrived. We were ... read more
August 11th 2006
Well I haven't written for a long time mostly because Alana who is travelling with me has been writing so I didn't feel the need to but there is one island I went to that she didn't so I will describe it. It was Roxa in Portuguese but Canhaba in Bijago. I went with an English banjo researcher we met at Bubaque, the most developed of all the islands. Bubaque seems to have seen more prosperous days. Laundry dries on old sagging power lines, and the only electricity is by generator. There are a lot of ghostly old ruins of hotels. The scariest was on the other side of the island where we cycled to. It was during a sort of storm, so the shutters were banging, and it was all decrepit. I could imagine ... read more
August 1st 2006
So we left Senegal last Thursday morning, right after I posted my last entry. I posted it that morning, though i had actually written it the day before, but the internet connection was down due to a storm. You can barely see through the rain sometimes during the storms it is so heavy, and that particular storm had a lot of lightening strikes and made me a bit more nervous than some of the others. Anyway, so we walked to the area east of town where you can get a car to Sao Domingo in Guinea Bissau. They are a bit smaller than a subaru wagon but have an extra row of seats in the hatch, so they fit 8 people each. There isn´t a schedule or anything, they just leave as they fill up. We ... read more
March 27th 2006
We were lucky. Four days after we crossed the border at Sao Domingo into Guinea-Bissau (G-B), the border closed. The Senegalese army had chased the Jola separatist guerilla into the city. The guerilla -using mines as warfare- blew up a minibus with people coming from Varela beach, before they were captured/executed by the military. This is a region of tension and sporadic turmoil, one must not forget that. But except for some out-of-order tanks along the roadsides and the former presidential palace in debris, there are few signs of neither the 98-98 civil war, nor the last coup in 2003. Another employee of my aunt accommodated us and took us out cruising Bissau’s potholed avenues, accompanied by loud Cuban music and hot-blooded greetings in Portuguese. There's a perceptible Latin-American presence. The family father; a warm-hearted, pragmatic ... read more
