Cultural revolution, coups and the beauty of Guinea

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Just before entering Guinea I had an email from a friend about a BBC report of a coup attempt in Guinea. He said, was I going to Guinea Bissau rather than Guinea. I made it clear that I was going to Guinea and that I considered Guinea to be a safe and stable country - the human rights record is not good but it has avoided the descent into Civil War that most of it's neighbours have suffered from. So, what about the coup attempt? It seems that someone shot into the Presidential motorcade and injured one of the bodyguards. Some of the reports that I heard suggested that there never was a coup attempt - that it may have been stage managed as an excuse to arrest political opponents. Whatever the truth, the billionaire diabetic president is still firmly in control and loads of people were arrested as a result of the assassination attempt but most of them have since been released. With that background I expected a very heavy security presence in the country - I didn't find the police presence to be any greater than in Senegal. Also the Lonely Planet warned that I would have problems with police at checkpoints. Again I had no problems - none of them asked for money and all the Guinea police have been polite and friendly towards me. All the police and everyone else I have met have been very proud of their country. They have some reason to be proud, as it is a stunningly beautiful place, with plenty of natural resources. For those of you who are into hiking, the countryside is a come on for hiking boots. But, power and water supplies can be somewhat intermittent.



So, the mystery is why is it so poor? It is poorer than many of it's parched northern neighbours. To be fair, the country has seen modest improvements in recent years, but at the time of independence the first president of the country took a Maoist direction. It was an economic disaster.



The rest of this blog will be in the form of a daily diary.

THURS 27th JANUARY - Waiting...

Leaving Tambacounda in Senegal, the hotel reception told me to go to the garage Dakar for bush taxi's to Guinea.



I found that I had to catch a taxi to Diaoubli and then change. The route to Diaouble was back the way that I had come from Kolda - in fact it was half way towards Kolda. So, I could have saved some time and not gone to Tambacounda.



At Diaouble I was recruited onto a bus taxi for Koundara which is near the border. It was noon, so I waited and waited...



The driver had no passengers. At 4pm he suggested I charter the whole taxi for myself at 40000 Francs. I wasn't keen. My idea was to look for a bed for the night and try again in the morning. The taxi driver thought I didn't understand him. I did, but he recruited someone else who spoke English to help. This person was Nigerian and was the only other passenger. The taxi driver said to wait till 6pm and then go look for a bed.



So the Nigerian and I waited...at 6.10pm we went to the taxi driver and said it was after 6pm. The driver had claimed there were plenty of hotels near the garage.



The driver lead us along the street, we walked through a passage into a courtyard which looked like someone's private house. There was a large middle aged woman, dressed in African style sitting by a well. This was the hotel. The driver spoke to the woman and negotiated the price. It was basic, to put it mildly, but cheap. The room was a concrete cell with a bed. The toilet and bathroom was an open courtyard with a shoulder high wall. It had a concrete floor with a hole in it, for the toilet. The shower was a bucket to be filled from the well. The squat toilet was in fact a long drop - that is a very deep hole in the ground. The idea is that the crap will eventually break down. Adding to the lack of facilities, the hotel had no electricity. So, no running water or electric. At least the bed was comfortable.



After sorting out the room the Nigerian, the driver and I looked for somewhere to eat. All we could find was somewhere that served us a meat sandwich.



Diaouble is a transport hub, but lacks most facilities. One of the few places in town that appears to have electricity is the social centre - which has satellite TV and a nightclub.



I slept soundly that night beneath my own mosquito net.

28th JANUARY

On the morning of the 28th I used the bathroom to wash and made my way back to the bush taxi. We were met by the taxi driver who said we would be leaving. Good news, or was it?



At 10.15am the driver said he was ready to go...but that 2 or the passengers had gone walkabout. (Were they actual clients he had sold tickets to, or just promises?)



Eventually I decided to go for something to eat - I hadn't had breakfast. I had rice and fish in the same place I had eaten the night before. As I was walking back to the car the Nigerian met me and told me we were about to leave. We did leave half an hour later.



The roads on the trip were un-tarred and dusty. The driver kept stopping to put water in the radiator and fiddle under the bonnet with a screwdriver. The car had 11 passengers on the seats and 2 on the roof.



Every time we approached a police check point the car stopped out of sight of the police and the passengers on the roof got down and ran into the bush. When we got past the police checkpoint our roof passengers re-appeared beyond sight of the police and climbed back onto the roof. They were evading the police because they had no ID cards, or any sort of papers. ID cards are supposed to be compulsory in both Senegal and Guinea. So much for ID cards, passports and border controls!



Not only did we have a car that shouldn't have been on the road, but we had a driver who was complaining he was ill and passengers who were illegal because they were paperless.
Whilst I went through all the formal border controls they just walked around the border posts!



We got into Koundara at 6pm. I lost my new Nigerian friend and found a place to stay - again with bucket shower and squat toilet, but this time my bathroom had an electric light - at least at night. Luxury! This was only because the hotel was also a nightclub and had a generator they turned on at dusk. Most of the town had no electric light.



I walked into the centre of town to buy bottled water. Whilst there I met a group of travellers who had been waiting 6 hours for a car to Labe. They had travelled from Guinea Bisseau. I think they were hoping I would join them.
I told them I had a bed for the night and would look for transport in the morning. I might even see them in the morning!

SAT 29th

I walked to the garage at 8am The guy on reception in the hotel told me I should have been at the garage at 6am. When I got to the garage there was a car waiting to go which was nearly full. The travellers from the previous night were nowhere to be seen. The left after only a 2 hour wait at 10am.



It was a long and dusty journey, the scenery was spectacular. We were travelling towards the rolling green hills Fouta Djalon, and ideal place to walk through the hills and villages. One image that remains in my mind is when we stopped in a small village at about 4pm at a village chop house (restaurant in a wooden shack). At one end of the chop house were 2 carcases of some animal hanging from the roof. Each carcass had a woman chopping at it, hacking small pieces off into a bloody pile of meat on the floor. One of the women hacking at the meat had a baby tied to her back with a scarf. The woman's movements were slow and deliberate, they were in no hurry.



The car reached Labe at 7pm. The 3rd largest town in the country - not a pretty place, despite the picture postcard beauty of the surrounding countryside.



I spent some time looking for the Hotel Tata which was supposed to be the most comfortable hotel in the town. I had to ask someone local to show me the way. It was on the outskirts of the town and when I got there I found it was full. It had been taken over by aid workers. It often seems to be the case that aid workers block book out the best places in remote African towns.



So I had to walk back to town. I met my guide again and he showed me to a hotel I hadn't wanted to stay in. The Hotel de l'Independance was opposite the gare voiture. It a least had electric light at night. The bathroom looked like a western bathroom but there was no water in the taps. The only water for washing was a bucket in the bath. It was a bucket shower again! The electric fan in the room didn't work, and there was no light in the bathroom. The place looked like it might have once been a decent hotel. It had been several days since I had been able to wash any clothes and I was starting to look shabby. I was putting back on filthy clothes, full of dust from the untarred roads.

SUNDAY 30th

I moved on, this time a short trip to the small town of Pitta. A small town near some waterfalls (Les Chutes de Kinton) and a hydroelectric plant. I stayed at the Auberge de Pita, which actually had running water! I used the the opportunity to wash my clothes.



In the afternoon, walking down the street I met a man called Abu-Bakka Kantelu, known as Papa. He said I had ignored him in the morning when I had arrived. He had wanted to invite me to stay with him. We went to a cafe and chatted. I had some difficulty communicating some things so he took me down the road to a friend who spoke good English. The friend Aloysious s. Karglo had come to Guinea as a refugee from Sierra Leone. He wasn't the first refugee I had met. A number of the money changers I had changed money with had been from Sierra Leone.



Guinea has a very large number of refugees from Sierra Leone and other neighbouring countries, that have been recent war zones. Over 10%!o(MISSING)f the population is a refugee in a country that is one of the poorest in the world. It puts the complaints of the tabloid press and their lip moving readers about asylum seekers in the UK into perspective. The overwhelming majority of refugees are displaced into neighbouring states within Africa.



Aloysious spoke perfect English so we could have a much more in depth talk than I could manage in French.



Aloysious is an active member of his church - the Assemblies of God. The leader of the local church is a 76 year old English woman, who Aloysious said is related to the British Royal family. (That means I suppose that she is inbread!) She had just flown back to England to attend a family funeral. I didn't say this but I don't think I would have had much in common with an aristocratic missionary. Also, there in the barbers shop was Henry Sasay. He was busy repairing a CD player. There was a picture of Henry in his football strip on the wall. His ambition is to play football for a living in Europe.



When it got dark I walked back to Papa's house and he introduced me to his family.

MONDAY 31st JAN

I travelled the short distance to Delaba. A mere 1 hour wait for the car to fill and a 1 hour journey. When I booked into a hotel I asked for the tourist office. At the tourist office I arranged a hiking tour in the nearby countryside with guides. We walked to the Pond to Dieu, a 7 km walk from the office - a total of 14km's there and back. The countryside in this area is ideal for hiking tours - it is picture postcard pretty. My official guides from the tourist office were Aliou Diallo and Jamanana Diallo. Aliou spoke 5 languages and had a University degree. He is a Peul, which is the biggest ethnic group in Guinea, about 40%!o(MISSING)f the population. Peul nomads were key to spreading Islam across the region. Peul people have often intermarried as Peul women are reputed for their beauty. It would be possible to spend a few weeks hiking in the mountains of this beautiful region of Guinea.

TUESDAY 1st FEB

I waited 2 hours for a car to Mamou - the car took an hour on relatively good roads - tarmac for most of the way. I needed to change some money, as I didn't have enough Guinean franks for the journey to Conakry. I changed 50 Euros at the Western Union Branch - as I couldn't find any black market money-changers. Once I had changed my money it was 1pm. It would be at least another 5 hours journey to Conakry, not including any wait for the car to fill. So, I decided to stay the night and booked into the Hotel Africa on the Delaba Road. It again had a very erratic electric supply. Mamou is a busy junction town and is an important religious centre for the Peul people, although it is a dusty, dirty town, with stinking open drains.



In the evening I watched a Thai action movie dubbed into French in the hotel lounge.

WEDS 2 FEB

I walked to the garage and got a car to Conakry, the capital. I only had to wait half an hour for the car to fill. One of the passengers who was dressed very traditionally was very chatty during the journey. It was a relatively good journey on mostly tarred roads.



When I got to Conakry I had some difficulty telling the driver where I wanted to stay. He wanted to take me to the Hotel Cayemane - a 120 Euro a night place.



Eventually the driver with some help found the place that I had asked him to take me to. It had no sign outside and someone said it was closed.



So, I walked back along the road to the Hotel Cayemane - despite the high price, but it was full.



Cayemane is an upmarket area full of Embassies and official buildings. I asked someone in some sort of uniform and he took me to another hotel in an official off road 4 by 4 car. Conaakry is very hot. I was staggering around with a backpack in over 40C heat and very high humidity. So, at this stage I didn't care about the cost. I would put it on my credit card and be damned.



The Hotel Riviera had a room - the price on the counter was 120 US Dollars, but the manager gave me a room for 90 US Dollars. At present rates of exchange that's about 50 pounds sterling. I collapsed into my room and took full advantage of the air conditioning, shower and satellite TV. I didn't do anything for most of the rest of the day except wallow in the facilities of this 4 star hotel. I wasn't impressed by the food in the hotel in the evening - it was bland and overpriced.

THURS 3rd FEB

This morning I went to the Malian Embassy to get a Visa. I spent the rest of the morning in an internet cafe catching up on my email and writing this blog. I retuned to the Embassy in the afternoon after eating Lunch to pick up my passport.

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Photos

Diaoube (Senegal border town)
The one street, one horse town I waited 25 hours in for a car to fill

Guinea
View from my hotel

Guinea
Pond de Dieu

Guinea
Hiking near Delaba

Guinea
Hiking

Guinea
Pond de Dieu. This is during the dry season - in the wet season the water would be up to the top of the rock on the left

Guinea
Pond de Dieu

Guinea
This mountain is 1750m high