When the wheels fall off

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Leaving Conarkry, the first vehicle I travelled in poisoned me with fumes, in the second car the wheels fell off! OK , I tell a lie, it was only the one wheel.



I've left Guinea now, but this blog is going to about the journey from Conarkry across the country to the border with Mali. I also had to give up on this blog at the first attempt because of illness.

FRIDAY 4th FEBRUARY

At this stage I was still in the capital Conakry. I changed hotels for somewhere half the price I had been in the day before. The Hotel Galaxie also has a much better location - right in the centre of Kaloum on 5th Avenue. I wandered around and visited the Marche Niger. The market sells everything.



In general the city centre juxtaposes wealth with squalor just next to each other. For instance the Grand Hotel and Casino seems to be plonked down in the middle of a shanty town. So, it has a high fence and security guards insulating it from the streets.

SATURDAY 5th FEBRUARY

I got a taxi at 8am from the hotel to the gare voiture for Kankan, I had arranged the lift the day before. At the gare I was recruited onto a minibus and waited...again!



Kankan is a major transport hub upcountry and is on the route to Mali. It's also the second city in Guinea.



So...seven and a half hours later we finally left. Only to drive into what looked like a scrap yard 15 minutes into the journey. We had a serious leak of petrol and this was the repair garage. At this stage I first spoke to Maury Saumane who is a 3rd year student at Kankan University. He is Senegalese and speaks very good English. I chatted with him a lot during the breaks when the bus stopped.



Half an hour later we climbed back into the minibus to be met by a very long tailback of traffic trying to get out of Conakry. We probably lost 2-3 hours in that traffic.



In my last blog I said that there had been no problems with the police and military - on this journey leaving Conakry we did have problems. Maury told me that there were a lot more police checks since the assassination attempt on the President, a couple of weeks ago. On this journey the police and military demanded to see ID, whereas on my journey to the capital the soldiers had mostly waved the driver through with a smile. Why the difference I don't know, as the previous journey was after the assassination attempt. Was it because we were leaving the capital, or the attitude of the driver?



At one point some policemen came to the bus and asked where the driver was. When the driver returned the police demanded to see his documents. He argued loadly with them. They then arrested him for parking badly! But, they didn't bother getting the bus moved.



Finally the driver returned, I don't know if he had to pay the police anything, but they had let him go. The minibus had 4 rows of seats behind the driver - one row too many, making the journey very uncomfortable. Added to that I was crouched over a hot engine. To make it worse, the engine was giving off fumes which were making me nauseous. At a stop I looked very ill - I was - I was being poisoned!



Maury got the driver to do something - he put sacking over the offending area. This reduced the heat and the smell. I also protected myself by putting a scarf over my face.



We stopped at about 11pm somewhere and had bread, omelette and coffee at a street stall. Maury told me that this would be our last chance to eat.

SUNDAY 6th

The journey continued... at about 4am the driver stopped and went to sleep at the wheel. Many of the passengers slept on the ground outside the bus. Before dawn the driver woke up and continued. We eventually got into Kankan at 10am. I went straight to the Hotel Bate, had a shower and went to bed. At 3pm I woke up, got myself a sandwich and some water and walked around the centre of town - particularly the large market. Maury had promised to come round and see me at 7pm, so I waited. He said he wanted to show me the University and the town. At 8.30pm when there was no sign of him I went to get something to eat. The place I was staying, although I think it counted as one of the better places in town, only had electricity at night. I'm assuming it was one of the best places in town because of the presence of aid agency staff. The town itself was obviously poor, with no evidence of the new money evident in Conakry. Although the contrast between the Western style luxury in the middle of shanty town squalor in Conakry is somewhat disturbing. Especially as the upmarket hotels in the capital are often protected by high fences with razor wire and security guards.

MONDAY 7th

I got a car to Siguiri very quickly - Seguiri is a town another 160 km towards the border with Mali. This felt like it was going to be easy after the trip from Conakry to Kankan.



Some hope! About an hour into the journey we stopped after someone in the car said something was wrong.



A group of men gathered around the drivers side back wheel. They took a tyre off that didn't look flat to me. Then they tried to put another tyre on. They couldn't. Someone appeared to fiddle around with the bolts near the brake pads - the bolts that hold the tyre on. That didn't work.



Eventually they gave up. They dismantled the whole unit from the car - the breaking mechanism and what looked like part of the axle. I can't be sure as I don't know much about cars. The driver then hitched a lift with a passing car in order to find a mechanic who could repair the faulty part.



It was very hot, midday in the tropical heat, with very little shade available. I found the coolest spot at the time was directly under the car!



So we waited...at 3pm the driver returned with the repaired part. Basically we'd had a wheel that was about to fall off, if we hadn't stopped. It's nice to know that I'm travelling in cars that the wheels fall off!



We got into Seguiri at 5pm. It was another 80km's to the border. There was no point trying to get to the border - so I asked a young man on a motorbike the way to a hotel. He took me to the Hotel Tam Tam on the back of his motorbike. Another room with electric that only turns on at nightfall and that had a very slow drizzle of water in the taps. There was a full bucket of water under the shower, undoubtedly a much better option than waiting for a few drips of water out of the shower head.



During the evening as I was finishing my meal on the terrace outside my room, a young woman struck up a conversation. She was dolled up to the nines, was very pretty and smelled of perfume.



After about 15 minutes she said something that I prefered not to understand. I think she said something like "you go with me" in French. I said "Je ne comprends pas". So, she searched for words in English and said, "You love me". To which I said "non". That took her back a bit. She hung around for another 10 minutes and then said goodbye. I did wonder about the hotel I had booked into, as she wasn't the only pretty woman hanging around the place.

Tuesday 8th

The trip from Seguiri across the border was again delayed. This time because we had 2 flat tyres. When the 2nd tyre went flat the driver had to hitch a lift to get an extra tyre. The border crossing was also very slow - it took us about one and a half hours. Although I didn't have to wait long for the car to leave Seguiri at 10am.



In Bamako, Mali I booked into the Hotel Djene, which is decorated in a very African style.



As to the illness I mentioned at the start of this blog - I'll tell all in the next entry!

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Photos

Siguiri
View of the town off a central square near the bank

Siguiri
Dig the open drains!