Blogs from Guinea, Africa - page 2

I first stepped on Guinea soil last Thursday morning. I walked down the gangway with a bag of trash from the dining room. It was raining lightly. Though I loved the sail here, it was great to arrive after many delays and six days at sea. I like taking out the trash so I can go out. I tie the large black bags up when they are half full so I can carry them out myself. It has rained every morning since arriving, sometimes a drizzle and sometimes a down pour. The afternoons have been bearably warm and humid. Yesterday, we welcomed the day workers aboard for an orientation to the ship. The advance team did some training before we arrived. 85% of them are from Guinea which is required as part of our agreement with ... read more

The rain continued to thunder down as we pulled in to the Guinea border police check point. We jumped out the car and made the dash to the immigration office but our efforts were wasted as we were soaked to the skin within seconds. By now the spray from the rain hitting the road danced up to our knees and we looked fairly pathetic as we entered the dark immigration office looking like drowned rats. Guinea is a desperately poor country with barely functioning infrastructure evidenced by the lack of electricity for up to 20 hours a day. The gruff police officer processed our passports using a feeble torch that barely lit up the huge battered ledger that he was writing our details into. We trudged back into the rain and walked back to the car, ... read more

There comes a time in a persons travels in Africa where one starts to think, ‘That’s it I’m through with pretending I don’t have much money. I’m sick of deluding myself that I can’t afford to pay for that extra space in the bush taxi or a flight to save a days travel. It’s time to act like a rich westerner.’ For some reason this explosion of resources in the financial sector happened with my comings and goings with the Guinean capital Conakry. After the 20 and a half hour bus ride to get into Guinea and waiting for a couple of hours a few days later for one last person to fill the already overcrowded car. It was up to the westerner to pay up and get the front seat all to himself for the ... read more

I was scrambling up the side of a Guinean mountain when…when I realized the faint game-like trail I was following had disappeared under a small avalanche of rocks. Looking back out across the valley I had just traversed, the few tiny huts and peanut fields of the last village before the mountain were barely visible amongst the vast green forest below. After unsuccessfully searching the area for the continuation of the trail, it seemed the options were either to return down the steep slope, defeated, back to the last village, or try to push forward and get a vantage point from the mountain’s top, which it seemed couldn’t be far off. I had hiked over 30 km that day and the only people I had encountered were in the villages, so the thought of two ... read more

The rainy season is finally here! There's no more school, so all the college and high school students come back to the village for the vacation. No more ridiculously hot weather. And my favorite, no more relying on a well 15 minutes away for all my water. Now it's delivered to me, straight off my roof. :) Far from being a vacation time, everyone is working more than usual. Practically everyone is in the fields most if not all of the day planting corn, rice, peanuts, cassava, sweet potatoes, and okra. All of this is done by hand, the only assistance being that of a hoe. Even I'm working more than usual. Because everyone's out of school, when they're not planting they want to learn English. So I've been having about three private lessons a day ... read more