Guinea Part 2 - 4 Feb 08 to 17 Feb 08

After leaving Mali at the beginning of February, I returned once again to Guinea. My first stop was the small village of Nyandankoro where my friend Melinda spent her first 2 years of Peace Corps service in Guinea. Melinda was there visiting her host family and friends for the first time since she'd left 5 months earlier. Also visiting was Melinda's friend Alison, on vacation from her current post serving in Peace Corps Mauritania. We hung out together for a couple days in Nyandankoro and enjoyed meeting Melinda's host family and all her friends.

Below is a picture of Melinda (on the right holding the baby), Alison (far left, standing), and a bunch of Melinda's friends from Nyandankoro.

Here is a picture of Melinda's host mother.

One of Melinda's host sisters sporting my hat.

A woman making to, a thick local staple which must be constantly and vigorously mixed in order to attain the right consistency.

The second night we were in Nyandankoro we were invited to attend this ceremony, which was a renewal of the hunters' fetish, the source of their power. The ceremony happens once a year and included much singing and dancing as well as repeated firing of a hunting rifle. The instrument you see is a type of large bass-ngoni, with the "sese" on the top rattling and providing sonic distortion when it vibrates as the ngoni is played.

Melinda took us up on a nearby hillside to see a broad view of the surrounding countryside and the Niger river.

Women watering the fields in Nyandankoro.

The bridge in Kankan. I was here briefly again for a few hours inbetween Nyandankoro and Kissidougou awaiting transport.

Our van broke down about an hour into the trip to Kissidougou and all the passengers were just hanging out while we waited for them to try and fix it.

Here the driver and the conductor are working on the motor.

A roadsign showing the distance to Kissidougou nearby where we were waiting.

The local people around where we were waiting were setting bushfires to clear the land for planting. Some of the fires got pretty big but they seemed to have it all under control.


After about an hour and a half, a big truck came by and all the passengers from the van wanted to switch vehicles as there was no guarantee our van would get fixed. The drivers argued for awhile about how to transfer the fees we'd paid and eventually worked it out. The rest of the trip was in the back of a big truck, looking out at the countryside as we slowly and torturously bounced over concrete chunks in the road that were all that remained of the pavement. I passed the time by talking to some people and playing ngoni.

Here is my hotel in Kissidougou. This town has special significance to me as the West African drumming and dance troupe I play with in the States takes its name from here. My teacher's family is originally from the area and that's why we have that name. I wanted to come and see for myself what the town is like.

Around Kissidougou. Anyone who knows Susu will appreciate this picture.

I met the local youth drumming and dance troupe in Kissidougou and explained who I was and why I was in Kissidougou. They invited me to come and practice with them for the few days I was there. The name of the troupe in French is "Sante pour Tous", which means "Health for Everyone".

Dancers from the troupe "Sante pour Tous".

Here are the directors of the troupe. The man on the right is named Fadama Kante.

Fadama's son is the lead drummer for the troupe. He took me to a wedding and I got some practice playing solo djembe for dancers. I didn't get any pictures of it. This is the end of the wedding right before people started to head home.

Here are some friends I met in Kissidougou. I hung out a bunch at their house and watched cool B movies from Nigeria and music videos from the Ivory Coast.

The market in Kissidougou.

After Kissidougou, I headed back to Conakry for a few days. The car ride there was made exciting by a high-speed flat tire around a curve but our driver was a pro and steered out of it. I didn't have the time to do any more studying in Conakry so inbetween getting my visa for Guinea-Bissau I hung at Fara's family's house and spent some time walking around Conakry and getting better acquainted with the city.

Here is Fara's brother Tamba, who is a teacher, giving a Sunday review to some of his students on the front porch of the house.

Fara's mother Mariama asked me for some Bazeng cloth from Mali so I brought her a bolt of the cloth as a present. Bazeng is shiny and brilliantly colored and it has a stiff, waxy texture. A lot of the clothes you see people wearing at weddings are made from Bazeng cloth.

Here is one of the traffic roundabouts in Conakry. I imagined the elephant coming to life and rampaging around the town, but I waited for awhile and nothing happened.

Fara's brother Sekou and I took a little visit to see the national museum. There were some interesting masks there, but I was reminded of a recent comment someone made to me regarding "preserving" culture: to preserve means to keep something that's already dead around longer. Seeing cultural items displayed in a museum, while interesting, always hammers this point home for me. When there is noone there to use the item, to put it into context, its life has gone.

After my brief stay in Conakry, I had my visa for Guinea-Bissau in hand and I started to make my way up in that direction. I took the route through the Fouta Djalon region of Guinea, a hilly part of the country home to the Fula (or Peul) people. My first stop was Mamou, often called the gateway to the Fouta Djalon. I stayed the night with my friend Mamado Aliou Sow, who was the driver I rode with to Mamou. He showed me all around town and his mother made us a wonderful salad that night.


Here are some kids playing soccer in Mamou around sunset when it's not so hot.

Me and Mamado Sow. I'm about to leave for my next stop in the Fouta, Dalaba.

The Fouta Djalon has some beautiful countryside with a slightly cooler climate. There are lots of streams and natural rock formations, as well as some amazing waterfalls (I'm told). I didn't have much time to check this stuff out, but I did take a little day trip to see the ostentatiously named Bridge of God (below). If you look closely, you will see that it is a natural rock bridge.

The town of Dalaba has a long history when it comes to the French colonial occupation. Because of its altitude and mild climate, many French people built homes here and there was a Victorian-era health spa based around some natural springs, as well as an experimental garden to see which European plants would grow here. An interesting balance to all of this colonial history was the Williams-Bah museum (below), a combination of African-American history and Guinean cultural artifacts, exploring the connection between Africa and the diaspora. They had an extensive discussion of the history of slavery and the civil rights movement, and many interesting books on the African-American experience.

This house once belonged to Miriam Makeba, the South African music legend. She was friends with former Guinean president Sekou Toure and lived in this house during the last few years of Apartheid in the 1980's. The proprietor of the Williams-Bah museum took me over here so I could have a look.

This is the roof of Miriam Makeba's old house. It is built with a traditional Fula technique of weaving the wood together. The effect is quite beautiful I think.

After visiting Miriam Makeba's house, I went to see the ruins of the old colonial headquarters. Here is the gateway to the compound.

Here is the inside of the old colonial mansion, once occupied by a French governor but now abandoned.

This structure is know as the "Casa des Palavres", the "House of Words". It is very important in Guinean history because it is here that Charles de Gualle, former president of France, and Sekou Toure, Guinea's first president, negotiated the terms of Guinea's independence from France.

One of a series of murals I encountered in Dalaba portraying athletic events.

After Dalaba my next stop in the Fouta Djalon was the town of Labe, also the regional capital. The drive there was in a super-packed little sedan that was so full there was even someone sharing the driver's seat. We got one flat tire along the way but other than that the trip went well and we reached Labe in the early afternoon.

Labe was a pleasant place to spend the afternoon. I spent most of my time just wandering around and talking to people I met, which is mostly what "tourism" consists of for me when I travel, although I don't put up many pictures of it. For me, just being in a place and meeting the people and talking to them is what travel is all about. This woman had an interesting story. She was from Labe originally but had spent 22 years living in the Gambia and spoke English quite well. When her husband there died she returned home to Labe.

A view of the grand mosque of Labe from afar. The Fula people are almost exclusively Muslim and historically were very instrumental in spreading the faith around West Africa.

After Labe, I took a very long, hot, sweaty ride in a taxi-brousse all the way up to the far northwestern corner of Guinea, to a town called Koundara. Here is a stop along the way on the road to Koundara.

Another stop along the road to Koundara to cross a river.

The barge crossing the river worked via a handcrank that pulled the barge along a chain traversing the river's breadth.

On the road from Labe to Koundara one will pass many such cars as this one. I was told they were all coming from Senegal and Gambia and going down to Conakry, loaded down as much as possible with all kinds of goods that people want to take home. I couldn't believe how much stuff they were able to pack on these cars!!

Here is a wedding I encountered while in Koundara, my last stop in Guinea before heading to Guinea-Bissau. Koundara is in the far northwest corner of Guinea, next to Senegal and Guinea-Bissau. Culturally it is a transition zone back to more Sahelian cultures and there are people from many different ethnic groups living there. This was a Mandeng-style wedding, but there are also Fula, Coniagui and many other peoples around the area.

Here is the big regional market in Sareboido, which is held once a week on Sunday. Sareboido is a small town about halfway between Koundara and the Bissau-Guinean border. I hung out here for a couple hours on the way to Guinea-Bissau.

Lunch at the market: couscous and curdled milk (I thought it was quite good).

My next stop was Buruntuma, at the border with Guinea-Bissau. My time in that country will be covered in a later posting.