Sierra Leone or bust!

Chronicles from Guinea.

It's called a "sept-place" taxi. A used station wagon shipped over from the US after its so-called useful life is over. In West Africa, the sept really means nine or ten human bodies crammed into every last square centimeter and some spilling out the windows. You can only hope your traveling mates are skinny old men.

Luckily, there were seven of us traveling, so we pool our money and buy out the "extra" seats. And we're on the road for Guinea, hiking shoes ready.

We cruise into the gorgeous hilly countryside of the Fouta Diallo on our second day of travel. I wish for a helmet for the final three hour stretch of road (slamming into the ceiling as we careen over washboards and pot holes that make Kangaroo Island or the McCarthy-Kennicott roads look like super highways). We show up after dark at a little village named Doucki and meet the irrepressible Hassan Ba, a little bundle of energy (fluent in English, Spanish, Fulani, and French) who guides us around the surrounding country for a few days. We hike into Guinea's Grand Canyon, clamber up little wooden ladders strapped together with natural fiber twine, dive into swimming pools, and ooh and aw at the countryside. It feels good to sweat from sheer activity, to cool off in fresh water, to swing on rubber tree vines, and to marvel at nature's beauty.

After three days, we reluctantly pile back into a "sept-place" to head for Sierra Leone. But visions of sugar sand beaches dance in our heads and we're on the road again.

Our only concern is the glaring hole in our passports where we should have a visa. A group of volunteers went to Sierra Leone a few weeks earlier without visas and managed to 'bribe' their way across the border, so we figure, well... maybe we can too. It sure beats the alternative of paying almost $250 US dollars. We're volunteers, after all. (According to a recent Economist magazine definition of poverty, Peace Corps volunteers' wages fall below the international poverty line. We don't even qualify for the global middle class, at $8 a day) We're willing to pay up to $100, but if that doesn't cut it, we're going to head back. So we press on towards the border a bit nervously.

We reach the turn-off road to Sierra Leone and get into another sept-place taxi. Two muscled guys climb into the front passenger seat and lean back to warn us, "They'll ask you for money, but don't give them any." We exchange glances. Okay. There's four of us across in the middle seat, shoulders and hips and arms and elbows rubbing and sweating in unison. We reach our first gendarme stop and as we see a camouflaged figure sidling up to the car, I plunge into the mess of legs to roll down the window. A mouthful of yellow (palm oil) rice and teeth lowers down into our frame of vision. More rice kernels cling to the gendarme's right hand (that he holds out to his side) as he surveys the carload of white girls. He grunts that he wants to see our ID cards, and we obligingly hand them over. After a cursory glance, he says "the price of water." I look at the guys in the front seat for clarification, and they say "he wants a bribe." Kyle picks up his water bottle and says to the gendarme "Are you thirsty? Here, have some water." The gendarme chuckles (spraying some rice) and waves us through.

At our next official bribing station, the gendarme is cleaner. He's also fatter, taller, and drunker. As he approaches our open window, we hush our chatter to gauge our oponent. His eyes are wide and red, slightly watery and without the slightest hint of humor or compassion. I smile and greet him. "Passports" he spits. We hand them over in silence. He looks without looking, his eyes slipping transparently past our IDs to rest on our white skin that drips of money. "Il faut donner dix mille francs." As the sole French translator for the group, I tell him that our passports are in order and we aren't going to pay any money. We argue for a few minutes, me and his red drunk eyes. He yells at our taxi driver to pull back and park on the side of the road, then he shouts "You'll spend the night here!!" We shrug and call his bluff. I plop my head in my heads for a nap. A minute later we're cruising down the road again.

Before the border, the road turns to a dirt track riddled with potholes (an international highway!) We have to make our way through check point after check point, joking about why we are six women with one guy. ("Yeah, these are my six wives. One for each day of the week, and then I rest on Sunday"). It's weird to be back in a place where people speak English, so we start speaking to each other in Bambara when we want to confer privately. We decide to walk the final mile to the border in order to avoid the scamming cab drivers.

At the top of a hill looms a giant building. A billboard in front of it reads "Stop corruption." Then I see the sign on the building: Sierra Leone Immigration, Customs and Excise Department. We're ushered up the steps and down a long dark hallway, then filed into a small office in front of the desk of a lanky man in a well-ironed uniform. He flips carefully through our passports and looks back at us,"Why have you come here without visas?" We tell our story of "no embassy in Bamako, we heard we didn't need them, blah blah blah." Sweat beads pop out on our foreheads as he continues flipping through our passports and says "You're chances of getting in without visas are very very slim." He points to the wall where it says American citizens must pay 650,000 le to enter, approximately $250. He asks us to read it out loud. I notice that the next nationalities only have to pay 100,000 le and I ask him why they don't want Americans coming to their country. He says, well, America doesn't want us coming to your country, so it's foreign policy retaliation. He asks us why we can't pay, and we say we're Peace Corps volunteers. Immediately his face brightens and he says, ah yes, I learned English from a Peace Corps volunteer. His name was Martin... Then we discover that he speaks Malinke, a close cousin to Bambara, and we joke around and call each other bean eaters. We monkey back and forth for an hour, but eventually they turn us away. We're unwilling to pay, and he's an honest guy who wants to do his job right. With a forlorn glance, we cross the border back into Guinea. Our passports are re-stamped (exit Guinea, 4:30 pm. Entry Guinea, 6:30 pm... Where were we for those two hours?). We stone-face our way back through bribe-hungry policemen and finally crash in Conakry at 1am at the Peace Corps transit house, a true vacation destination.

We drink beer and eat pizza at the beach bar 50 meters from the house, and then we get a boat out to the little islands off the coast of Conakry. The port is the biggest sewer I've ever had the pleasure to visit (an olfactory nightmare), so in order to swim we have to get out to the islands.

I was reading Cradle to Cradle Remaking the Way we Make Things, a waterproof book made from fully re-cyclable plastic polymers. The author said "You can even take it in the bathtub." So I took it to the ocean.

My last vacation in Africa. Now it's back to work! Lots to do in the next few months.

A lot more pictures are on Facebook,

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2375449&id=3408340&l=199bc6888d