12/31/2023 Bikepacking Guinea Day 145 : Les Ivrognes

The Fouta Djallon highlands are aweome. I decided to zig-zag through this section and savor it. Ivory Coast is the next country. It’s a ways away, but in order to be allowed into the country, I need to go to an Embassy in Conakry or Freetown (Sierra Leone). I’m pretty sure that I won’t like Conakry, and Freetown has only one known positive, which is that I’m in communication with a guy I met on Strava named Tenesie. Oh, and in Sierra Leone, they speak English.

Near the falls, I met a guy named Barry who spoke nearly perfect English, but kept saying he only knew a little. I’m desperate for English communication, and squeeze as much out of these conversations as possible. When I asked for a photo to remember him by, he seemed reluctant. I asked why, and he said, “maybe someone will see my ugly face.” Of course, his face was not ugly, but I kept the camera in my pocket anyway. Later, he asked, “What languages do you speak?” I replied, “Spanish and English.”

He got really excited, and started speaking perfect Spanish too! The polyglots of Africa are truly humbling! We went on and on in Spanish, but BAD NEWS! My Spanish is completely jacked-up from doing French for 2 months. I kept interjecting French words. Barry could switch between languages easily. My brain feels like a cheap 30 minute cassette tape from the 80s where if you wanted to record a song from the radio, you had to overwrite the previous songs (You know, the one you stayed up until midnight waiting for the dj to play your song request!) How I wish I at least had a 120 minute cassette-tape-brain! 🧠

Anyway, now Barry wanted a photo of us, so we got a selfie on his phone and maybe he will send it. If he does, I’m sure everyone will say how good looking he and the people of Africa are.

I was backtracking from the falls on an isolated stretch of dirt road, when a woman in a wheelchair sprinted out from under a tree. She looked ready to win a heat in the paraolympics. I knew she was coming for me, so I stopped. Her face looked like my grandmother who passed away 25 years ago.

She said, “Argent! 40,000”. (Money). Those would be her only French words. I could see the whites of her eyes were dark yellow. Maybe she had hepatitis? She wasn’t drunk. I decided that I’m not going to single-handedly end begging, so I gave her enough money for a day or two of food, and a handful of candies. Then she pulled up her skirt to show me her scaly legs. I asked, “diabetes?” I was feeling bad about the candy, but she had already called out to a nearby girl and gave it to her. I learned her name was Mariame from another woman who walked by.

You might be wondering why I said Mariame looked like my grandmother. Was my grandma black?

Until I got the group photo from yesterday, I had forgotten that I look so different. You never see yourself, so if you’ve been somewhere for a while, you just start to assume you look like everyone else you see. Another weird thing that has happened is that the way I remember people in my head after meeting them is color-independent. That is a tough one to explain; you will just have to believe me or test if it happens to you by coming here for a while. It might account for why I saw my grandmother in Miriam’s face.

The day wasn’t perfect, though. I was sitting and drinking water out of a bag when I could see a man stumbling towards me. He started grabbing my arm and poking my side. In Senegal, I had come to really like the friendly human contact, but this guy, I wanted to squirt my water bag in his face. Guineans are much more reserved than the Senegalese so far, and they don’t usually touch you. I’ve even been left hanging a couple of times on handshakes or high fives that I’d grown accustomed to in Senegal.

Anyway, the drunk guy wasn’t getting a response from me, so he suddenly grabbed the other water bag from my lap! I figured he could have the $0.05 bag of water, but instead, he ran with it to harass a nearby kid. He kept trying to get the poor kid to take the bag of water!?! The kid didn’t want to have anything to do with him, but we exchanged knowing smiles behind the pest’s back.

A couple of villagers said something to the effect of “knock it off,” and the guy returned my water in a huff and marched off. Later I gave the kid some candies for his troubles. I’m back to candies since I can’t find dates anymore.

I’ve been buying hard boiled eggs everywhere I go. It’s amazing this is a readily available option on the side of the road! An ebullient woman was explaining to me that if I wanted 10 eggs, it would be 30 minutes to boil them. My lack of French, while disappointing for me, does add a lot of fun to everyone else’s day. She was very patient, and a crowd gathered. I got out my phone application, and she thought that was hilarious… but she spoke perfectly into the phone. The villagers and I were all laughing when THIS town’s drunk person appeared. He wanted a go with the phone, but couldn’t hold it right. It kind of stopped being fun when he arrived. You can tell the villagers don’t know what to do with the inebriated; they try to be polite, but I think they are letting them get away with too much harassment.

Well, good evening to you! (Bon soir). Since I’m mentioning it, there must be some kookoo French teacher running Guinea’s French program because people say, “good evening!” to me all day long!