The Skinny on Guinea

After leaving the Peace Corps bureau in Conakry around 7:00am, I made my way to the gare to catch a taxi bound for Labe. The trip to Labe went pretty smoothly. At one point the accelerator got stuck so the driver just ran a string from the engine, out from under the hood and back in the window so he could operate the accelerator by hand. We drove like that for about an hour and then we stopped outside Kindia to fix it. After that it was smooth sailing to Labe. This was the first time I had travelled to Labe by taxi so I got to see some beautiful countryside I hadn’t seen yet. I got to Labe around 7:00pm, got some food, and then thought about going to bed but it was hard because I was so excited about my trip. I finally managed to fall asleep around midnight, only to wake up around 4:00am so I could leave for the gare around 5:00.

I wanted to be sure to get the first taxi heading to the Senegal border. I got to the gare around 5:30 and there was practically no one there yet. After talking with a few people, I learned that this was probably not the best place to catch a taxi for the border so I got in another taxi and headed for a village outside Labe who had a marche that day and likely some taxis heading to the border. I managed to find one rather quickly and by 8:30 we were on the road. This leg of the trip went pretty smoothly. For some reason, we tied a bunch of large leaves to the roof for about an hour and then took them back off but that was the only weird thing that happened.

We made it to the border right before it closed at 6:00pm and got across with no problems. Then we continued on to Manda, a transit hub in Southern Senegal. We took a shortcut on a non-paved road to get to Manda and while driving on this road we saw A TON of monkeys. They were crossing the road in packs. It was pretty awesome. Also, there are donkeys in Senegal and a lot more people ride bikes because there aren’t as many hills. So, when we got to Manda, we then got on a bus bound for Dakar. I had made some friends in the taxi so we all continued on together. The bus ride wasn’t too bad and we rolled into Dakar around 6:00am on Friday. I had made a friend in the taxi from Labe who was selling gold in Dakar so he showed me around a little bit before I struck off on my own. I even went with him to a few jewelry shops while he was trying to sell his gold. I found a decent hostel to stay at for 5000 CFA or about $10. It was right above a delicious fast food place called Ali Baba’s that made amazing chawarmas. I stayed there for two nights and spent my first two days in Dakar scoping things out so I would be ready when Kelsey arrived on Sunday.

On Sunday morning, I took the bus to the airport to check on the flight. It was delayed of course. Probably because Obama was coming to Dakar that Tuesday! After waiting for basically the entire day, Kelsey’s flight finally arrived around 5:00pm. Just seven hours late. I was very, very, very excited to see her! She got to stay in Senegal for two weeks. We didn’t have anything planned so we mostly just walked around and looked at things. One afternoon we rode a pirogue packed with at least 50 people across a short stretch of ocean to a cool island. Another day we walked to the westernmost point of the African continent. About a week of our time was spent in St. Louis, the first French settlement in West Africa. The beaches near St. Louis were marvelous and one day we walked all the way out to where the Senegal River meets the ocean. We ate a lot of good food and got a chance to hear some live music. We went to the marche too so I could get a “WATI B” shirt and Kelsey could find some fabric to make a bag. We spent the last 3 nights in Dakar and then Kelsey flew out on Sunday afternoon, two weeks after she arrived.

I headed back to downtown Dakar to prepare for my return voyage. I stayed at the same hostel and was up early the next morning to get a taxi toward the Guinean border. I had planned to spend the night in a town called Dioube where there is a large marche and probably lots of taxis heading to Guinea. Unfortunately, the taxi going to Dioube didn’t leave until 12:30pm so I decided it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to go all the way there because it would be dark when I arrived and I didn’t have a place to stay picked out yet. Instead of going all the way to Dioube, I decided to get out early in a larger city called Tambacounda. There is a Peace Corps volunteer house there and I was hoping I could stay there for the night. Unfortunately, due to some recent rule changes, they couldn’t let me stay at the volunteer house. They gave me the address of a cheap and respectable hotel. When I got there though they told me that it wasn’t open because the owners were on vacation. Luckily, there was a super nice guy named Joseph who lived on the property and offered me HIS room for the night. We chatted for a little bit and he told me about the soccer club he runs in Tambacounda called the “JOEstars.” I got some good sleep that night and Joseph was even nice enough to show me to the gare in the morning.

I decided at this point that it wasn’t worth it to go all the way to Dioube because people told me I could get a taxi direct to Telimele in Manda. This turned out to be true. I found the Telimele bound taxi within seconds of my arrival in Manda. It wasn’t full yet so I walked around the busy marche for a while to kill some time. Around 1:00pm, I asked the driver if we had all the passengers yet. He said we did and that we were just waiting on some baggage so we would leave right after the 2:00pm prayer. It turned out that we were waiting for a lot of baggage. And apparently more people. There were 8 seats in the taxi including the driver’s seat. When we finally left Manda around 7:30pm, there were ten adults and eight children in the taxi, plus another guy on the roof. There was even a guy in the trunk. We got to the border after it had closed so we had to sleep there for the night. Apparently this is a pretty common thing to do because there were at least 15 other taxis doing the same thing. The setup was pretty cool. There were food stalls all along the side of the road. You picked one to eat sinner at and then that person let you sleep on the ground in or in front of their stall. I was super tired so I managed to get a little sleep but the next day was the first day of Ramadan so everyone got up around 4:30 to eat before the sun came up. We got moving around 7:00 and had a successful border crossing. After a grueling eighteen hours in the taxi (and outside of it, climbing mountains that it couldn’t go up with all the passengers inside) I eventually made it to Ellen’s site around 1:00am. I spent two nights there and then took a taxi back to Gougoudje. It was quite the trip. Not something I would want to do again but it makes a pretty good story…

Luckily Kelsey took some pictures. There are more on facebook...