I arrived promptly at 9am as the Sierra Leone embassy in Conakry opened to watch the Consul in charge of visa affairs leave in a car. “Never mind, he’ll be back by 11am, come back then”, the gate security inform me. Thanks to the local climate, which combines the less pleasant aspects of a furnace and a sauna I lose a few kilos in body moisture killing two hours in the particularly unremarkable portion of town in which the embassy…
There are few pleasures in life more sublime than being able to make small children burst into tears or flee in abject terror at your mere presence. Such are the joys of travelling in areas of West Africa away from the tourist trail and you don’t have to go very far to do that given the limited number of people who make the effort to come here. These kinds of reactions are usually an indication that the children have never…
If you are unfamiliar with the American expression S.N.A.F.U. an explanation is required before I proceed: it stands for Situation Normal All Fucked Up. Whilst scanning an online map of Liberia in preparation for the trip I was delighted to find a place so named, hence the goal of reaching this forgotten corner of the country became my prime reason for going there, sad, puerile individual that I am. Whilst many would assume the title was an unsurprising indictment of…
The photo above of an advertising hoarding for a popular skin cream is, in some respects unremarkable: yet another product to beautify the skin. But this is West Africa and even a generous interpretation would we hard pressed to describe the model as even mixed race. If this was some lone, anomalous advert it would not be worth more than a brief mention but it is typical of marketing for beauty products in the region. Of the dozens of ads I have seen,…
Liberia’s coastal town of Buchanan is home to a lively Ghanaian fishing community known as Fanti Town, named after the region and its people in southern Ghana. Sharing Christianity and the English language makes them a compatible mix with the locals. It should be pointed out that although these immigrants generally understand Liberian Krio (as in creole form of language) English, to us it may as well originate from Planet Zogblax 3 in the Acturian Nebula. What may seem reasonably logical when read in a…
I’d hesitate to recommend a decent, well publicized war as a development policy but ten years of aid after the country’s horrors have seen improvements due to foreign agencies which would never have occurred otherwise. Few indications of the war remain, only the occasional abandoned ruin, some graced with the pockmarks of bullets and shrapnel, forlornly waiting for their former owner to return, in the slim hope they may still be alive. If there is one thing aid agencies love…
The initial signs were not good: as the manager led me in to the hotel he didn’t feel it necessary to comment on the unconscious figure sprawled in the lobby. Checking to see if the first room was available we obviously disrupted a prostitute and her client, judging by the noises coming from within but the next room with a dusty motorcycle parked outside in the corridor was deemed suitable. I was welcomed by the death throes of cockroach in…
If you were to judge a city by its outskirts you would have turned round a long time before getting even half way into Conakry and called in a tactical nuclear strike. Lurching at crawling speed over the 4×4 test track, which is the main road into the city, along with far too many road users than it was designed for, you are surrounded by the clanking of improvised industry amongst clouds of dust and smouldering heaps of plastic and…
It has taken much time and effort to find just the right words to encapsulate the true essence of this country and after much consultation of dictionaries and thesauri, contemplating adjectival comparisons and literary metaphor I believe I have captured concisely the quintessential Guinea: absolutely fucked. For a nation that hasn’t suffered war it suffers a level of decrepitude rarely matched in African nations. If you have not had the opportunity to become a connoisseur of relative levels of fuckedupness (this is my opening bid…
Dear Allah I am very sorry but I may have inadvertently insulted your great religion. Please allow me to explain. I know being omniscient you already know this but I would just feel a bit better about it if I put it into words, if you don’t mind. Ever since George Bush decided that Islam was a bad thing I have sought to better understand your religion, after all I wasn’t going to take that dimwit’s word for it was…
