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…
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…
