Guinea 2022 Day 3
July 25th, today - Ibro the country director came with one of the drivers to pick me up today. Ibro himself has only just recently come back from his own vacation in which he traveled to Mecca to make the hajj, and now can append "al-hadji" to his name. I think it's kind of cool how unlike in Nigeria where you primary get to add "chief" or "prince" to your name based purely on bloodlines, the most respected honorific here is gained by actually doing something specific that requires committing to a fair bit of a journey.
We drove first to the Organization's new office here in Conakry, which is a nice little building. One of the program assistant's read out to me the official introductory advice for Guinea, liberally interspersed with "I know you've been here many times before but I'm supposed to tell you these things" apologies, though I assured him that since I was the first volunteer in years we should just take it as a practice for the induction of upcomign volunteers (it sounds like in the next two weeks they'll have three more). And there were a few things that came up that we realized should have been told to the volunteer before they left home country ("you should bring a gift from your home region"!).
They primarily speak French here in the capital, and some local languages out in the countryside. I've found my meagre French has actually degraded in the years since I was last year, particularly since Spanish has supplanted it in my head and while trying to think of French words I keep accidentally coming up with the Spanish equivalent. But I can often get the gist of what people are talking about.
Went to a bank where I got some 1.5 million francs, so I don't feel penniless anymore (I've always found taking a bunch of USD cash to exchange is often unnecessary and necessitates tedious money changing chores when bank ATMs will dispense local currency to you at no worse an exchange rate than you could have gotten from a money exchanger, probably a better one in fact). Anyway the 1.5 million is $173.32 in USD (currently 8654.61 : 1).
Then went on an extended quest to find a barber, which I thought would be quick and easy but the first two barbers were closed (in the second case, the barbers themselves, three young men who looked Lebanese, were idling about in the barber shop but declined to do any work when asked because they were closed. Seemed a bit odd to me that they'd even be there in that case but hey). Then we found ourselves near a supermarket so I asked Ibro if we could go in and see the honey and he agreed. It was the most weirdly empty and spacious supermarket I've been in. When I walked into a supermarket in Nigeria on my first ever project I felt like an idiot for having expected it to be different, it was very normal, how foolish of me to assume it might be otherwise. Well, this supermarket definitely felt weird. There was locally produced honey which was good to see, as well as honey from India and "Dubai" (pretty sure Dubai doesn't produce honey). I took a picture of the weirdly empty and spacious aisles but didnt' even notice the weirdest most dystopian thing until a bit later, but it fortunately is visible in the picture.
As we waited in line (Ibro was going to buy something) I noticed that there was a second floor balcony that wrapped around the entire store and stationed about every three aisles there was a person in the store's red uniform, just standing there, watching. Being as there weren't more than a dozen customer in the store there were definitely more people watching that no one pocketed a snack surreptitiously than there were actual customers (but then again these people are probably paid daily less than the cost of a snack so...). Anyway silent watchers all up along the walls definitely feels creepy and dystopian.
And then we finally found a barber who was open. The haircut cost $5.
In all this driving about town I noted once again that the town is strewn with trash, running water flows down every road and pools in low places and the numerous enormous potholes, as well as cascades down embankments in places or flows like a stream down some roads. In short, and I'm sorry any Guineans who are reading this, I know one doesn't like to see words with such negative connotations used to describe one's principal city, but it's squalid. And I was thinking, it wouldn't be so bad if it was a dry squalid. But the fact that its always over 80f and everything everything is wet with dirty and sometimes stagnant water, I think it's the awareness of all the bacteria and parasites that are probably flourishing on every surface which makes it all really disturbingly squalid.
Back at the hotel restaurant this evening I had filet de beouf, which, though maybe somewhere in Australia could have come up with a better cut of beef, at least it wasn't chewy like all meat I'd had in Ghana, and I think there was clear evidence that a skilled chef and done the best with what they had. There were pickled vegetables intermixed with the fries which I don't tihnk I've ever had before but it was a delicious combination. For over $20 (180,000 francs) it cost a fortune by African standards but I justify this to myself that I'm going up country tomorrow and this is probably my last taste of luxury for two weeks. The one waiter who speaks fluent English is a swell fellow named Bobo.
