A Rather Roundabout Journey to Guinea
Let us pick up directly from where we left off, at the airport gate to leave Melbourne, and stressed about whether or not I'd be able to get in to Guinea due to accidentally failing to have my yellow fever certificate with me.
Sitting nearby in the waiting area was what appeared to be a couple of African descent with their 4 year old daughter, and the precocious little girl was telling another woman "I'm going to Africa!" So I thought I'd be so bold as to ask the man where in Africa they were going.
"Conakry Guinea"
"Me toooo!"
We immediately began comparing notes on the trip to Guinea (there's direct flights from Dubai now!), how things are there, etc. They turned out to be extremely friendly. Not a couple as it happens. The man (Sam) was traveling with his wife's best friend and the latter's daughter.
Had an aisle seat beside an older caucasian couple. It would be my assumption they're just doing something boring like being on a vacation to Rome but last year when I finally talked to my older caucasian seatmate three quarters of the way through the flight it turned out she was on her way to Lagos Nigeria for a development project. So with that in mind this time I greeted my seatmates as soon as we were seated. They were on their way to Rome for vacation.
In Flight Movie Reviews
Woman King - This movie is about the legendary female warriors of the Dahomey kingdrom in West Africa in or around 1823. The plot is kind of a bit full of ahistorical fluff -- in the movie the Dahomey are adamandtly opposed to the slave trade and fighting to end it when in reality the Dahomey under that specific king tremendously _increased_ their participation in the slave trade and it was only under pressure from England that they eventually moved away from it. But other than that it's a fun movie and it's good to see a hollywood movie set West Africa actually striving to do serious justice to the culture rather than have it be some anarchic backwater of simple "natives." One review describes it as "Braveheart with black women" and that seems accurate.
Also noteworthy that John Boyega, who played the Dahomey king, is ethnically Yoruba, ie, of the people who are portrayed as his enemies here. And it was interesting to me because the Yoruba history I'd read as background for the historical bits of my book as generally from the Oyo / Yoruba perspective, so funny for me as well for them to be cast as the villians. Also, as portrayed here, they come across more like their own enemies the Sokoto Caliphate horsemen than as themselves.
I give it an A-, it was enjoyable and my only quibbles are with their historical liberties.
The Legion - This movie about a Roman scout escaping an encircled Roman camp and fleeing across the Armenian wilderness pursued by two enemies in order to go ask for help from another Roman general was extremely unimpressive. It felt like I was watching a student film project made by about half a dozen film students (I'm surprised to read now there's as many as sixteen actors in it). I didn't even try not to fall asleep during it and I don't think I missed anything. Looks like the professional reviewers pretty well skewered it too. F
Unknown Richard the Lionhearted Movie Kingslayer - then I tried to watch some Richard the Lionhearted movie that also didn't seem like it was proceeding very promisingly and I was at my limit for bad movies so just went to sleep. Googling it now I find it has 4/10 stars on IMDB, and the first result besides that is a google auto generated "People Often Ask: Is Kingslayer a good movie?" with the answer "Kingslayer is a poorly written, poorly acted, poorly directed film where the plot makes as little sense as why John Rhys-Davies agreed to associate himself with it." sooo I think my initial impression was probably correct and I'm going to go ahead and label it with the F
End Movie Interlude
Arrived at 5:20am local time in Dubai, which would have been 10:20am in Melbourne, I guess making it only a 13 hour flight.
Met up with my Guinean friends, who of course were making the same connection as I. Because I'm almost always traveling alone it's kind of novel and fun for me to feel like I'm traveling "with" people and they made me feel like I was part of their little group. In fact I had a very unusually social time in the airport because then a Muslim man approached us, he couldn't speak English but it was clear he couldn't figure out where his flight's gate was so I went off with him in search of his proper gate until he found some Arabic speaking people to help him. Anyway took off about two hours later.
Flight would be bound for Dakar after Conakry and wasn't full. I was kind of anticipating most of the passenger would be onward bound to Dakar but (spoiler alert) it seemed like roughtly half got off in Conakry in the end. I would have had a seatmate but the cheeky woman moved to an unoccupied seat in the front row of the section, which I'd just heard the flight attendant tell someone else they'd have to pay $100 if they wanted to upgrade to it ahaha. So I had the aisle seat, empty seat beside me and a young man by the window spoke no known language (which is to say not English or French), and didn't deplane in Conakry.
As the flight was all day time, and had the same set of movies of which I'd already seen all the ones I wanted to watch, I just read my book(s).
In Flight Book Reviews
In Trouble Again by Redmond O'Hanlon -- I had greatly enjoyed reading his later book set in the Congo, and in this one he is traveling by boat through the Venezuelan Amazon. Again I loved his mix of well portrayed characters, beautiful descriptions, and interesting all around setting, observations of natural history, etc. I think I slightly preferred Congo Journey for its tighter Heart of Darkness style plot arc of descent into near insanity, but no complaints about this book, I quite liked it. Finished the book ... great I haven't even arrive yet and finished one of the two books I brought with me. And I like this book too much to discard it, want to keep it on my shelf / loan it to other people, so guess I'll be carting it around now.
Into the Heart of Borneo by Redmon O'Hanlon -- Started this earlier book by the same author. In this one he is in 1983 making his first of what as we know would later be several ambitious expeditions. I'm only a few chapters in and I can tell his writing at this early stage is much less evolved than it would later be. He seems to be hurrying along in his prose, and makes some jokes I felt rather fell flat, but that's not to say it's a bad book at all. In fact it's kind of fun to have witnessed his development as an author through the course of his books. Anyway, I'm not very far in so that's all I have to say about this one so far.
But in general I think O'Hanlon might be unseating Paul Theoroux in my opinion as the best travel writer, though I just wish he had written more books! It's only these three and one more on a trawler in the North Atlantic.
End Book Review Interlude
I expected we would just fly more or less straight west across north Africa but we instead took quite the detour north over the Mediterranean. I kind of expected maybe we'd avoid flying over Sudan but looking at the specific route we took I can only guess we were also trying to avoid flying over Libya and Mali as well. And you'd think this would have been planned in advance but then we arrived over an hour late so who knows. As it happens, sometimes like on the Mel-DXB leg, I don't look at the in flight maps but as I was just reading I had he map open the whole time so I'd look up at it every so often and be like "okay we're crossing over Alexandria now huh." "well look there's Malta now. Are we headed to Europe??"
And also, don't forget, this whole time in the back of my mind I'm a little stressed about what will happen when we get to Guinea in terms of being able to get in without the yellow fever certificate.
So by and by finally we landed. 3pm local (2am Saturday Melbourne, having left my house at 2pm Thursday). Last year they were checking temperatures and covid vaccination certificates just at the end of the boarding bridge but not so this time (also masks are being worn now by a handful of people but no longer either required or worn by a siginificant number of people). Rather than wait for my friends, I hurried along thinking it might take me awhile to deal with passport control. Proceeded directly to the woman in the "arrival visas" kiosk, who last year had been sullen and difficult and had extracted a bribe from me (by cleverly telling me I needed to pay, rather than actually asking for a bribe, I only realized later I'd already paid for the visa). But this time she waved me away saying "no marshe pas!" which to my very basic understanding of French seemed to be "don't walk" and made no sense -- though now I look it up and apparently it means "do not work" (though I wasn't wrong, marche does walk on its own). So I just went to the passport stamping kiosk and handed the woman there my passport and the paper showing my visa approval. Rather to my surprise she simply stamped the paper and the passport and waved me through.
Last year not only had the first lady asked me a bunch of questions and made a big deal about issuing a visa, but then the person at hte passport stamping kiosk had ALSO grilled me on things like the address and phone number of where I was staying and my hosts and generally also made himself difficult. But this time and after all that stress I blew through passport control in probably a matter of seconds. Needless to say she didn't ask about a yellow fever certificate.
And then I ended up waiting around for my friends, they were among the last off the airplane. As we exited the terminal they were met by their joyous families. My ride was a spot late due to traffic but by and by they came and collected me, took me to the hotel. Another difference I noted from last year was a very heavy policy presence last year. There were armed soldiers loitering menacingly in the airport last year, one had to squeeze past them on the narrow walkway out which was kind of intimidating, and then in the drive across town one would see them very visibily present in many places -- as I noted last year I even saw things like a heavily armed policeman (/ military? well I think they're "gendarmes" which are literally both police and military) savagely thwack a motorcyclist for not coming to a stop fast enough. The police presence was overwhelming and imminently menacing. I don't know if the political situation has in general improved here -- they still have the unelected military leader who took over in a coup -- but just from the first day's observations the military/police presence doesn't seem as overwhelming and menacing.
Otherwise, at the same hotel again. Just chillin here (well it's 36c/98f out so maybe not exactly "chillin") Saturday (today) and then tomorrow I depart for up-country.