Ablution, Thursday 30th April

I landed at the airport in Conakry last night just after six o’clock. Sleeping through the entire flight I was exhausted after the two and half day trip from California via Washington DC and Charles De Gaulle. Fortunately I had an unbelievable stop-over poolside in DC. Adrenaline pumping and still unfamiliar as to what to expect, I stood up from my seat ready to disembark at Conakry International. We got off old school on a starboard side ramp from our Air France 747. Uniformed soldiers immediately surrounded the plane, a reminder that a coup d’état just occurred by the CNDD in December. They were there either to prevent anyone from running out onto the runway, or to assert some sort of legitimacy, which I was soon going to get a taste of. The arrival was quite a spectacle. Soldiers were ordering others around as if it was the first time a plane ever landed in country. Making sure I had written down my telephone number at the top of my registration form, They let me threw.

After breakfast at Le Damier, a comfortable and elegant little French café nestled between the shacks and street vendors of Conakry, Asmine, my brothers driver was meant to come pick me up at 10. He arrived around 11, no problem. You quickly get use to the routine when everything has to be done and redone a second time, when everybody is late, and allowing extra time for about anything. TIA. While I was waiting in front of my brothers place, I had time to introduce myself to Toure, the security guard, and the other guys sitting around the ground floor entrance. Something I learned in my travels in Namibia and South Africa, is always greeting others with respect, paying attention to detail, making eye contact, and trying to memorize their names, because they will often ask whether or not you remember them. In Guinea, each person introduces himself with his full name, for example, Bashir “Jay-z” Barry, the name and nickname of one of my students up-country. So far everything seemed alright from the balcony of my bro's seventh floor apartment. It’s undeniable that you feel guilty in the lavishly decorated penthouse in the middle of downtown Conakry. A city with almost no electricity, dirt roads, water taps for every neighborhood, and a nonexistent trash disposal system. No trash bins at all. Ornate ceilings, large white Christian Liaigre style couches, hand carved table lamps, dining room table and matching black side tables in the living room. African masks and articulated details on the lamps in each corner of the room, can't complain. We have running water, sinks and flushing toilets. The most basic elements, yet so hard to come across in this country. Only in these conditions do you begin to appreciate the food on your plate, the shower you can have at the end of the day, and the water you can drink and use for basic sanitation. The water in the streets is distributed drop by drop into yellow and white plastic jugs that women carry on their heads and toddlers haul down the little streets of the city. The trash is swept up into piles at the corner of each street, but unless that block paid their 5000 Guinean Franc free, equivalent to $1 each month, they carry their waste to dump it by the harbor. I immediately came to familiarize myself with the lifestyle after I heard two men greet each other that morning: “Ca va?”, and the other answers “Ca va…a la Guineene.” 

The first day in country was unforgettable, everything you know and are familiar with goes right out the window. Before you can even notice, you’re disorientated by the sounds that echo throughout the city. Exhaust pipes fuming and grumbling from the passing cars, an old Honda 125cc changing gears, a herd of goats yelling for attention, the arguments going on between street vendors, the laughter of children playing soccer and little kids screaming in the streets, the whistling of the birds flying through the mango trees, and the morning prayer coming from the minaret of the nearby mosque.

Asmine was to be my guide for the day, since after another half hour we quickly realized the guy who was originally going to show me around, never really wrote it down in his daily planner. We hit the Marche Du Niger, then an abandoned train yard that resulted in my first in-country payoff for taking “unauthorized” pictures of the ruins. A little something “pour le the.” Just after the raw meat section, chunks of red flesh displayed with a fresh layer of flies and topped with an odor that could kill a European fly, a brawl was going on in the market. Sort of frightening when the “coupe coupe’s” are sitting in the next stall. I quickly moved on. We reached bro’s HQ, Direction General, just on the outskirts of the city. Dug in to a killer sandwich prepared by his cook, then moved on to visit the Botanical Gardens, one of the calls to fame for the city. Some old French colonial villas were left over among the trash, and students were littered through the area reading books or whispering underneath the imported eucalyptus trees. We moved on to the US embassy, where I registered so that at minimum I would appear in a head count if shit hit the fan. The place kind of looked like an aircraft carrier with a control tower overlooking the Conakry peninsula… a perfect observation post to watch the whole Black Hawk Down scenario play off from the safety of a precinct that looked equally protected as the Pentagon in DC. Before that I was the Grande Mosque where I had to abandon my faith as an infidel and slip into the skin of someone who knew the Koran and just happened to drop in for the afternoon prayer. Tricky. Asmine walked me through the ablution ritual, the washing before prayer, to purify oneself and to obtain true guidance and respectful worship of Allah. At the taps outside the mosque, I removed my shoes and washed my hands, mouth, nose, face, arms, forehead, and feet. It was an incredible experience, so focused and trance-like that you forget everything around you, the past, the future, the noises, and the people. The mosque, I learned, was not only a place of prayer, but also an important abode for congregation. Men and women gathered to share stories, whisper conversations, rest in the cool air, and listen. The mosque transforms into a podium of orators, and an amphitheater for gossip, and with a loyal audience, possibly for confrontational rhetoric.