Riding shotgun was as much of a shock as flying back over Conakry. With barely any glass or tall structures in the city, there isn’t even a glimmer of hope shining at the horizon. Amazing to still see people in the capital living in such rudimentary conditions. Enough time in rural Guinea, and you begin to appreciate the things that we take for granted, like three meals a day, running water, showers and toilets. Essentially Kerouane is a victim of the corruption and negligence that trickles down from the big cities. Back home we're overwhelmed with such excess that we forget how developed we’ve actually become. We’ve gone beyond anything imaginable here. When I attached an ipod to a cassette player the other day, a local friend of mine in Kerouane said under his breath "aah, le blanc..."
First the noise hits you, then an airport shuttle picks you up for a twenty meter drop off. Once you walk through the military checkpoint and customs, two kids in uniform sitting on stools at the front door of the airport, you already think of the mismanagement and waste that corrupts the system. My brother’s driver arrived, and I jumped in and we began swerving down the highway like in BA. You can only close your eyes if you don’t want to see the carts full of garbage being poured over the boardwalk and pilled onto the beaches like seaweed. On one side of the boardwalk, a fire is burning in a lot, melting away some compost, plastic, rubber and other pieces of trash. Beside it is the skeleton of a swing set, and an abandoned playground, and just further along in the trees, some kids are playing football.
On Saturday, my brother, his friends and I, escaped to Ile de L’Os, apparently the islands that inspired Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. Palm trees, cabanas, white sand, beautiful rocks and perfect waves, once the launching point for the slave triangle, it was now a little paradise. After a few weeks in the bush, it was the Bahamas, and all I could think about was the island of Dr. No, and Ursula Andress singing ‘Under the Mango Tree’ by Monty Norman. We ate freshly cooked fish in palm leaf huts by the ocean, laid down by the water and bodysurfed the waves until nightfall. We hopped on the boat back to Conakry, rolling through oil spills as we got closer to the bay. You could see the wake turn brown and the smell polluted the air. The scenery between the islands and the port was littered with ship wrecks, wooden fishing boats and oil tankers. Trash floats around like devil ducks in a bathtub. The supertankers would slowly creep past the local fishing boats, in the same way our land cruisers would fly by the cattle plows in Kerouane. Despite the presence of UNCEF, NGO’s and all these foreign multi-national companies in West Africa, there’s still a stark contrast between the old and new. Technology is simply inexistent, unobtainable, or unaffordable. They still haven’t invented the broomstick, so they use straw bundled together to sweep the ground. Either people don’t want to explore new methods because they are satisfied with the way things are, or they’re simply so far behind that it will take another hundred years for them to make a step forward.
The hardest part of coming back from Kerouane was handling the social scene in Conakry. I have to say I was impressed by the grungy night clubs, despite their local prostitutes grabbing you every which way and white expats running around intoxicated like “there’s no place like home.” There were Russians, Lebanese, French, Americans, British, South Africans, Rhodesians, etc… a whole clan of expats living and working in Africa. Some for the pleasure, some the adventure, others for the moral value and the greater cause, but most are here for the money. Working as an expat usually increases your base pay by fifty percent. So you don’t necessarily meet people that wanted to be here, but rather who were obliged to because they were assigned to the region for a few extra bucks. All I can remember is hearing them wishing for a MacDonalds and saying how they had enough and wanted out. Despite the few who were motivated by what they were doing, it’s generally a pretty rough group, and not necessarily the best diplomats for their country. After such an experience with the community work up-country, it was a real shock being back in the capital, and jumping between the social lines of money and customs.
One kid I met was working for the UN on a project that provided aid to refugees in Africa by using their expertise to offer them asylum abroad. They sift through refugees that come out of conflict zones, like Sierra Leone up until 2002. The idea is to find specific talent, like doctors, engineers, electricians, and other technicians that could successfully be integrated into a workforce in countries like Australia, the US, and Canada. I believe he said that Australia is actually the hardest place to get into because of their strict health policies. I was rather surprised because my immediate reaction was to ask why they weren’t reintegrated into their own country, or into other countries in Africa. If they export all of the talent, then who will be left in Africa to redevelop conflict zones and help improve the future of this continent? His answer was that the people wanted to leave, and feared going back to the countries they had left behind. Of course if I was from Sierra Leone, and one third of the country fled, while 200,000 had been killed back home, I would rather go anywhere else in the world. But then how do we rebuild schools, help educate the thousands of child soldiers left behind after the civil war, how do you rebuild when the qualified laborers aren’t there anymore? Exporting specialists limits development in Africa and reduces the effectiveness of reconstruction.
The weekend allowed me to revaluate the significance of my effort, and there are a few things that I have taken out of my experience in Guinea so far. You learn quite a bit about people, and human beings tend to be able to do great things. Never underestimate their capacity for good or evil. I learned quite a bit about perspective, patience, and the precious gift that is time. When you see the way people live and treat each other in comparison to where you come from, you tend to develop a sense of what does and does not matter. You develop a more patient outlook on the nuances of life. “It could always be worse,” (Donovan Campbell, Joker One). I learned from my experience and from Campbell that failure is an inevitable part of life. It happens whether you want it to or not. School tends to award for a lack of failure, but life isn’t always so refined. Through college my father taught me to learn from my mistakes rather than ponder over my losses. The question isn’t whether or not you will fail, but how you will overcome. How do you respond to failure? You can persevere through motivation and dedication, but most importantly you can get back up and put one foot in front of the other. Finally, in leadership, I have learned that it is about what you do and not what you say.
First the noise hits you, then an airport shuttle picks you up for a twenty meter drop off. Once you walk through the military checkpoint and customs, two kids in uniform sitting on stools at the front door of the airport, you already think of the mismanagement and waste that corrupts the system. My brother’s driver arrived, and I jumped in and we began swerving down the highway like in BA. You can only close your eyes if you don’t want to see the carts full of garbage being poured over the boardwalk and pilled onto the beaches like seaweed. On one side of the boardwalk, a fire is burning in a lot, melting away some compost, plastic, rubber and other pieces of trash. Beside it is the skeleton of a swing set, and an abandoned playground, and just further along in the trees, some kids are playing football.
On Saturday, my brother, his friends and I, escaped to Ile de L’Os, apparently the islands that inspired Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. Palm trees, cabanas, white sand, beautiful rocks and perfect waves, once the launching point for the slave triangle, it was now a little paradise. After a few weeks in the bush, it was the Bahamas, and all I could think about was the island of Dr. No, and Ursula Andress singing ‘Under the Mango Tree’ by Monty Norman. We ate freshly cooked fish in palm leaf huts by the ocean, laid down by the water and bodysurfed the waves until nightfall. We hopped on the boat back to Conakry, rolling through oil spills as we got closer to the bay. You could see the wake turn brown and the smell polluted the air. The scenery between the islands and the port was littered with ship wrecks, wooden fishing boats and oil tankers. Trash floats around like devil ducks in a bathtub. The supertankers would slowly creep past the local fishing boats, in the same way our land cruisers would fly by the cattle plows in Kerouane. Despite the presence of UNCEF, NGO’s and all these foreign multi-national companies in West Africa, there’s still a stark contrast between the old and new. Technology is simply inexistent, unobtainable, or unaffordable. They still haven’t invented the broomstick, so they use straw bundled together to sweep the ground. Either people don’t want to explore new methods because they are satisfied with the way things are, or they’re simply so far behind that it will take another hundred years for them to make a step forward.
The hardest part of coming back from Kerouane was handling the social scene in Conakry. I have to say I was impressed by the grungy night clubs, despite their local prostitutes grabbing you every which way and white expats running around intoxicated like “there’s no place like home.” There were Russians, Lebanese, French, Americans, British, South Africans, Rhodesians, etc… a whole clan of expats living and working in Africa. Some for the pleasure, some the adventure, others for the moral value and the greater cause, but most are here for the money. Working as an expat usually increases your base pay by fifty percent. So you don’t necessarily meet people that wanted to be here, but rather who were obliged to because they were assigned to the region for a few extra bucks. All I can remember is hearing them wishing for a MacDonalds and saying how they had enough and wanted out. Despite the few who were motivated by what they were doing, it’s generally a pretty rough group, and not necessarily the best diplomats for their country. After such an experience with the community work up-country, it was a real shock being back in the capital, and jumping between the social lines of money and customs.
One kid I met was working for the UN on a project that provided aid to refugees in Africa by using their expertise to offer them asylum abroad. They sift through refugees that come out of conflict zones, like Sierra Leone up until 2002. The idea is to find specific talent, like doctors, engineers, electricians, and other technicians that could successfully be integrated into a workforce in countries like Australia, the US, and Canada. I believe he said that Australia is actually the hardest place to get into because of their strict health policies. I was rather surprised because my immediate reaction was to ask why they weren’t reintegrated into their own country, or into other countries in Africa. If they export all of the talent, then who will be left in Africa to redevelop conflict zones and help improve the future of this continent? His answer was that the people wanted to leave, and feared going back to the countries they had left behind. Of course if I was from Sierra Leone, and one third of the country fled, while 200,000 had been killed back home, I would rather go anywhere else in the world. But then how do we rebuild schools, help educate the thousands of child soldiers left behind after the civil war, how do you rebuild when the qualified laborers aren’t there anymore? Exporting specialists limits development in Africa and reduces the effectiveness of reconstruction.
The weekend allowed me to revaluate the significance of my effort, and there are a few things that I have taken out of my experience in Guinea so far. You learn quite a bit about people, and human beings tend to be able to do great things. Never underestimate their capacity for good or evil. I learned quite a bit about perspective, patience, and the precious gift that is time. When you see the way people live and treat each other in comparison to where you come from, you tend to develop a sense of what does and does not matter. You develop a more patient outlook on the nuances of life. “It could always be worse,” (Donovan Campbell, Joker One). I learned from my experience and from Campbell that failure is an inevitable part of life. It happens whether you want it to or not. School tends to award for a lack of failure, but life isn’t always so refined. Through college my father taught me to learn from my mistakes rather than ponder over my losses. The question isn’t whether or not you will fail, but how you will overcome. How do you respond to failure? You can persevere through motivation and dedication, but most importantly you can get back up and put one foot in front of the other. Finally, in leadership, I have learned that it is about what you do and not what you say.
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