The electricity in my Bafatá room went off around 5:30am and I almost immediately woke up. It does get quite cool at night, the temperature drops 20 degrees from +40 to +20 yet it’s still hot. I think this may be due to to house walls retaining the heat. Shower water on the other hand is rather cold in the mornings while during the day it’s almost warm.
I left the guesthouse around 8am and went to look for transport to Gabú and on to Guinean border. I also ran out of mobile data and wanted to recharge. It wasn’t easy. None of the mobile shops open at this time was doing the phone account recharge.
I was waiting for long – until 9am – for the transport. I managed to get hungry in the meantime and bought the sticky couscous. 100cfa bought me 4 pieces and that was too much. I decided to share it and gave it to a man who just bought himself nescafé from a street seller. He accepted without blink. It took us over an hour to reach Gabú and it cost 650cfa + 500cfa baggage.
Gabú is rather filthy and when it has asphalt roads, they’re more potholes than roads. I thought it’d be a good idea to get some cfa to change at the border – euros or dollars may not be in big demand around here. I walked to BAO ATM and this time it worked. The Rough Guide also placed a post office on its Gabú map but where it was supposed to be, there was an old crumbling building that looked abandoned. And it was post office! Inside it looked like old colonial shops of 1700, wooden and devoid of everything. There were no stamps, stamps I can only get in Bissau. Tough luck.
I also went to Orange shop where I too could not buy credit on my phone. You never know what you can’t do in mobile network shops.
The bush taxi stand, so-called paragem, is a dirty filthy square at the end of the remains of the asphalt road. I changed the CFA, 50,000cfa for 770,000gnf, Guinean francs. The highest denomination of Guinean franc is now 20,000francs which is just below €2. I remember when it used to be 5,000francs, which was exactly €0.5 and the only ATM in Conakry would give you max €20 at a time (most ATMs can give out max 40 notes at a time).
The price for the toca toca to the frontier village of Buruntuma was 2.500cfa + 500cfa (down from the asking price of 1000cfa). As we were waiting for the bus to fill up, I walked around the stalls hoping maybe to find some baguette sandwich to eat.
There were baguettes for sale but dry but just next door I saw a curious thing standing on a small charcoal stove. An Italian coffee pot. A big one. Then I saw many men drinking coffee from glass espresso cups. I could not believe my eyes. In this filthy paragem such a gem! A man was handling the café, his skin brighter and face looking more Mediterranean. Another man sitting next to me with similar face features but much younger, says he’s the coffee master’s brother. He said he learned this coffee in Algieria, where he was trying to get on a boat to Spain. He tried twice and failed. He showed me a scar on his throat. I wasn’t asking any questions because what can I possibly ask? He said he still loved Europe. He was from Conakry. The coffee was an incredible 100cfa per cup, I took two and left.
The bus was not very uncomfortable. It was most of all very low and I couldn’t sit straight, the roof was so low. The road was bad. It took us over 3 hours to reach the border village.
At the border I bought myself some oranges and made myself a sandwich with onions and eggs. The oranges here are sold peeled. They are not particularly nice. They are sweet and full of seeds but not very juicy.
I got my passport stamped for exit – no money asked though I saw local people leaving 500-1000cfa notes on the immigration desk. A man approached me offering a ride all the way to Koundara, the first town behind the border some 50kms away.
I was approached by another money changer in Gabú who wanted to buy euros but for 100euros he was giving 1,014,000francs and when I told him he should at least give me 1,020,000francs he said no. Yet he did tell me to use a motorbike taxi to take me to the first village behind the border, Saréboido, and that it will cost me 25,000francs.
The bush taxi man asked for 4000cfa. Quite much but when I immediately told him I’m not paying for the baggage and he reluctantly agreed, I went for it.
There is a kilometre or two between Guinea Bissau immigration and Guinea Conakry immigration, through forest shrubs on a very bad road. We stopped at what seemed Guinean immigration control. A man in uniform said we should proceed further and we did.
At one point the taxi owner – his name was Alise ans he runs a transport business between Conakry and Dakar, we were driven by a young boy who Alise claimed was 14! I didn’t wanna know any further – asked me to move to the other side of the backseat (from right to left side) saying if people see me they will ask for money. Then I mentioned passport control. He said that in Koundara. 50kms away! I said no, impossible, that will be asking for money when someone will see me in the country without entry stamp.
Alise seemed surprised but we turned back the car. We stopped at a hut that was police control. When the immigration people saw us coming from Guinea towards Bissau they thought I was leaving. When I told them what happened hell broke loose. They claimed Alise did it for purpose to avoid them. Shouting and chaos ensued.
I got my passport stamped but then an old man in long gallabiya said I cannot go with Alise anymore and that I would go with another car, that just showed up. More shouting followed. They took out my bag from the car. I said I already paid, Alise offered 20,000gnf in return (€2/1300cfa, while I paid 4000cfa). They said he should pay me back in full. Alise said he had already given money to the “syndicate” (the transport is quite strictly controlled around here, there is often someone selling tickets, checking departure time, we even had someone today counting passengers in the bus – the max number of passengers is 15 , there was 16 of us + conductor, 500cfa sorted the matter, passenger no. 17 joined us 100m behind the headcount post).
The men asked me to wait. Nerves calmed down. Shouting stopped. Finally I was told to go with Alise, who didn’t seem bothered by the whole pandemonium. He talked quite a lot, curious about me, told me he too would like to go to Europe but it’s too much money.
The road was horrible. We drove the 50kms for over 2 hours. At one point Alise casually mentioned that it’s a common area for bandits, but he quickly added that only at night. I was happy I didn’t follow the money changer’s advice and didn’t use the motorbike, the village I was told to reach on a bike seemed dead empty. However I could see the environment changing. These are Fula/Pulah lands and they are cattle herders and cattle you can see. Also there are mainly round thatched huts in the villages we passed by and there are even fences around compounds built from pieces of wood, sometimes interlaced with straw.
Also we are approaching the highlands of Fouta Djallon and we already passed some spectacular escarpments. There is hiking in Fouta Djallon but i can’t see myself hiking up those vertical walls in +40C.
We arrived in Koundara at around 3pm, it was our first sight of asphalt in Guinea. I have an impression this was Alise’s first time around here. He was occasionally asking for directions and in town he had no clue where to drop me off. He sat me on a moto taxi and asked for gare routière. We went off, 3000gnf but when we arrived this was not gare routière for Labé, that one is out of town and I had to pay another 7000gnf to reach it. It was quite deserted when I reached it. An old peugeot was waiting for the passengers. 2 people in front, 4 in the middle, 3 in the backseat. Price a whopping 110.000gnf and an even more exorbitant 20.000gnf for luggage. No discussion.
I was very thirsty after all those bush roads. I almost immediately drank a whole bottle of water. There was a woman selling juicesz I had a small bottle of jus gingembre, delicious with a hint of lemon, and a small bottle of bissap. Bissap is almost always too sweet for me so I dilluted it with water and it was as delicious. But time passed by and no passengers were coming. At 5pm men went to pray in a roofed enclosure where there were some mats spread out. One of them even acted as a muezzin and just stood and called out.
I asked the ticketmaster, who looked very serious what happens if we don’t get a full car. He said we’d go with a smaller car and even if the smaller car wouldn’t get full they would possibly go at 6pm. Then I asked the ticketmaster how long the drive is and he said he wouldn’t know. I asked how it’s possible when he is selling tickets for this place and he answered that he doesn’t care when the car arrives at the destination as long as it arrives safe and with all passengers.
The distance to Labé is 250kms. That’s about 5hrs of driving. At night. The only hotel I know of is an expensive Italian-owned hotel called Tata. If I want to search for another accommodation, 11pm is not the best time to do it. Not to mention driving on God knows what roads (people here say the road is full asphalt all the way and good).
I gave up. Got my money back, said “see you tomorrow” and hopped on a moto bike and came back to town. I asked for Orange office but the moto driver had no idea. And the Orange office was closed already anyway. I asked around the mobile shops for SIM cards. No they don’t have. Yes they do have but go to Orange agency next door. Yes we do have SIM cards but we cannot register foreign passports go to the Orange office oh but it’s closed.
I finally managed to find someone who registered my foreign passport and it took 10mins + another 15mins of waiting for a welcome message (there were supposed to be two but after the first the man said it was OK). SIM card is 10,000gnf and 1.5GB of internet for a week is 31,000gnf.
The same man who registered my card also showed me to a hotel. Armand hotel, no sign, was just behind the mobile shop. Bare room, only bed, electricity 7pm-2am, shared toilet and bathroom, bucket shower only, no ventilator. Asking price 100,000gnf I went down to 90,000gnf.
There is a bar by the hotel. I was expecting Guinness the whole day, I’m finally in a Guinness country but there ain’t any! ”Guinness is rare around here, it’s too expensive to transport it here”. One more day of lager.
I went out looking for food. Couldn’t find anything, walked around a lively market and asked again my mobile shop friend. He took me to a “woman that makes good rice”. It was a roadside stall, attached to a household, where a lady had rice and sauces: something she called “soup”, gombo sauce which I think is groundnut-based, something else, and a potato leaf stew. I took the potato leaf stew and it was very tasty. 5000gnf including water in a plastic bag.
I got back to the hotel compound and been sipping happily the bière nationale called Guiluxe with Guinean artists playing from the bar speakers outside. Temperature dropped .
Coming back to Maman 