At first, Kankan was a tough nut to crack, although I very much like the clean and comfortable accommodations at the Catholic guesthouse.

My first full day in Kankan all I could see was the filthy streets and the sprawl and the intense heat. It’s a very big city, probably the second largest in Guinea, and it felt at first like nothing but disorder and trash. It's not as much of a commercial center as Labe or Kindia, and feels distinctly less developed than either.

I started to figure it through and found places to eat cooked food during the day, and a reliable bean sandwich lady in the morning. Strangely, Kankan seems overall less observant of the strictures of Ramadan than N’zerekoré. This I find bizarre, and can only guess why it feels this way. It may be because my accommodations here are right next to the university, which tends to attract a more liberal and diverse population.

What really cracked the nut was making a friend. I keep relearning the lesson that Guinea is all about personal relationships. It’s a different city if you know someone who’s connected. And on my second morning in town, while stopping to look at a huge swarm of bats fluttering around a large Ceiba pentandra tree, I get to chatting with an old guy. Turns out he’s a Senegalese civil engineer who’s now retired in Kankan. Name of Moussa Fall. He’s of the old school, and well educated. He also traveled extensively during the 70s and 80s. He’s worldly enough to be interesting to talk to and is very chill. He’s clearly spent time with toubabs before. It can be hard in Guinea sometimes because people treat toubabs so bizarrely. Rarely ill intentioned, but I am like an alien. I prefer normal, calm conversations.

And so I hang out with Moussa in the fan cooled TV room of his house, and we chat about Kankan. This is probably the biggest city I’ve ever been to with the poorest infrastructure. That being said, much of the low hanging development fruit has been snapped up impressively quickly in the last 10 years or so. However, the city power grid is still very limited, with power only from 7 pm to midnight. To get power during the day, Moussa switches to power coming from a generator owned and operated by an entrepreneur who sells power via his own micro grid. Moussa has a switch on his wall to toggle between the public and private power sources, and he strung the wires himself to connect with this generator produced power.

Getting things done is easier with Moussa. He knows everyone and where everything is. The other thing I work on a little is Malinké. I’m still finding it surprisingly difficult to be understood, especially compared to how fluent I was feeling with Jaxanké not so long ago. They are very distinct, and I am growing more sympathetic to the argument that there are multiple Manding languages, rather than Manding being a broad language encompassing several dialects.

Moussa tells me about his travels. He’s been all over Africa. He tells me about going to Cameroon, and that he was able to communicate largely in Pulaar. He tells me that the Pulaar in Senegal and the Pulaar in Cameroon are closer than the Malinké in Senegal and the Malinké in Guinea. Obviously, this is one anecdote but can see it being true. I don’t quite understand what would cause this, other than that the spread of proto-Manding across the region occured hundreds of years before the spread of Pulaar, and thus has had more time to diverge. It is also true that there is more of a migratory culture with the Pulaar, and the constant interchange between far-flung populations, linguistic and otherwise, may keep them from diverging. Malinkés on the other hand are more sedentary rice framers. These are guesses. I don’t know.