I spent 4 nights in N’zerekoré, which is a major city, and a pretty one, with green hills visible from many places in town. I immediately took a liking to it, in no small part due to the outstanding and cheap accommodations at the Mission Catholique. It’s truly an oasis of calm in the middle of the city. My first afternoon in town I take a walk around the neighborhood near the Mission, in order to get the lay of the land. I find plenty of mangos, kola nuts, hardware stores, pharmacies, cellphone stores, mechanic shops, and boutiques selling dry goods. But I can not find any cooked food during the afternoon, except for some aloko, which is fried bananas.

After sunset though, the city comes alive, and I find one of my favorite dishes just a short walk from the Mission: tò, which is a delicious goop of cassava mush, with okra peanut sauce. I also come across another one of my favorite treats: grilled chicken feet. They are so tender and well cooked you can eat the whole thing, bones, tendons, gristle and all. Quite delicious.

The next morning, my first in N’zerekoré, is a little bit of a letdown. I wander for almost an hour, up and down some of the main streets near the main market without even finding a piece of bread. It's hot and I get a little bit annoyed at not being able to find anything to eat. It strikes me as strange that a large city in a predominantly Christian region of the country should shut down so completely for Ramadan. This central part of N’zerekoré is clearly predominantly Muslim. Eventually I find a place selling Nescafé and boiled egg sandwiches. Not great, but better than nothing. Then, walking back to my room, I pass a little blue painted shack. No sign, no indication of any kind what lies inside. I poke my head inside and find a few men sitting at little wooden tables sipping café noir and digging into bowls of beans with mayonnaise and bread. This is my ideal breakfast shack, and its only 2 blocks from the Mission, yet I passed by it an hour and a half ago without noticing.

I get back to the Mission and lay down for a while, until I hear someone speaking French with a French accent. I emerge to find the German couple I met yesterday, sitting with a young European man and woman, and a few Guineans. This is more white people than I know what to do with. I immediately want to know all about what they are up to in Guinea. I learn the following: The young man is indeed French and is hitchhiking and walking across West Africa. He’s lively and goofy and energetic. The young woman is Belgian and is biking across West Africa. I’d actually been told by a few people in Mamou, Faranah, and Gueckoudou that they’d seen a woman biking on the same route as me, about a week beforehand. Everyone emphasized the same detail: “She doesn’t have a man with her!” Though she does now, kind of. She and the Frenchman ran into each other somewhere north of here and have been traveling together since, leapfrogging during the day and meeting back up in the evening. Neither have a specific end location, but they vaguely suggest it could be Brazzaville. They both plan on skipping Nigeria and taking a ferry from Cotonou to Douala.

There isn’t much time to talk to anyone though, because, as it turns out, all four of these Europeans are in the exact same situation, and about to leave all together. All four obtained Ivorian visas prior to reaching the border, in Conakary and Brussels, respectively. However, upon reaching the border crossing on the highway east of N’zerekoré, all were turned back and instructed to obtain a special entry permit— a relic of covid bureaucracy that apparently could not have been foreseen by the respective embassy employees they dealt with. So, all had come back to N’zerekoré to request this permit and have been here for a day or two, waiting. Now, here at the Mission, they have just greeted an Ivorian guy named Pierre, who works at the N’zerekoré consulate to Côte d’Ivoire. Actually, I learn, Pierre doesn’t work at the consulate, he is the consulate. And he has their permits, Word documents printed in fancy cursive on standard printer paper.

The Germans are going to give Frenchy and young Belge a ride to the border, and they are in a hurry to get moving, because they’ve already lost a few days to this unexpected holdup. My interaction with everyone here lasts about 10 minutes before they all pile into the Mercedes tank and sputter off, down the hill towards the road out of town. Wow. I wanted to see what kind of bike she was riding, and hear what it’s like to hitchhike, and so many other things, but alas, they are moving fast.

Seeing and interacting, however briefly, with these four Europeans feels almost like an aberration. It’s good to know that I am not unique in traveling by bike and camping in Guinea. I will say though, despite cosmetic similarities, my trip is quite different than what any of these travelers are doing. All four of these folks are focused on getting across West Africa, and thus, Guinea. They were all quite friendly, and I am sure have wonderful interactions with locals. But they aren’t actually here to see Guinea. The country is not a destination in itself for them. It doesn’t sound like they are doing much site seeing. None of them had heard of a “Malinké.” Different strokes.

I consider getting an Ivorian visa. There is a lot about Côte d’Ivoire that interests me. Something like half the population can speak Dyula, which is very similar to Guinean Malinké. And the northwestern part of the country is supposed to be absolutely epic, in particular “La Region de Dix-huit Montagnes” (The Region of Eighteen Mountains). Pierre, the consulate representative sticks around after the Euros leave and we chat. He’s a very nice guy and says it would take 5 business days. They’d have to send my passport to Conakary. This sounds a little complicated. But what ultimately deters me is the vague wording on my Guinean visa. It does not make it clear if I can re-enter Guinea. All it says is that I must enter before March 13th, at which point my 90 days begin. I entered on January 29th, so my 90 days lasts until the 29th of April. However, I could easily see some border guards taking issue with this vagueness and not permitting me to enter the country again. I don’t want to risk border issues, considering I need to cross Guinea to get back to Senegal (Going through Mali is unfortunately not a good option at the moment), so decide against it. Someday I will see The Region of Eighteen Mountains.

The upside is I get to chat with Pierre. He’s a cheerful man, and has an unbelievable story as a refugee from the First Ivorian Civil War (2002-2007). He is a Christian, and originally from an area in the south of the country near Abidjan. He was posted at a city in the north to work at some kind of government post, and was working there when the war broke out. The Ivorian civil wars were to a certain degree ethnic conflicts, with a major fault line being the Muslim north feeling disenfranchised and resentful of the richer, arguably politically over-represented, Christian south (I hope this is a reasonable way to summarize a complicated conflict). Violence broke out quickly and unexpectedly, and Pierre was not able to evacuate ahead of time. Also, he told me, his home region was as dangerous as anywhere at the time. Instead he absconded into the bush, and made his way towards Guinea.

He said that for about a year he barely knew where he was, just that he’d crossed the border and was probably safe. He lived in small bush villages, and eventually found his way to N’zerekoré, which was inundated with refugees at th time (Liberia and Cote d'Ivoire). Once here he managed to access the modest savings he had accumulated from his job as a government employee, and, seeing an opportunity, spent almost all of his money to open a “centre informatique.” This was in an age before smartphones or internet or computers (this latter are in fact still very uncommon in Guinea), and the “centre informatique” was an internet café and print center. It filled a niche most people didn’t know existed, but quickly realized its importance. It has apparently done fairly well, and he makes a decent living running the centre. He has since purchased a piece of land which he now spends a lot of time cultivating. He tells me that farming is, and always was his true passion.

Pierre also tells me that the work he does for the Ivorian embassy is voluntary and he makes no money doing it, that he just wants to help people experience his home country, a country he still loves. I am very glad I ran into Pierre and got to hear his story.

My routine in N’zerekoré improved dramatically after that first, unsatisfactory morning of wandering around. I get my coffee and breakfast beans at the little café nearby, spend time exploring different parts of the city, relax and read/write at the Mission, and eat good food (after sundown). I am continually dismayed at how impossible it is to find cooked food during the day, even in the center of the city. All the street food stands are packed up and vacant. I ask an old man at the Mission if there is a neighborhood where I might be able to find lunch, perhaps an area with more Christians. He tells me to check out the area near the University of N’zerekoré. This is on the opposite side of town, but I hop on my bike and head over. Indeed, there is a bustling street food scene here. Restaurants and rice shacks are open, and ladies hawk various food items on the streets.

I can’t wait to get an actual lunch, but first I ride onto the campus of the university.

The University of N'zerekore occupies a small, handsome and orderly campus. I don’t know what to expect at a provincial university in Guinea, but I get good vibes while biking around the around the grounds. I particularly love the color scheme of the buildings. I sit for a few minutes in a classroom. My biggest takeaway from this short visit is how much we take indoor acoustics for granted in the US. I don’t know specifically what makes our classrooms better in this regard, but what I can say is that the unadorned concrete walls of this classroom amplify every footstep and rustle of bags and creak of desks, and it was hard to hear the professor. She sounded like she was underwater, or far away down a hallway or something. The students weren’t making excessive noise, the room just had terrible acoustics. There are small things like this that make a huge difference. There are big things too. No computers in sight, just a chalk board. No AC or electricity. Yet everyone appeared focused and earnest. Higher education is not easy.

Back on the street I enjoy a few courses: aloko (fried banana), some chicken meat, and a frozen sour milk. On the way back to the mission I stop by the central mosque in town, which is really a big, imposing structure on a hill in the center of town. After taking a couple pictures I peek my head inside and suddenly I understand how people deal with Ramadan. A couple dozen people are passed out on the carpet floor, napping.

The next morning happens to be Palm Sunday, and the mssion holds a big event under the mango trees on the lawn right in front of my room. It’s a good-sized crowd, about 500 people, and the ceremonies include several obviously important pastors (?) or bishops (?) dressed in impeccable and ornate red robes. I watch for a while. The sermon (?) is mostly in the Kpelle language. But verses are also read in French. There is a chorus that sings several songs that I find rather beautiful. At one point everyone waves strips of palm fronds.

After the ceremony there is a meeting of Scouts on the same lawn. It’s pretty cool how scouting organizations exist throughout the world. If I were rich, international scouting is something I would consider supporting, especially in a place like Guinea. Children and young people here typically have very little pedagogical structure in their lives. Unless you have the means to go to a good (often private/Catholic) school it is unlikely that you’re getting much structure in your education. Schools don't have much in the way of extracirriculars. Scouting organizations seems like a good way to keep kids engaged and could be an excellent supplement to whatever formal education they receive. I’m certainly not one to advocate for “tiger mom” style child rearing. Many kids in the US have far too little unstructured time. But I would argue that kids have the opposite problem here. Most children probably grow up without partaking of a single formally structured extracurricular.