The hotel is Faranah is great. I am woken up at 7 by a very loud gardener. I am somewhat annoyed at this. He is speaking Malinké as loudly as a griot would speak in front of a crowd of 50 people for a performance. Malinké is often spoken this loudly. It is a lyrical language, widely regarded as a particularly beautiful language for song. The success of so many musicians and singers from Mali and this part of Guinea attests to this. And in this lyrical tradition, many hundreds of years old, even simple conversation is sometimes carried out in a vaguely rhythmic, flowing way. This gardener is an example of this. He’s talking to someone across the courtyard, I assume another gardener. And every time he responds he hits a “nam,” then waits a beat, then says whatever he has to say, which somehow leaves his mouth with a kind of cadence.

I get over my annoyance when I realize that its great to be up an at ‘em. Anyway I’ve gotten more than 7 hours of sleep, I think. Time to start the day. And this day, as so many on this trip, begins with about 6 bananas, a bunch of water, and some salted peanuts. I have become a banana eating machine, in particular. I want to take a moment of appreciation for bananas. There is a reason that, despite not growing in the US, Americans eat about 2x as many bananas as apples, the next most popular fruit. Bananas are an extraordinary fruit. Especially for strenuous exercise. What other food (not just fruit) is an appropriate snack pre-activity, during activity, and post-activity? Not just appropriate— optimal. Bananas help your body prepare for, sustain, and recover from intense activity. They are always easy on your stomach, and typically delicious. I eat a lot of bananas these days.

Faranah is 143 km from my next destination, Kissidougou, with about 2500 ft of climbing. This is a solid ride, but I want to check out whatever there is to see in Faranah before getting on the road. Not that there is a whole lot to see in town. The main reason tourists come here is to go to the “Upper Niger Natural Reserve,” which does sound pretty cool. Tours to this natural reserve are the main function of the hotel I stayed in, for what I can tell, and Lonely Planet tells me they can arrange guides for the park. As for Faranah itself, the main claim to fame of this energetic but ultimately very provincial city is that it is the hometown of the first president of Guinea, Seckou Touré. While Touré never seriously tried to move the capital here (à la Houghet-Boigney of Côte d’Ivoire), he did invest and build here in ways that are a total mismatch for the actual importance of the town, such as an airstrip built to accommodate a Concorde. He also made a big investment in something called “La Cité du Niger.” The term “cité,” used in this way is difficult to translate. We don’t have an exact word for it but imagine a big walkable space with nice courtyards and pavilions and landscaped hedges and well centered fountains and buildings all in the same architectural theme (in this case I think you’d describe it as neo-modern African huts). The Cité here was built to accommodate presidential guests, as well as for conferences or events. “The Cité’s handful of grand bungalows are all dilapidated,” Lonely Planet tells me, “but since they are nice structures with fabulous vistas over the river, someone might just open a hotel here. Come for the view, [or] a drink with the mandatory, gin reinforced guardians…”

The passage is written as though the author is privy to some plans to turn the place into a hotel. Alas, this has not come to pass. Nor did I find any amiable drunk guardians. There was one guy at the front gate who waved me through, then the whole place was abandoned, overgrown, and showed little trace of use in recent years. The basic concept is great— a manicured space with nice buildings and beautiful views— but like so many tourist attractions I’ve come across in Guinea it feels like the last couple decades have brought decline and neglect. Interesting to compare this with general infrastructure, like roads, electrification, and hydropower, which have all massively improved recently. My visit to the Cité is quick. I ride around the network of brick paved walkways snapping pictures and get off briefly to check out the view of the river. The bungalows were well constructed, and despite neglect seem like they could still be re-enlivened with little more than a good cleaning. It’s hard to tell what ought to happen with this place. Faranah doesn’t really have enough going on to justify some kind of investment to revitalize this. But it seems like a pity to let it slowly decay. Who knows.

After this I want to see the river. Last night it was dark and I couldn’t actually see the mighty Niger as I crossed the bridge into town. So I follow a little trail between some compounds, down to a sandy bank where I find a couple dozen women and children washing clothes. My first real glimpse of the venerable Niger River, the greatest and most historic of all West African rivers. It’s not much to look at here though. We are very far up river, and it is the height of the dry season. The river is at its lowest point right now. Even by my highly jaded standards, it is shockingly full of trash. Much of the bank at this access point is comprised of a solid mass of discarded clothes and plastic bags. But, I’ve now seen the Niger River.

And now it’s time to get moving. My ride today will take me from Haut Guinea, all the way down to the edge of the last geographic region of Guinea that I am yet to visit: la Guinea Forestiere. I’ll loop back up through the heart of Haut Guinea on my way back north to Senegal. I will see plenty of rolling plains and savanna, but first I want to get down into the forest region and experience a fundamentally different part of West Africa. After my site-seeing and a two-part breakfast I get on the road at about 12:30. I am in a similar situation to yesterday— a time crunch. So I ride, and barely stop at all. As I ride south things get slowly, subtly, but noticeably greener. The pace of a bike ride is the perfect speed at which to notice the gradual change of a landscape, but not get bored at the monotony of a certain landscape.

The road stays mostly good. There are a lot of broken-down big rigs along the side of (and on) the road, especially on hills. It’s consistently amazing to me how normal it is to come across a big rig blocking 2/3rds of the road on a blind corner on what is, let us not forget, one of the major roads in Guinea. The only paved road to an entire 1/5th of the country. As a safety precaution a few branches are laid out on the side of the road a few hundred meters in either direction, along with one or two small reflective triangles.

The calls of “Chinois” continue, and even increase. It’s amazing how limited a notion of non-African people exists here. On more than one occasion I hear a young boy get right to the point and greet me with a “Shwa shwee” (imitating the Chinese language), and then crack up at himself. It’s also amazing how universal casual racism is.

I keep seeing scattered signs in Chinese along the road, and the occasional walled compound with red Chinese lanterns adorning the perimeter. For a while I still don’t know specifically what work is going on here. Then I realize, finally, what’s going on: Simandou.

Have you heard the name “Simandou” before? It’s an important place and will be an even more important place as the century goes on. Simandou is the name of a mountain of iron in south central Guinea. Southwest of the town of Beyla. It is extremely high-quality iron and one of the largest untapped reserves of its kind anywhere in the world. Multinational mining companies have been pursuing the iron there for a while. Deals have been made, suspended, and renegotiated. The details, and political intrigue are complicated. But the current arrangement is thus: there are 4 blocks of mining rights. Two are fully owned by a Chinese consortium. The other two are split between Rio-Tinto (45.05%), an Anglo-Australian mining company, Chinalco (39.95%), which is the Chinese aluminum giant operating the bauxite mines, and the Guinean government (15%).

The Guinean government has insisted that any deal includes construction of a really nice railroad from the mining site to the port. This has been a non-negotiable for both recent regimes. It would be cheaper, shorter, and easier to ship the ore through Liberia or Côte d’Ivoire, but the Guineans, to their credit, have insisted on getting infrastructure built in the country. The hope is that this railroad will also open up the markets of the country’s interior and facilitate transportation to and from this relatively inaccessible part of the country. Doumbouya, the current “transitional president,” has insisted that the railroad be completed by the end of 2024, or the contracts may be in jeopardy. This is an extremely ambitious timeframe. The Guinean government has also, though I don’t know specifics, insisted on more training and jobs for Guineans as a part of the deal.

The port that will receive and ship this iron ore transported by railroad 650km from the interior is another story entirely. It does not exist (yet). The port at Conakary is already at capacity, and weaving a new railroad through the urban sprawl to the port would be next to impossible anyway. So a site has been proposed at the island of Matakong, which is just offshore between Conakary and the Sierra Leon border. The Wikipedia page for Matakong mentions, with no reference, that a 20 km long pier may be needed to reach deep water. The complexity and expense of this undertaking is staggering, but no cost is too large, apparently, for the largest reserve of iron ore in the world.

There is a long history of resource deals between western and Asian companies/governments, and Guinea. Most Guineans I speak to who know anything about these deals feel like Guinea has gotten a raw bargain in most cases. Yet they seem optimistic about the way the current negotiations are playing out. They feel like the government is finally acting with full awareness of the unfathomable mineral richness Guinea possesses. The present always feels like a new moment, in which the fog of the past is lifted, and we act with more clarity, having learned from history. I hope that is the case here.

The size and value of the Simandou Iron mine makes all previous resource deals in Guinea look small fry. It is claimed that it will double Guinea’s GDP. The iron ore from here will comprise the largest single source of iron anywhere in the world in the 21st century.

With all that in mind, work on the railroad appears to be underway. For a while the road runs parallel to the work zone. The work I can see includes grading the lane where the tracks will be laid, and laying the foundations for countless bridges the tracks will have to cross. The Chinese are doing an awful lot in Guinea. In addition to the work related to their 3/4ths stake in Simandou, they recently inaugurated a large hydroelectric dam which requires ongoing work, they’ve built, and continue to build roads all over the country, and they have enormous aluminum operations out of at least 3 ports. There are so many details to their involvement here.

As I get closer to Kissidougou the landscape gets hilly again. The forest region includes some significant highlands. These mountains are mostly of a different character than those of the Futa Jallon. They are younger mountains, less eroded, and include classic cone looking peaks. I’m very happy to find myself again amongst verdant mountains.

I begin having significant difficulty taking pictures. The humidity, as I drop latitude, has greatly increased, and the touchscreen of my iPhone seems to be permanently covered in a film of moisture. I adopt a couple strategies, such as keeping the phone in a bike bag instead of in my pocket, where my own sweat only makes things worse, and strapping my towel to the handlebars of my bike so I can wipe off my fingers and the screen when I hope to take a picture. These measures help a bit, but it’s still a bit of a struggle. Also, humidity on the camera lens gives a lot of my pictures a certain fuzziness.

So, I am entering yet another geographic region of Guinea: the forest region. Down here I will have to contend with a new consideration: rain. While I did experience one rather surprising rainstorm near Pita about a week ago, that was not at all the norm for that time of year, it only lasted about 20 minutes, and I camped confidently that same night. Here in Guinea Forestiere it is unquestionably the rainy season. Indeed it is usually the rainy season here, so I will have to plan my bike rides accordingly.

The rains tend to come in the late afternoon or evening. The mornings start out with relatively cool air, often with a mist rising if it rained the night before, and lingering clouds. Perhaps there is also a breeze. Mornings after an evening rain are amazing. As morning becomes mid-day and mid-day becomes afternoon, the temperature and humidity both increase. The afternoon hours can be intense, sweltering. The air gets heavier and heavier, and the temperature rises to a fever pitch until finally, usually with a sudden burst of wind, the clouds break, and cool rain dumps from the sky.

Today I think I am ok. I hope I am ok. The forecast on the Apple Weather app projects a 30-40% chance of rain in Kissidougou through the early evening, rising past 50% after 8 PM. But weather forecasts in West Africa are notoriously unreliable. As night falls, at about 7:15 pm I am still about 30 km away from town. This means I’ll be riding in the dark for about an hour and a half. I have a good night riding setup with a strong rear blinker and a good forward-facing light. Riding at night is no problem as long as the road is decent and it’s not raining. The road stays good, though when I am about 20 km out I begin seeing lightning on the horizon. No sound, just far off flashes in the sky. This gets my adrenaline pumping a little. 10 km out, still no noise, but stronger, more sky encompassing flashes. 5 km out I begin to hear noise, faintly.

As I ride into Kissidougou at about 8:45 rain still seems pretty far off. Kissidougou is a long city, stretching along the highway for many kilometers. I pass by a lively street food scene that smells excellent. Kissidougou is not a touristy city at all, but Lonely Planet tells me there is a decent hotel here. After wasting time checking out dives yesterday and the night before, tonight I decide to go with the top recommendation right off the bat. It’s just off the highway and not hard to find. First impression is that it’s kind of like the spot I stayed at in Faranah: not particularly new or fresh, but delivering the essentials: running water, AC, and an acceptably comfortable bed. The price is the same as the hotel in Mamou ($33.33) that sets the standard for what a hotel of this price should provide. I check in, shower, and change. The AC is pumping and I start charging some devices. Then I set out to find some food.

It’s already almost 10 PM when I get out onto the street. I need to get onto an earlier schedule. I wander back north to the row of street food stands I’d seen on the way into town, where I find women tending clusters of caste iron (or are they aluminum?) pots, stirring various sauces and meat stews and rice. I am beckoned over by the first such woman I walk by. She is not shy and speaks French. Different vibe than other regions of Guinea where women tend to be shy and typically not conversant in French. I go with it and ask to see the goods. She removes the lid of a big pot to reveal a lush, glimmering beef stew, including some tendons and organs, bubbling, juicy, and divine. For $2 I get a large portion of this over rice. It is very good. The seating area is nice, well lit with a real table, and so are lady’s relatives who hang out in the restaurant. Her daughter is very energetic and social. We manage to communicate in Malinké, which is fun. She thinks the whole thing is a riot and laughs hysterically. After the meal she brings me to a lady who she says is Jaxanké. The lady in question is dozing when we see her, propped up but catatonic sitting on a plastic chair.

This is a common scene during Ramadan, which seems designed to deprive people of sleep and productivity. The day starts as early as 3 am when the mosques emit a wakeup call. This is not the morning prayer, which comes at dawn (more like 4:30). This 3 AM broadcast is simply a wakeup call to rise and have some food and water before 4:30 when the day’s fast begins. An hour and a half seems like much more time than is necessary to do this, but the call comes at 3 or 3:15. I’ve been woken at this hour in every city I’ve spent the night in since Ramadan began. I respect an early riser, but this is a bit excessive. I go back to sleep after this call, but apparently between 3 and 4:30 there is a bustling pre-dawn scene: Restaurants open and busy, cafés going full tilt. Food cooked by women the night before is brought out. It’s an hour of feasting and commotion in predawn darkness.

After this you do your 4:30 am prayer, and then… go back to sleep? But you just drank coffee. And maybe you have some kind of job, in which case your workday will start shortly thereafter. It’s not clear to me how a Muslim’s sleep schedule is supposed to operate during Ramadan. Things are further complicated by the fact that right after the workday once the sun sets, it's time to party. Despite the day starting at 3 AM people don’t seem to go to sleep especially early. To the contrary, after the evening break-fast the eating, coffee drinking, and socializing can last late into the night. The answer here seems to include long naps during the middle of the day. These happen whether or not it’s Ramadan, with an afternoon siesta schedule pretty common in the tropical heat. But this does not, for what I can tell really compensate for the obliteration of one’s nightly sleep cycle. Despite this being my 3rd Ramadan in West Africa I don’t fully understand how sleep worlds during this month. It’s hard to tell if what I experience is just normal, slow, hot season West Africa, or a distinctly slower, more sleep deprived month of Ramadan.

Either way, I am introduced to this sleeping woman. She half wakes up, registers a bit of surprise at seeing a toubab, greets me, and then goes silent. It seems like she’s out again. I talk and tell her about my time in Dar Salaam. She nods along mumbling. I ask where she’s from. She tells me the name of a small city near Labé. She doesn’t really speak Jaxanké, just Guinean Malinké. Makes sense considering how long she’s lived here. I try talking to her some more, but she keeps passing out. I wish her well, and then go to leave. The daughter of the rice lady, a nice young woman wants my phone number. Ok, fine. She’s been helpful and willing to entertain my fledgling Malinké. We can chat on the phone occasionally, as I do with many other people I've met on this trip, who call me constantly. So, we exchange numbers and then I walk back to my room. It’s a nice night. Still hasn’t rained, but still fairly cool. I feel good, and I am pleased with how easy it was to find really good food in Kissidougou. I buy some bananas and peanuts for the morning.

When I get back to my room the power is off, and suddenly this hotel, which I paid good money for, is a dive. Without power or AC there is no difference between this and a hotel that should cost a third of what I paid. I check my battery, which I left plugged in. It’s scarcely charged at all. Power must have gone out shortly after I left. It’s a bit stuffy in the room, but I think I should be able to got some sleep, so I shower again to cool off, brush my teeth and lay down to sleep. Then I notice that the water from a tap in the bathroom is dripping loudly onto the tile floor. I get up and try to close the faucet. No luck. The solution I come up with is taking the shower curtain and scrunching it right below the tap so that the water streams down it silently, rather than falling to the tile with an audible thud. OK. I lay down again. Now I am aware that there are mosquitos in the room. The only excuse for a hotel not having a mosquito net (besides being a complete dive) is that it has AC. At this point my hotel has neither. I get up and turn on the lights and successfully kill a few mosquitoes. But they still buzz in my ears. Yet, eventually, after reading for a little while, I fall asleep.

Until my phone starts vibrating. It has a do not disturb mode that goes into effect at 10 pm every night, so for it to actually ring someone has to call multiple times in a row. Is it an emergency? I roll over and grovel at the bedside table in the dark, and finally bring the phone to my face. The number ringing is the young woman from the restaurant. It’s 2 AM. I take the call and ask her, furiously, why she is calling me right now. Her response is to ask if I’ll call her in the morning. I cus at her in French and hang up. Then I see that she’s called me 7 times, between 1:45 and 2 AM. Fucking unbelievable. The phone probably rang a few times, I mercifully slept through it at first. I should really just leave my phone on airplane mode while sleeping. I block her number and roll over.

But after this I cannot fall back asleep. The room is stuffy. There is still no power or AC. The shower curtain has shifted somehow, and the dripping is back to being audible and annoying. I get up and take another shower and read more of my book. It takes a couple more hours to fall asleep. I hear both the morning wakeup call from the mosque and the morning prayer before I fall asleep again.