I slept well in the Kerouané guest hut until about 4:15 am when every dog in the village joined in a chorus of sorts, including a kind of call and response number. I was amazed at how loud the dogs managed to be. But I was even more amazed when, in the morning, I mentioned this annoyance to several people in nearby huts, and they had no idea what I was talking about. People’s ability to sleep through noise is truly impressive.

Made coffee in my hut and spent some time deleting redundant pictures on my phone. I am running out of memory. The issue is that the internet, even in cities, is often not strong enough to back everything up to Google Photos, which is what I would normally do, and then delete what I have on my phone. I’m also deleting superfluous apps, which is particularly therapeutic, feels like I am simplifying. Marie Kondo would be proud. I’ve created plenty of space and will be able to keep taking as many pictures and videos as ever. I’m hoping that in Labé, where I hope to be in a few days, I’ll be able to actually back everything up. If memory serves I stayed in a hotel there in 2015 with decent WiFi.

After coffee I went up to Tounko’s hut for a piece of bread and some “kinkeliba,” a medicinal tea made from the leaves of a wild shrub. Kinkileba is known, touted, and drank all over West Africa. It is supposed to be affective against hypertension and diabetes (though I don’t know in what way, specifically). Ironically, people drink it with vast quantities of sugar, to the point where it is basically a simple syrup. I drink mine with no sugar and people are think I must be confused; they chuckle and shake their heads.

Some villages just aren’t too big on breakfast. This is one of those villages. Luckily, I ate well last night, and feel fine this morning. I hang out and talk for a while then head back to pack up my bike.

On the ride in, during the rather substantial descent from Bouberé, my disc brakes were sounding pretty rough. After packing up my bike I take a closer look at them and decide that it is finally time to change the pads. These have lasted longer than I had expected they would, but there is no question it’s time to change them out. This is not the kind of thing you want to test your luck with, as you can end up damaging the rotors themselves. If that happened, I would be screwed.

This job takes a little while, and by the time I am done it is suddenly almost noon. Not sure where the morning went, but at this point I will just have to stay for lunch. This will give me an opportunity to perhaps eat something more substantial before hitting the road. Also, I have a pretty good ideas of my ride today, and it’s not far, so leaving after lunch will not put me in a time crunch.

So, around noon, Tounko and I go on another greeting session, stopping by various compounds to say hi to the old men and women. There are lots of Mintés here. They are all very happy to meet me, very sweet, and tell me to greet my toxoma, and various other Mintés in Dar Salaam and Kédougou.

At one such compound a pulaar woman comes by selling mangos. I buy 10 of them, one of which is a handsome large, grafted unit, for $0.22. I give half of them to Tounkoo for her kids and go about eating the others.

It’s great to be here during mango season. During the past week or so mangos have made a substantial contribution to my feeling full. My hosts have been extremely generous and gone out of their way to make sure I get the best portions of food they can provide. But the food just is not all that substantial much of the time. Common meals have been rice with palm oil, rice with a thin MSG sauce and bits of onion, and cassava porridge with okra sauce. It’s been a few days since I’ve had fonio.

So, filling my stomach with mangos helps me feel sated by a meal. They are also delicious. And today, after a lunch of cassava porridge and okra sauce, I feel great. I have a bit of backup food with me, a tin of sardines and a couple handfuls of peanuts. I also have high quality reserves of grade A American adipose tissue. So I am fine.

After lunch Tounkoo takes me to one more hut to greet more distant Minté relatives. They are really nice and welcoming, but they keep doing this thing that I can’t help but feel annoyed by. After greetings they sit there grinning; they’ve never met a toubab who can speak Jaxanké. They never even thought it was possible. So far so good. But then, instead of asking me more questions, or talking to me, they ask questions *about me* to my host, in this case Tounkoo. They are right in front of me, literally looking at me, but addressing the question to someone else. “Is he from France?” “Did he arrive here on moto?” “Where did he learn Jaxanké?” It’s bizarre, and despite myself, I can’t help but feel that it’s patronizing. Why don’t you just ask the question to me? I literally came here to talk to you.

This has happened in basically every village I’ve been to. There is obviously no ill intent. People just don’t know what to do with me, or how to treat me. On a couple occasions I’ve kinda gone on a little bit of a tirade. “Why are you asking the question to her? I am sitting right here, we are together. You can ask me.” They generally understand after this. It’s a really minor thing. I probably sound petty even mentioning it. This is what I get for being the first tourist to ever come to a village, I suppose, and communicating in a minority language.

After this, at about 3, I get on the road. The route is nice today, running alongside the river. The sun is hot, but for much of the ride I am in the shade of fairly intact riparian gallery forest. This same river, which flows from north to south, through Toubacouta, Doungee, and Kerouané, will now take me most of the way towards my next destination, the last of the five Jaxanké villages in this area: Kelimbou.

I was on my way to Kelimbou about a week ago, when my bike broke, and I had to go to Yembering first to fix it. Following this detour, I changed my route, and it will now be the final Jaxanké village in the area that I will visit. I think this is actually a better order, and that Kelimbou is the right one to finish on. This is because, as I have learned in the last few days, Kelimbou is in fact the original Jaxanké village in the Fouta Jallon. It is older even than Touba. I’ve heard this from many different people at this point.

When the Jaxanké people migrated south from the old city of Diaka Ba, in modern day Mali, they settled in a region called Futa Bundu, in what is now eastern Senegal, near the Bafing and Falémé rivers. But some also continued farther south, into the Futa Jallon. At first they settled a single town in this region: Kelimbou.

But all this I will learn from the Kéebas once I am there. I must first arrive, which I do at about 5:30, with the sun’s light is at its most beautiful. And my arrival is fortuitous. On the outskirts of the village, I stop to ask a couple guys by the side of the road which trail to take. The village is up a hill, and there a few different trails climbing towards it. After clarifying directions, we chat for a couple minutes and one of the men, as it turns out, not only knows Dar Salaam and my Toxoma, but actually lives in a suburb of Kédougou called Fadiga and farms a piece of land in Dar Salaam. He’s originally from Kelimbou and is back for the dry season. Seasonal migration like this is very common. He says we met back in 2015 or so. He also knows the name of the two Peace Corps volunteers who lived in Dar Salaam after me, a nice way of giving his bone fides. I am ashamed to say that I do not specifically remember this guy, who introduces himself as Boubacar Jaxité. I wish I were capable of remembering everyone I met back then, but there were lots of visitors.

Many visitors indeed. My toxoma would host, seemingly every week, a relative or friend from Guinea. After dinner we would sit and chat and I would listen as best I could, wide eyed like a child, as they spoke about the villages they were from, deep in the Fouta Jallon mountains, and fantasize about visiting this epic, rugged land of lush forests and old Jaxanké villages. Amazingly, I now find myself here.

I ride up the hill into Kelimbou, and the village reveals itself to me bit by bit. It is in an extraordinary location, tucked back against the foot of a steep ridge, on both sides of wide drainage. I didn’t think it was possible after Doungee and Kerouané, but this village is somehow more beautiful, less developed, and has poorer cell service than anywhere I’ve been yet.

I wander into town, pausing every 30 seconds to try and capture the scene with pictures. The huts are on a slope, overlooking a multi-pronged valley, and two very prominent peaks beyond, with rocky cliffs and forested escarpments on their slopes. I ride through fields of fonio, a grain native to West Africa that grows in well drained rocky soil— in this case almost pure gravel on the side of a ridge line.

I find a group of about 6 men, working on the construction of a hut. They are mixing water with gravely mud. This mixture, once laid and dried, will comprise the entire wall of the hut, brick and mortar both. The view from this work site is stunning. This whole section of the village is built on a slope, affording every hut something that, in another context, might be called a million-dollar view.

Before I even say anything the men are looking at me with a welcoming smile. When I start to introduce myself in Jaxanké many can’t help but burst out into laughter. It is one of the easiest village introductions I’ve ever done. What's more, this group comprises a majority of the middle-aged men in the village, (Kelimbou, I learn, is quite small) so I only have to give my full spiel once. On top of that, they just seem to understand immediately what I am up to and are happy to host me for the night. I am granted several “bismillahs” and offered a seat.

Regrettably, I am out of kola nuts. It has been a while since I’ve been to a market, and I gave my last to the village chief of Kerouané. But no one is worried about this. I inquire about a couple of Mintés I was told might be able to host me here, a pair of brothers who are cousins of my host dad. Turns out they are both out of town, in Labé on business. But this is no problem. One of the men, a fellow of about 45 by the name of Ibrahima Jaxité, volunteers to show me around the village before it gets dark. So, we set off, and as we walk, he tells me about this old, historic village.

I am told the name “Kelimbou” is derived from is an archaic name for the Ceiba pentandra tree, known as “kapok” in English. “Bantango” is the word Jaxankés use now, but apparently “kelimbou” is the old word, and the origin of the name of the village. Ceiba pentandra is the tallest tree in West Africa. Mature individuals develop incredible buttress roots and massive yawning canopies. They are amazing trees, if you aren’t familiar, you should look them up. They are often considered sacred trees, but in many cases are cut because the wood is of high quality has many uses. The French call them “fromager,” because, and this may well be apocryphal, they were said to have the best wood for the construction of cheese boxes.

Ibrahima leads me along a path that goes up and over a minor ridge, through peanut and fonio fields, and then crosses a small, currently dry, drainage. There are several beautiful specimens of the village’s namesake trees along the way. We are heading towards a cluster of huts on the slopes opposite this little dry creek. This cluster of huts, I am told, is a district (he uses the French term “quartier”) of Kelimbou, called “Suu,” which means “heart (of the city).” Ibrahima explains that the village has three districts: the area I arrived in is called “Wurundelé,” we are headed towards “Suu,” and the third is called “Konkótò.” I am surprised that Kelimbou has named districts like this. It doesn’t seem large enough to justify this. What I learn is that this used to be a much, much larger village than it is now. It used to be, in his words, a city.

Next to the dry creek we come across a field. Ibrahima sweeps his hand across the empty, fallow land, “this used to be full of huts and compounds. There used to be people living everywhere.” I try to get a sense of how long ago there might still have been people living here, but it’s difficult. He says when he was little there were still people living here. There are no remnants at all of huts, but this is not surprising. A concrete foundation can last decades, but the huts here use no concrete at all, and the mud, gravel, thatch, and bamboo that comprise a typical hut, once abandoned, will decompose and wash away in much less time than that.

Kelimbou feels to me a bit like an old, dying town in the Appalachian Mountains. In fact, even the mountains are remarkably similar. The Fouta Jallon, like the Appalachians, are a very old mountain range, that have eroded over the millennia, forming innumerable steep valleys. The Appalachians are a much longer chain, but in terms of height range they are pretty similar. The mountain ranges also have parallels in a cultural way, as economically marginalized homelands abandoned for the sake of opportunity elsewhere. Pulaars and Jaxankés alike have left the Fouta Jallon in large numbers over the last few generations, seeking economic or political stability in Senegal or Sierra Leon, or the opportunities of a big city.

And no village exemplifies this immigration trend as much as Kelimbou. It is the town of yesteryear, formerly prosperous, but now slow, empty and largely devoid of young people. We pass by a patch of cleared land, a soccer field, but there are only three kids playing. Where are the other children? This is the only village I have ever come across in West Africa that feels like this. Normally there are children in profusion, everywhere.

We get to the cluster of huts, the district known as “Suu.” There are, to my surprise, a handful of newish looking red brick buildings. One of which is a house. It’s the house of Cherno Minté, my toxoma’s cousin, who is currently off in the city of Labé on business. Cherno, I learn, possibly the lone prosperous resident of Kélimbou. He has a successful business of some kind (I don’t know what) in Labé, and could live there full time, but chooses to keep a house in Kelimbou because he wants to maintain this village of his ancestors. His house stands in great contrast to the thatch roof huts around. Nearby there are more newish brick buildings: a school, a mosque, a female mosque building, and a little gazebo shade structure. These buildings are all, I learn, funded by relatives, mostly Mintés, living in cities, and in Europe. Economic revitalization. The buildings are, however, not quite done, and appear as though they may be suspended in some state of permanent disrepair, which is quite common in Guinea. The school does not have a teacher yet. Nonetheless Ibrahima is clearly proud of these new buildings, and I express my appreciation for them as well. The gazebo in particular, which is used as a spot to hang out in after a prayer session in the mosque, represents a certain degree of village decadence.

We greet a couple residents of “Suu,” and then walk up a hill to “Konkótò,” the third district of Kelimbou, after “Wurundelé,” where I arrived, and “Suu.” Konkótò means “under (next to) the mountain,” and this cluster of huts is indeed perched up on a hillside. This is the smallest of the three districts, but it has the best views, including of the mosque in Suu. All of Kelimbou has the same feeling, old, and somewhat forlorn. All of this adds, somehow, to the beauty of it.

Back at Ibrahima’s compound, in “Wurundelé,” I sit on a chair in front of his hut, eat some mangos, and take in the view. Evening becomes night, and I sit and chat with Ibrahim’s brother, Muhammad. I learn a bit more about Kelimbou. The founders of all the other Jaxanké villages in the Fouta Jallon came from here. I also learned that my toxoma’s father, a man I knew and who died in 2018, was born here.

Dinner is rice with palm oil and onion leaf sauce. I feel strangely at home in Kelimbou. Although I’ll only spend one night here now, I already know I want to come back.