March 23rd

I’ve spent the last week or so, since I left Yembering, pretty deep in the bush. I’ve been going from one Jaxanké village to the next, through some of the most beautiful, and rugged country I’ve ever seen. It’s been extraordinary, and very immersive. I’ve been, as they say, deep in the sauce, dreaming in Jaxanké.

These villages are among the most remote, and least developed places I’ve ever been. I’ve had very little phone service during this time, and have struggled to find places to charge my phone/external battery.

I have, however, had plenty of time to write. In fact, as you’ll see, I’ve gone completely overboard in the last few days. I have an iPad with a fold out keyboard with me, which makes it pretty easy to write. It is clear that I need a different format for my words and pictures from this trip, like a blog or something. But for now Strava is a really nice place to just put it out there, without worrying about it being perfect

So, I’ll be going back and uploading my pictures and daily journal for each day from Yembering until Labé, post hoc. It is completely, utterly absurd to put a story this expansive on Strava, but until I have a lot more time to figure something else out, here it is.

March 17

I showed up to Yembiring yesterday afternoon feeling a bit salty. My bike was broken and I wasn’t sure if I would be able to fix it here, or if I’d have to go to Labé, a true city of several hundred thousand, about 75 km to the south.

Yembering is a sous-prefecture of about 15,000. So it’s a town, but not a big one. My first impressions weren’t great. Upon arrival my moto taxi pulled into the center of town alongside a vast field of trash and rusty car parts. The main drag, next to the “garage” (where you can get a car to another town), is a treeless and shadeless expanse pretty much devoid of charm.

However, things turned around very quickly. It helped that I have a host here. One day back in December, I was in Dar Salaam, my host Senegalese host village, and I met a man named Mamadou Touré. He was friendly, spoke French, and we had a nice conversation. His mom is a Minté, which makes him some kind of cousin to my toxoma. His dad is Sarakulé (see post about Badougoula), and his family mostly lives in Yembering. Mamadou lives and works as merchant in Kédougou, selling Guinean clothing and fabrics, but he told me to call his brother Bassirou if I should ever find myself in Yembering, Guinea.

This is what I did, but I did not even have a chance to even give Bassirou any forewarning. Mamadou had told him, when my trip was about to start, almost 2 months ago now, that there might be a toubab showing up at some point, and to expect a call. I’d planned on giving him some lead time, but there was no service in the town where my bike broke down, so all I could do was call him when we pulled up to the Yembering garage. Luckily, people in West Africa are used to this kind of thing; people showing up unannounced. Phones are a relatively recent arrival, and even still service is often poor/unreliable. The culture remains very accommodating to unannounced guests.

So Bassirou didn’t skip a beat when I called out of the blue, and told me that his son would come find me at the garage momentarily. I sat in the shade, bought a banana, and within 5 minutes a kid of about 15 showed up on a moto, and introduced himself as Mamadou. (Names are extremely repetitive here. Virtually every family recycles the same 10 or so Koranic first names per gender every generation). We got acquainted, and speaking a mixture of French and Jaxanké, and I told Mamadou I needed to get parts for a bike with gears. I haven’t seen any functioning geared bikes in this area, just motos and creaky old steel frame bikes rigged as single speeds, so I was not sure what kind of luck I would have with this request. I was expecting, at the very least, to have to do the work myself as it seemed unlikely any mechanics here would know how to fix geared bikes, since there are none.

Yet Mamadou immediately had a place in mind where I could find what I needed, and he led down a row of greasy moto repair shops— shabby zinc roof shade structures in front of small storage rooms. The ground in front of these shops is permanently wet with discarded motor oil. There are rarely work benches and tools lay strewn on the ground. Kids as young as 8 years old tote rags, chock blocks, and tools. Everyone’s shirts are thoroughly stained a sooty black.

We get to the stand Mamadou had in mind, at the end of the row, and are greeted by a kid maybe a year or two older than Mamadou, so no older than 16 or 17. He takes a look at my bike. I ask him if he’s worked with bikes with gears before. He responds confidently that he knows how to fix anything. He goes into the storage room and re-emerges immediately with a shifting cable and a roll of housing. I nearly jump with joy. Maybe these items are not as rare as I’d supposed? He says he can do the work. I’m willing to trust him. So I leave the bike with him and get some lunch. Garages always have the best and cheapest food, and I enjoy a nice bowl of mafé tiga (rice with peanut sauce), one of my favorite West African dishes.

After lunch, no more than an hour later, I return to the mechanics shop, and see the mechanic riding around on my bike, testing the gears. I take a test ride too, and am floored. This kid has done a hell of a job. The shifting is smooth, the cable is properly routed, and the bike feels good. I don’t know how he knew how do this, and tell him, at the risk of being patronizing, that I am impressed. He’s totally nonchalant.

What does this service cost me? Parts are one (1) dollar. As for labor, well this is more flexible. I give him another dollar, which is way, way more than he might normally get for this amount of work, but I think he deserves it. His nonchalance almost cracks at the sight of this sum, but he keeps his cool.

Then Mamadou leads me to the Touré family compound. Here we are greeted by Bassirou, and 3 more brothers. I immediately lose track of their names. They are all very friendly, speak Jaxanké, and happy to have me as a guest. I take a bucket bath, and sit and eat mangos and chat. This day has gone from seemingly disastrous to very pleasant in just a couple hours.

Now that I no longer have stressed out tunnel vision I notice that Yembering is in fact absolutely beautiful. It is perched on a sloping, rocky plateau, which affords views from virtually everywhere in town (besides the garage) of the surrounding valleys and mountains, and the little Pulaar villages on their slopes. Around dusk I go for a walk while eating salted peanuts, and take in the scene. There is no hotel here, but there is a government building called the “Maison d’Acceuill” (Welcome Center). I am told I can stay there for 50,000 GNF ($5.55), but I prefer the host family vibe. Yembering strikes me as a town with enormous potential for tourism, if accessibility were, well, far better. As so often happens in Guinea my head spins as I contemplate just how many epic rock formations, mountains, waterfalls, caves, and other natural sites probably exist without a small radius of here, yet see little to no tourism.

That evening I enjoy a delicious meal of fonio and peanut sauce, at Tourécounda (“house of Touré,” the suffix “-counda” can be added to any last name to refer to that family’s compound), and given my own hut for the night. There is just a rug in the ground, but with my air mattress it is a great setup.

This morning, the 17th, Yembering continues to impress. First thing in the morning I am delivered a piping hot bowl of rice porridge, which I eat in my hut while listening to a podcast. The Guinean bike tour version of breakfast with the morning paper. Up the hill from my Tourécounda I find a calm, airy café with good coffee and beautiful views. I drop my phone off to charge at a shop next to the cafe with a running generator. I hate to admit it, but in West Africa, I’ll take a generator powered charging shop over a solar power charging shop any day. They are way more consistent and charge far faster. I have been burned by solar panel charging stations, leaving my phone there for hours to find it barely charged at all. Unfortunately this means I don’t have my phone/camera for the rest of the morning and don’t get any pictures with my hosts.

After coffee I head back to my hut to pack up my bike. It then is made known to me that there is a wedding taking place at the main Tourécounda across the street from my hut. I am obliged to make an appearance, if for no other reason then to say goodbye to my hosts, who are all at the wedding.

So, bike packed and ready to hit the road, I go to stop by the wedding to say goodbye. However I quickly realize that there is no such thing as “stopping by” a wedding. It is inconceivable that I should leave without at least eating. I am taken by the wrist and led into a room and offered a seat. A flurry of greetings ensue. The main Tourécounda is, by Guinean standards, fairly nice. This family is what I would probably call upper middle class Guineans. They are by no means ultra wealthy, which typically comprise either those involved in mineral wealth or government, but a solidly prosperous family of merchants and traders. They might also have a relative or two in Europe. In this room are exclusively men, chatting, drinking tea, talking on the phone. Some are also outside in the shade sitting on a couch. People come and go on motos constantly.

The women, meanwhile, are out in a near shadeless courtyard, cooking vast quantities of rice, meat, vegetables, and sauce over open fires. The scene around these cooking fires resembles, at first glance, something just shy of total pandemonium. There are at least 2 dozen women, most with babies on their backs. The din is sufficiently loud that basically every one of them is yelling. Children wander around, precariously close to open fires and large cast iron pots of boiling rice and sauce. Opportunistic chickens and goats scurry about, snatching stray grains of rice, potato peels, and onion skins. Yet the food is being cooked, and in a few hours everyone here will eat their fill of delicious wedding food.

I manage to make it clear that while I would love to stay, I really must hit the road. I have little concept of how far away my next destination, the village of Doungee, might be, or how many feet I must climb to get there. Doungee does not appear on any maps, and I have received mixed reports about which villages it is next to, so I want to give myself plenty of time today to find it.

Bassirou, my host, reluctantly obliges, and a bowl of food is quickly prepare for me. Waiting for the main wedding meal cook would have taken hours, but luckily they already have some other food prepared. And it is fonio, which is probably my favorite West African staple. Bassirou’s wife also insists that I take some food to go, and puts some rice and sauce into some plastic bags to pack with me on my bike.

After this most satisfying meal of fonio, I am very full. I say a few more thanks and goodbyes, slip Bassirou some money, and extricate myself from the wedding. I pick up my phone, which is fully charged, and, by 11:30, am on the road.

I’m headed towards Doungee. Doungee. This is a place I have wanted to visit for a long time. At this point my relationship with the people of Dar Salaam, and as such the Jaxanké people, now goes back 8.5 years, to November of 2013 when I first stepped foot in the village at the start of Peace Corps. During the 6 years between finishing Peace Corps, in November 2015, and returning to Senegal for this trip, in November 2021, I managed to call often enough to more or less keep up with my host family in Dar Salaam. And when I returned in November, my relationships with people for the most part picked up right where they left off.

And for this entire time I have been aware of a village in Guinea called Doungee. This is because it is the ancestral village of the Minté family, and a sort of paradise lost for the Mintés of Dar Salaam. They speak of the rich, beautiful, and rugged lands of Guinea, but have no illusions about why they left.

To fully understand the significance of Doungee, I will have to tell the story of my my Peace Corps host dad, Ousmane Minté, who was born in Doungee. Ousmane is also my “toxoma,” meaning namesake. When someone is born and given a name, the name will almost always be given as a homage to someone with the same name, the namee’s “toxoma.” This is a ubiquitous naming convention in west Africa, not just among the Jaxanké. It can be be a sign of respect to the person who’s name is being repurposed, and can serve to strengthen bonds between family members. The overall role of the concept of “toxomas” is pretty complex.

Anyway, Peace Corps volunteers are typically given local names when they install in a community. It’s just a lot easier for people to remember than strange American names, it also creates the opportunity of a bit of a naming baptism, a small ceremony, and facilitates integration. So when I arrived in Dar Salaam, for the very first time, Ousmane, the head of the household of my Peace Corps assigned host family, declared me his toxoma, giving me his name as my own. I was thereby dubbed “Ousmane Minté,” a name, and even an identity, I have come to inhabit with surprising ease ever since. Being someone’s toxoma gives you a bit of a unique relationship with someone. From here on I’ll refer to him as “my toxoma,” or just “Ousmane.”

Ousmane is, today, about 50, so he was born in the early 70s. At the age of one, his father, El Hadji Sori Minté, the patriarch of the family, led his 3 wives and 10 or so children (both of these numbers would grow significantly in the coming years) out of Doungee, and out of Seckou Touré’s Guinea. The country was in a steep downward economic, political, and societal spiral due in no small part to the bizarre and parochial policies of president Touré (no relation to my hosts in Yembering). The Mintés traveled, on foot, with my toxoma on his mom’s back, out of this deep and inaccessible part of the Futa Jallon mountains, down to the forested savanna just north of the mountains. The region where they ended up, comprising foothills, plains, and river valleys, is historically linked with the Futa Jallon of Guinea, but due to a last minute administrative change by the French, it is part of Senegal. But just barely. El Hadji Sori first brought his family to Dakateli, an old Jaxanké village that is tucked right up against the border.

In Dakateli the family did what Jaxankés do. They farmed rice, studied the Koran, bore more children, and engaged peacefully with their Pulaar neighbors. After a few years, El Hadji Sori moved the family, again, to the town of Kedougou. In the early 80s Kédougou was not yet a regional capital (the region of Kédougou was not created until 2008, carved out of the larger region of Tambacounda), but a laid back, mostly Malinké town of a few thousand at a bend on The Gambia River. However, the town was growing as people, mostly Pulaars, fled Tourés regime in Guinea, and poured into the region, starting villages and moving to the larger towns that existed. Enough pulaars moved to Kedougou that it grew, in a few decades, from a Malinké town to a mostly Pulaar city.

Ousmane grew up in this burgeoning provincial town, and excelled at everything expected of of him by traditional Jaxanké societal norms. He was a prodigious student of Islamic theology, and through his adolescence studied intensively with Mauritanian imams— native Arabic speakers— who’d migrated to Senegal, and he was a highly productive farmer who learned, as he became a young adult, how to leverage the labor pool of children that underpins the substance farm economy in West Africa. (Western readers might be surprised to know that not only is child labor practiced in this part of the world, it is really a foundational aspect of the agricultural economy.)

At some point in the early 90s Ousmane and his younger (full) brother Mamadou, both in their early 20s, began farming a piece of land about 8-10 km southwest of Kedougou. They’d found and laid claim to a choice piece of land, a roughly triangular alluvial plain near the intersection of the Gambia River and a tributary creek named the Silling, which flows out of the Bedik Foothills, a mountainous region northwest of Bandafassi. The land also includes a natural floodplain that is perfect for rice farming during the rainy season— a crucial component of any Jaxanké settlement.

Initially Ousmane and Mamadou spent time on this land only seasonally, staying for a few weeks at a time during the rainy season with a few family member to farm rice, peanuts, corn, cassava, and fonio. But gradually the farming camp developed into a settlement, and after a few more years they had constructed huts, established compounds, and brought their wives and kids to live there full time. Soon more family members joined, and the farming camp grew into a small village. Ousmane and Mamadou named it Dar Salaam, which is a very common place-name in the Islamic world (like the former capital of Tanzania). It is an Arabic term: Dar, or Daraa, means “school,” and Salaam means “peace,” or “Islam,” in so far as they are etymologically the same word (same Semitic root as the Hebrew “shalom”).

The village quickly realized the promise of its name. By the early 2000s Ousmane had established himself in the wider Jaxanké community as an accomplished scholar and imam, and as such began to accept “talibés:” boys, often as young as 5, who are sent to live with a religious teacher to learn the Koran, how to farm, and generally be a successful member of Jaxanké society. Talibé is an Arabic word for “student,” and talibé systems exist throughout Islamic West Africa. Unfortunately, in urban Senegal the system has been corrupted, and the talibé there seem to spend most of their time begging for coins and rice on the street, rather than learning the Koran or a vocation. But in Dar Salaam, and among Jaxankés more generally, the system still exists in a more original form. The talibé here come from Jaxanké villages across the region— Guinea, Senegal, Gambia, and Mali— and it is not uncommon for them to spend their entire adolescence, from the age of 5 until 18 or 20, working for and learning from my toxoma.

The system is based around the broad kin network that comprises Jaxanké society. Every family that sends a son to Dar Salaam has a direct relationship with my toxoma, and believe that their kid will benefit from his religious and agricultural pedagogy. There is no doubt that he instills in them the work ethic and discipline that is necessary to be a successful farmer: waking at 5:30 am, and marching out to a field to plough, weed, or clear land. Rice farming in particular is difficult work, wading through tepid knee deep water in 95% humidity when the temperature is in the mid 100s. Yet they also spend plenty of time trouncing around the woods, swimming in the river, and playing soccer, particularly during the dry season. In a way it’s an idyllic existence, but I also don’t want to sugar coat it. The talibé in Dar Salaam are not learning any French or math, or any trade beyond farming. And the truth is, that except for a select few who excel, they don’t even really learn how to read/write in Arabic in any practical way, but mostly just memorize and recite passages of the Koran.

In establishing this village— a productive farming community with a thriving talibé system and tight-knit populace— Ousmane and Mamadou realized the highest ideal in Jaxanké society. The history of the Jaxanké people is largely a series of stories of a small group of pious, pacifist scholar farmers migrating to new lands to recreate the archetypical, sometimes utopian vision of the ideal scholar-farmer community. In this way theirs is something of a revivalist culture, with successive generations looking back on the old city of Jakha as the perpetual ideal for Jaxanké societal organization.

Ousmane is by no means the most successful, economically, of his siblings. He has brothers and sisters in France, Spain, and apparently even in the US, who make far more money than him, and support relatives throughout Senegal and Guinea. But in terms of traditional cultural currency, nobody is of higher status in the Minté family than my toxoma— founder and leader of a community that actively embodies the core ideals of Jaxanké identity.

So that is Dar Salaam. Now fast forward to about 2010. It is now a village of about 200 people, and Kedougou is a bustling regional capital of 25-30 thousand, and growing fast in large part to a gold rush in the wider region of southeastern Senegal. Ousmane now has 3 wives and 17 children. Every Friday, which is the holy day in Islam, he rides his moto into Kédougou to deliver the weekly sermon at the cities largest exclusively Jaxanké mosque. Dar Salaam no hosts about 30 talibé, a signification portion of the village’s 200 or so residents. About 20 of these boys live in dormitory style housing in Ousmane’s own compound, where his wives somehow cook three meals a day for all of these hungry young men, in addition to themselves, Ousmane, and the 12 or so biological children that still live in the compound (several of Ousmane’s eldest children, the first 7 of which are all, improbably, women, have already married and moved out of Dar Salaam).

Around this time, Mamadou, who is about 5 years younger than Ousmane starts going to some trainings with a friend run by a program called “Corps de la Paix.” At these events, young Americans who miraculously speak rudimentary Jaxanké, Malinké, and Pulaar lead trainings about how to integrate trees into agricultural regimes to improve soil health and increase yields, how to graft mango trees, and more. Mamadou is a skilled farmer, and an attentive learner, and begins successfully applying the techniques he’s learned at these trainings. Eventually his friend, who is the regional liaison with the Peace Corps, asks Mamadou if perhaps Dar Salaam would like to host one of these Americans. He and Ousmane discuss this and agree it sounds like a good idea, and they sign up.

An interesting note about Mamadou. He is said to be, by all who I speak with about such matters, every bit as erudite and knowledgeable about the koran, and Islamic theology as his older brother. Yet he is a very humble, and modest person, who recognized and accepted early on that only one of the brothers could assume the role of high profile imam and religious instructor. Because of this, he began devoting his considerable talent and energy to the project of agriculture, and learning about new agroforestry techniques. In a parallel universe Mamadou may have been the lead imam of Dar Salaam, but in this one he is the Peace Corps Master Farmer.

Then, in September 2013, I land in Senegal and begin training as a sustainable agriculture and forestry Peace Corps volunteer. The first part of this training is a placement interview, to decide where in Senegal to place each volunteer. The placement process is ultimately opaque, but I believe two main factors contributed to my being sent to Dar Salaam. The first is that I already speak French. Jaxanké is an extremely minority language in Senegal as a whole, so French would be crucial for me in getting around in other parts of the country. Secondly, I like to mountain bike. Peace Corps volunteers are not permitted to drive motos, so biking is the only practical way to get to Dar Salaam, which, though not particularly far from Kedougou in absolute terms, is accessible only by bush path, too far to walk, and is not served by any transit routes.

So Dar Salaam becomes my home in Peace Corps. Ousmane, along with his three wives and 16 children take the role of my official Peace Corps host family, and Mamadou is my primary work partner and runs a USAID funded demonstration farm and garden known as a “Master Farm.” The integration curve in DS was steep at first, in large part because of the 18 or so talibé with whom I shared every inch of common space outside of my hut. But with time I got to know the boys individually, and piece together how they were all part of an extended kin network.

Many of the boys came from a small handful of villages in the Futa Jallon Mountains of Guinea,l including Doungee, where my toxoma was born. I was immediately fascinated by their descriptions of villages, located in remote, lush mountain valleys. On a clear day one can actually see the first two rises of the Guinean Plateau from Dar Salaam; green giants on the southern horizon. The very northern edge of these mountains spill just across the border into Senegal. It is a choice slice of the mountains, with many of magnificent waterfalls and rock prometories lying just inside Senegalese territory. Exploring these sites during Peace Corps only increased my desire to explore the rest of the mountain range.

My time in Peace Corps happened to coincide with a kind of my toxoma’s success as a religious and social leader. In 2014, the President of Senegal, Mackey Sall, visited Kédougou on an official state visit. During this visit he convened a meeting with 10 of the region’s religious leaders, and Ousmane was nominated by the Jaxanké community to represent them at the meeting. Prior to this I didn’t really understand the status of my toxoma in Jaxanké society. He was to me an extremely cheerful man who I shared meals with, who instructed his talibé with strict discipline, and who patiently listened to me as I tried to express myself in halting Jaxanké. He remained these things, but I began to see him in a new light. He lives in a hut in a village with almost no infrastructure. There were hundreds and hundreds of people in the city of Kédougou who lived in fancy houses and clearly had more money than him. But his place as a respected imam gave him a different kind of status.

After this, in 2015, he announced that he would be going to Mecca, to complete the Hadj. In more affluent parts of the Islamic world the Hadj is largely within reach of middle and even lower middle class Muslims. However, Saudi Arabia is a long way from the rural hinterlands of western most Africa, and the trip is squarely out of reach for the vast majority of Muslims in the region. So making this trip was a very big deal.

What happened is the representatives of the Jaxanké community in Kédougou were contacted by an anonymous benefactor in Europe, who said that they wanted to fund the pilgrimage to Mecca for one pious Muslim in the Jaxanké community of Kédougou. Who this would be was to be decided by a consensus among the community. We don’t know anything about the sponsor other than that it is a Jaxanké female living somewhere in Europe. Needless to say, it was a huge honor for Ousmane to be chosen as the receiver of this anonymous sponsorship.

In fact, I have reflected on this a fair bit, and it occurs to me that I probably can’t even understand how much this means to him. The truth is that there is nothing in my life that I believe in as much as my toxoma believes in his faith, and the importance of the 5 pillars of Islam. As such I doubt that I actually have the mental framework to understand how significant this is for him.

The trip lasted about three weeks. His time in Mecca coincided with an unspeakably horrible event that got little notice in western media, the 2015 Mecca stampede, in which an estimated 2400 people (this is not a typo) were trampled to death. Despite witnessing, at least partially, this unfathomable calamity, Ousmane remained immaculate, never deviating from his cheerful, tranquil disposition.

He came back dressed in the finest Islamic garb I’d ever seen, newly bestowed with the appellation “El Hadji” Ousmane Minté. At the reception ceremony in Dar Salaam he played the part of a noble, lofty elite, one who had breathed of rarified air, and whose presence alone graced those lucky enough to be near. This went on for a few more days, as he received dozens and dozens of guests to his hut, who brought gifts and greetings. In return, the newly minted El Hadji would recite extended prayers, demonstrating a newly refined, and dignified fluency in Arabic. Shaking the hand of a man who had so recently touched the Kaaba was an honor beyond words for the chiefs and imams from the tiny, humble neighboring Pulaar villages.

Yet within 24 hours of his return to Dar Salaam Ousmane was wading through the murky, knee deep water of his rice fields in the light of dawn, and running a horse drawn plough through the muddy rows of his corn fields. He immediately returned to his duties as a farmer in the mornings, reserving the mid day and afternoon hours for guests.

Neither meeting the president, nor completing the Hadj changed Ousmane’s essential disposition as a humble, disciplined and amiable man, an imam farmer from a small village in Guinea—a village I find myself, on a bright and sunny day in March 2022, approaching on some of the worst roads I have ever biked.

The road to Doungee is quite bad, and passes up and over several extremely steep hills. In absolute distance the ride was shorter than I was expecting, but the poor quality and steepness of the road made each kilometer feel significantly longer than 0.6214 miles. The road was sometimes literally blanketed in multiple inches of blanched, powdery dust, like fresh snowfall, and even dampened sounds in the same way. I saw something on this ride that I’d never seen before in Guinea: signs indicating a grade of greater than 10%. My immediate thought was to wonder why, if they were here of all places, I hadn’t seen any on the countless hills of similar steepness I’ve already encountered throughout the country.

The eco region of the Fouta Jallon is comprised mostly of Guinean Forest-Savanna. It can be difficult to categorize this environment because it varies so intensely from season to season. The rainy season arrives with vigor, and the landscape transforms overnight to lush forest of the most vibrant greens. Streams, creeks and waterways are seemingly everywhere, the grass is 10 ft high, and the landscape teams with animal and insect life. But when the rains stop, usually in early November, they stop quite abruptly, and the savanna quickly begins to dry. By now, in late March, it has not rained in almost 5 months, and the landscape has transformed to a parched sea of yellow and brown. Many trees in this eco region are drought deciduous, meaning they will drop their leaves for the dry season, adding to the effect of barrenness. Yet, the Guinean Forest-Savanna is a fundamentally a mosaic, which means that while much of the landscape during the dry season becomes a dry, shadeless deciduous woodland, there are also many patches of forest with mature, large leaved evergreen trees, and tangled vines, offering a deep, cool shade.

These patches of forest are where I try to take my breaks, when possible. Though they are not common outside of the riparian corridors on the valley floors. And in fact, much of the landscape I pass through today is made even less shaded by the perpetual clearing of the land for agriculture.

Although Doungee is not listed on any maps, I have a general notion of where I might find it, and my Pulaar is just good enough that I am able to ask for directions in the villages along the way. I pull in to town at about 3:00 pm, with the sun at its hottest and most people having retired into their huts, or to the shade of a tree for a short siesta. On afternoons like this, a village can seem momentarily deserted, and my first moments in Doungee are essentially a solitary exploration of a dusty, sun drenched landscape. The village lies on the rocky slopes of a river valley, downhill from the road, and as I slowly make my way down towards the first cluster of huts I have sweeping view of the mountains on the other side of the river valley below.

I quickly, and somehow instinctively, become aware, that Doungee is… It is a bit shabbier than any other Jaxanké village I’ve come across on my travels so far. All African villages are not created equal, and there are palpable differences between them based on a number of factors, but economic connectivity is probably the biggest one. The roads to Doungee are such that it’s not clear to me that a car could actually make it out here. A seriously rigged out 4x4 could probably do it, but these are not the vehicles available for general transport in this area. You do occasionally see such vehicles, often Toyota Landcruisers, sporting the insignia of various NGOs, buzzing around bush trails, but the vehicles that are actually available for hire to normal Guineans are mostly French station wagons from the 1980s. Particularly common is the Peugeot 505. These cars, all things considered, are kept in remarkably good condition, and are far more capable than one might assume. But the roads to Doungee are bad even by Guinean standards, and it would take a bit more horsepower and clearance to get here than a Peugeot 505 can offer. So transport to Doungee, except on rare occasions, is limited to whatever people can strap onto the rear of their moto.

All of this is to illustrate that getting things to Doungee is undoubtedly more expensive than to a place like Dar Salaam, which can be accessed by car fairly easily during the dry season, or even Salamata, which has far better access by road. Doungee is in a different situation. This is really a strong data point for an argument in favor of geographic determinism. And the lack of imported materials is evident immediately. Cement powder is one of the things that is not going to make it over the hills between Yembering and Doungee in any significant quantity. My hut in Dar Salaam has a thatch roof and the walls are mostly mud, but these walls are finished with a glaze of concrete, the floor/foundation of the hut is concrete and the thatch of the roof is tied to the bamboo and palm support beams with steel wire. Huts in Doungee are built without any concrete. They are completely mud/gravel, with hard packed mud floors. The roof thatching is tied with various types of natural cordage, most often fibrous strands skinned off of palm fronds. The one imported construction material that is common here are sheets of zinc roofing, which top many of the buildings.

These are some of my first impressions of Doungee. I am also struck by the landscape in the village, it is essentially set in a boulder field. There are large rocks everywhere, and piles of smaller rocks stacked on the side of fields and paths. The first people I come across are furniture maker and a group of children under a mango tree. The man is planing the side of a board with a steel blade. He is kind of apprehensive at first, almost suspicious when I say hi and introduce myself, but points me in the direction of the compound of the Minté family member I was told to seek out. A child leads me there, and we as we pass through the village I greet several woman, who, as it happens are Mintés. They are warm and cheerful as I greet them, but when I introduce myself as Ousmane Minté, and tell them that my toxoma is El Hadji Ousmane Minté, of Dar Salaam, they absolutely light up. A couple of them have a vague notion that there was a toubab living in Dar Salaam, but this is not like Salamata, where people were somehow already knew who I am. But this doesn’t change anything, and I feel immediately the unconditional love that has defined my entire experience with the Minté clan.

We get to the compound of Fodé Samba Minté. My host in Salamata, El Hadji Bassirou Minté had recommended that I say hi to Fodé Samba, and that perhaps he could host me. The compound is quiet, and Fodé Samba, who is an old man perhaps in his 60s, sits in the shade. I introduce myself proceed slowly and deliberately through the formal greetings. But there is something off with Fodé. He does not look at me, and seems totally indifferent, even dismissive of my presence. I explain to him that I lived in Dar Salaam for two years, in the compound of El Hadji Ousmane Minté, who is my toxoma, and that for the last two months I have been biking around Guinea to various Jaxanké villages in order to greet my family, the Mintés, and all Jaxanké people. This is the general spiel I give whenever I show up in a village. Fodé Samba acknowledges that he knows my toxoma, but other wise seems nonplussed. After a couple minutes the greetings grind to a halt, and he asks, quite bluntly, “ok, so what do you want?” I take a breath, somewhat taken aback by the tenor of this interaction, and say, in the best, clearest Jaxanké I can muster, that I would like to find a host for the evening so that I can greet everyone in Doungee, and see what’s going on in the village. Fodé grunts and says nothing, his gaze veering bizarrely off into the middle distance. I sit back and try to think. As usual I am a bit tired. There are a handful of kids here, who mostly just sit and stare at me, no other adults.

I have the name of one other Minté in Doungee who I could go and say hi to. I’m on the verge asking a kid to lead me to this other compound, but think that maybe I could show Fodé Samba a couple pictures of me and my toxoma. This usually means a great deal to people. So I pull up a picture of myself, Ousmane, and about 15 of his Talibé standing in his field. It is one of my favorite pictures ever, taken on a DSLR by a fellow Peace Corps volunteer in 2015. I lean over to hand him my phone, “Here is me and my toxoma and his talibé,” I say, but he waves the phone away and kind of mumbles “I have a problem with my eyes.”

He’s blind. Everything is making more sense. The lack of eye contact, and slowness with which he seems to be making sense of my presence. He’s also pretty old. At this moment a couple of women show up, followed shortly by a few kébaas. My introductions with them go much better, and my spiel is much more warmly received. At one point one of the women whispers into Fodé Samba’s ear for about a minute while he nods along. After this, his disposition transforms, and he is now almost boisterous and enthusiastic. While we talk he reaches out with his hand on a few occasions, searching for my own, in order to give it a hearty, affectionate shake. Meanwhile, a small crowd forms, of perhaps 8 men, 5 women, and at least a dozen children. I greet each of these people individually. Many are Mintés, and even the ones that aren’t all have one degree of connection to my toxoma and Dar Salaam. I find myself surrounded by warm, smiling faces. Then Fodé Samba takes the floor, and delivers something of a speech to the small crowd, describing who I am and what I am doing. This is the traditional way of disseminating information in a village. A kébaa, while he may or may not be the most articulate or well informed, is given the floor, and he delivers some information that he wants the village to know. It is done in a kind of rhythmic fashion, with each sentence being followed, almost before it is done, by a “nam,” spoken in unison by members of the crowd. “Nam” is, as far as I know, an Arabic term meaning “I am here,” and is meant to indicate that you are listening. After each “nam” there is a beat of silence, and before the next sentence. As such, Fodé Samba informs the people of Doungee who I am, and they nod along enthusiastically. Now we are back on track.

After this the crowd disperses. It is now the afternoon work hour. But one sticks around, who introduces himself as Babacar Minté. This is the other name I was given in Doungee. Babacar tells me I will in fact stay with him, and asks if I would like to wash. I would love to wash.

The rest of the evening is spent wandering around, greeting people, and taking in the beauty of Doungee. One surprise is that the village chief of Dar Salaam’s wife is here. She’s a wonderful lady who I’ve know and worked with for years, and she’s here with three of her adorable young children. She was born in Doungee, and her mother is still here. I also meet a young man who has spent time as a Talibé in Dar Salaam. He remembers me from 2015, though I can not say I remember him. He wasn’t there consistently or long term, but he is helpful, and leads me around to greet some Kéebas.

Just after dusk the moon rises and I take some long exposures of a moonlit field, where, it is repeatedly pointed out to me, there once stood the hut in which Ousmane Minté was born. I