The wrong turn

Friday, 8th Feb


I realized I'm actually further along than I thought - we covered the "Highway to hell" and the nature park stops from Tamba, which means it's now time to address the crossing into Banana Republic, excuse me, Guinea Bissau - and the local rendition of the Hunger Games (if you didn't read the books, go see the movie).

Leaving Tambacounda on a reasonable road to start with (and a "not too bad a road by African standards" road just before the border), we came to the Senegal Guinea Bissau border, where the little verm... damn it, adorable little darlings, whose only words of French are "Petit Cadeau" (*Little Gift, normally a pen or small flashlight/box of cigarettes, but can go up to your watch/shoes/car), were out in force. The one, and only one Gendarme manning the exit point spoke magnificent American (as we're moving to the UK, I am no longer allowed to call it English), and we got past his Cadeaux requirements - though he was nice enough he'd get one anyway - with a flashlight.

(Movie note: Cue fast, terror inducing music, like the one just before the zombies attack)

Guinea Bissau.

We first started thinking that it might be an issue when the biggest "Maman" I have seen so far was sitting in the "Police" shack with an "El Paso, Texas PD" hat was shouting at the top of her lungs "Cadeau, cadeau, cadeau" every 30 seconds. She took down the car details, one of her cronies copied the information from the passports into a book, and crony 3 checked the passport - and did't return it until he got a gift. One of the guys had to give him the sun glasses he was wearing, because, that seems to be the going tax rate for entering Guinea Bissau this week. A quick stop at the other shack, and 5000 CFA later you had an import permit for Q1 2013 done (this will be relevant later).

So, in about 2h on average, we were on the way to the village of Canjufa over what can be best described as a dry riverbed that someone decided to call a road, because that's just the kind of twisted person he is. The feral children lining bits of the "road" next to their villages tried to jump under the car to make you stop, swarmed at every opportunity, threw rocks if you didn't stop, and pounded on the windows. It was wonderful, and if I ever meet the whitey who first started giving out gifts for no apparent reason in Africa, he's not going to have a good time.

So, Canjufa. Where we offloaded the donations we brought onto the waiting pick-up truck, guarded by boys with sticks in orange shirts. And a goodly pile of donations it was. The fact that it had to be guarded should have gotten my alarm bells ringing.

Apparently, the pile was found lacking. Things started disappearing from camp. Then a scuffle broke out when one of the bags fell off of a pickup truck. A few folks started demanding that we share dinner (uhhh, David doesn't share his food), give them more gifts / our watches / shoes, etc. - in short, it wasn't pleasant. We locked up the car and crawled into the tent with Hungarian pop music as the lullaby - for the Hungarians: Hungo techno pop, accompanied on the drums live by Pako Fekete.

Yeah. ;)

And that was just the evening. As we were packing up the next morning, more things vanished (none of our stuff), and the Hunger Games-like fights over the empty plastic bottles started. They only got worse as some of the teams that came in late tried to give out their donations on their own, and one of the Slovenian teams that was leaving among the last had to stand guard over their camping kit with a machete while they were packing up.

In short, the rally should give Canjufa a wide berth next year. Like about a country away.