Hello friends and family,
There's so much to tell.......I haven't had the chance to update my blog since we left Mali, but finally here I am. I left off last time saying I'd explain the traditional festival which we saw in Mali. It's a Muslim festival called La fete de Tabaski, which celebrates a story of a Muslim prophet being asked to sacrifice his only child for Allah, then at the last minute Allah allowing him to sacrifice a lamb in the child's place. So for the festival, every family plays out the action of sacrificing a lamb for Allah and then having a party and using every part of the sheep for either eating or for some other purpose. The week before the festival we noticed along the road shepherds from the Tuareg tribe wearing their blue turbans, selling the fattest sheep to the richer families and the smaller ones to others. These sheep were then tied to some post in the family setting for few days with no food or water. (Anyway,in their option they were going to be killed anyway and were seen purely as meat, not living beings- hard to swallow for us as vegetarians!) In the few days in the lead up, the cries of the poor little lambs under the hot sun grew as the tailers prepared traditional clothes for the festival and the women and girls sat at the outdoor hairdresses, plaiting their hair in amazing patterns or adding long staight or curly hair to look beautiful for the special day.( Most of the tribes at least in Mali and Guinea have hair that only grows about ten cm, so the girls and women either plait their hair in braids close to the scalp, or for special events add fake hair to do long plaits. There is a huge market here for hairdressing and one sees hair being braided in every family courtyard, on every street corner and in the capital there is a huge hub of about thirty women on benches either braiding, attaching hair or undoing braids. It's a great sight but unfortunately they don't want photos, so it remains a memory only for us.) So, it ended up being an interesting day, with a very festive air, everyone out and about in their fine clothes, families and groups of friends wandering the town enjoying the day off from work and school. The girls were beautiful with their fancy hair and the young boys were all wearing colourful plastic sunnies ( I guess they wanted to feel special too.)
We spent the day wandering around, watching how the families celebrated and closing our eyes to the brutal killing of all the sheep at exactly ten o'clock. They hang it up and slit it's throat, and within ten minutes, the meat's in the pot, the skin is drying in the sun, to sell back to someone who passes later to use the skin to make traditional drums. The intestines are cleaned out, the head and hoofs are burnt, and there's blood everywhere......Let's just say, we were happy when that pert was all over!
Anyway, due to a few factors we decided to move on from Mali and head to Guinea, where Giovanni could learn a different style of drumming and I could begin to learn African dance, which is most famous in Guinea. We spent an exhausting day in the capital searching for the Guinean embassy to purchase our visa. It seemed very dodgy that the taxi driver we asked to take us there, said the address had changed and when he tried on his mobile the number we had for them, that also was apparently not working. But we weren't to worry, as he knew the new address. Therefore we headed off to this new address and when we arrived it didn't seem at all like an embassy, but rather like a house with the Guinea flag. We entered a loungeroom with the tv blaring of traditional music and were ushered into a small room where a secretary sat at a type writer. On seeing the taxi driver she told us happy that this was her little brother, then she began to explain that the price that was in the Lonely Planet guide book that we were carrying was not the right price. That the price for the visa was now triple the price. When we started to question the whole situation, the woman was so rude and turned around on her swivle chair and with her back to us said Au revoir! Well, what a crazy next four hours we spent searching for what we thought was the true embassy, and in the end , after hours in different taxi's found ourselves back inh that very office, forced to pay the new price if we wanted to continue our journey to Guinea. That was the introductory to how corrupt and difficult Guinea turned out to be! Despite this the next day, we packed our bags, farewelled the lovely family in Mali and headed off to the Collective Taxi stand in the capital. As we looked around at the options for transport to Conakry the capital of Guinea, we saw dozens of taxis loading more and more bags, pots, chickens, motorbikes and everything you can think of higher and higher on the top and tying it down with netted rope. I'm not joking when I say the luggage on the top was the same height of the taxi again! Crazy and so dangerous! But when we asked for two places to Conakry, they led us to a taxi which already seemed too full, with 7 passengers already waiting. But everyone was happy, as we were the last two people to fill the car and with us they could head off. I told them I ddin't think it was physically possible to add all our luggage to the mountain already plied high on the car, but they assured me there would be no problem. So, after buying the ticket and paying a fee for the excessive baggage we always seem to carry, we began to load in to the taxi. We were shocked to realise that the space left for one person in the taxi was actually supposed to be for both of us! All I can say, is lucky Giovanni is small because the other big african mammas next to us we taking up so much space. I literally had the women next to me on my lap, Giovanni was squeezed in, our hip bones were grinding against each other, our knees were pressed against the driver's seat and there wasn't enough shoulder space for all of our the sit back, so we had to take turns leaning forward. I can't explain to you how claustophobic we felt, not to mention the stinking heat, the absolutely crazy taxi driver with the cartoon voice who must have bought his license at the Grand Marche' ( big market )!!! It was a nightmare that we will both never forget and which lasted for 26hours too long!!
To top it off, on the border with Guinea we all piled out to show our ID and as the Police checked the vehicle, we discovered, along with the Policeman, that much to our horror, the driver had brought along his brother, his personal mechanic squashed in the trunk of the taxi!!!! We couldn't believe it!!! But after paying a little fine to make the Policeman happy, we continued on our way, with the mechanical brother out of the trunk and riding happliy on top of the luggage on the top of the taxi, completely oblivious to Giovanni's calls from inside to be careful of his newly purchased Balafon ( a big traditional wooden xylophone), which was making for a very comfty bed!!!!! What a trip!
Guinea seemed tropical and tradtional from the view of the taxi, with round mud houses topped by straw roofs, in small villages, palm trees, wide spaces, greenery and long yellow grassland. It was very different from the desert like red dust of Mali. But all our good feelings changed as we entered the capital, which from the beginning, we saw was a typical dirty city, but much worse. The plastic and open sewers, the dirty half-built buildings, the shacks and make-do shop fronts spoke of a poverty we'd never seen even in India. And it got worse as we continued in, blocked by military barrackades which demanded money from the driver to pass, traffic and smog thicker than fog, crowds of people, dressed in leftover's from the west, not even able to afford their own traditional materials. The taxi started to sputter and ended up stopping, not even starting again with a push from behind, so Giovanni and I grabbed our stuff and took another taxi to the only hotel we had read about. It wasn't amazing and it was very expensive, but it did us well to have a bed to crash our on for the next 17hours!! We were shattered!
On awaking, and searching in the market, we discovered it was going to be even harder for us to eat here, as vegetarians, than in Mali ( if that was possible!) The fried fish, fried couscous, beef sauce, fried sweet potatoes, slimey green sauce...... nothing took our fancy, so we turned yet again to dry bread and egg. One definately doesn't come to West Africa for the food! Anyway, at the market we met another guy who offered music lessons and showed us his abode, where we could stay, which was a damp, dank room, heading onto a courtyard with at least 25 members of his family, crowded in doing their daily chores, a goat that pooed on my shoes, a little baby, who must have been sick with some problem as she looked totally shrunken and anorexic..... it was all too much and we headed out of there, in a bit of culture shock at the level of crowded, communal living in such a squalid place. Not to mention when he took us to the port where we were to learn, which involved crossing a train line and passing a shanty town of plastic shacks, sewers, babies, women doing their normal chores in the filth of the plastic pathway. It's hard to explain, but the port was like a nightmare of plastic, people living in such poverty, stinky of rotting fish and open sewers.
When we left felt so shocked at all this that I wanted to get out and leave Guinea, I didn't think it was possible to live in such a place.we contacted the brother of a famous drummer in Sydney, whose contact we had, and after meeting him, headed off in a taxi to Matam, a suburb of the capital. We decided to give it a try and see if this area was a little more possible to think of living in. And what a beautiful family we found!! They were so sweet, they were a different level of society and for Guinea quite well off with a western style house with a loungeroom and lounges, a tv, three rooms and a paved courtyard. Still, not even normal standard in the West, but much cleaner and not squalid. The family were gorgeous with a very hyperactive and funny 6 yr old son and a responsible, mature 8 yr old daughter. The mum was gorgeous and we were looked after very well. The father organising lessons for Giovanni and dance lessons for me. We would go to the bustling market to buy our daily needs and cook for ourselves on their charcoal fireplace, the only way to cook in Guinea as the electricity comes only for 5 hours every second night!! So, cooking for ourselves we began to eat well, eat vegetables and rice and start to fell energetic again after a month of very bad eating in Mali. Our lessons were great and we both were learning very well, when the President of Guinea died and there was a Military Coup which was a bit scary, as there were shots at night in the air, curfew at 8pm for 4 days and a general feeling of unease. That's how we spent Christmas and as the Military ordered a 40 day mouring period of no music, we decided it was probably a good time to leav. As the only reason we were there was for the fact that in this suburb it was amazing. The heart of the music of Guinea, there were youth halls where every day at differnt times, different dance and drumming groups practised their routines to amazing tradtional rythms. It was the most amazing experience to see these poor youths, who live in such crowded but communal living spaces with nothing, cole alive with the music anf give everything in that moment of estatix dance or drumming. What an amazing culture and what an amazing suburb! Poor but so rich with music!!
anyway, we plan to come back again there again, but for now, we've headed back to Bamako in Mali and we've decided to head back to Europe and then on to Thailand, to do our designs for our clothing business and enjoy a bit of easy travelling, after a fairly difficult but amazing month and a half in West Africa.
We have to admit we're looking forwrd to spending New Year's with Gio's family, telling loads of crazy African tales and tasting again Mamma's delicious cooking!!!!!!
Love and light
Jess and Giovanni
There's so much to tell.......I haven't had the chance to update my blog since we left Mali, but finally here I am. I left off last time saying I'd explain the traditional festival which we saw in Mali. It's a Muslim festival called La fete de Tabaski, which celebrates a story of a Muslim prophet being asked to sacrifice his only child for Allah, then at the last minute Allah allowing him to sacrifice a lamb in the child's place. So for the festival, every family plays out the action of sacrificing a lamb for Allah and then having a party and using every part of the sheep for either eating or for some other purpose. The week before the festival we noticed along the road shepherds from the Tuareg tribe wearing their blue turbans, selling the fattest sheep to the richer families and the smaller ones to others. These sheep were then tied to some post in the family setting for few days with no food or water. (Anyway,in their option they were going to be killed anyway and were seen purely as meat, not living beings- hard to swallow for us as vegetarians!) In the few days in the lead up, the cries of the poor little lambs under the hot sun grew as the tailers prepared traditional clothes for the festival and the women and girls sat at the outdoor hairdresses, plaiting their hair in amazing patterns or adding long staight or curly hair to look beautiful for the special day.( Most of the tribes at least in Mali and Guinea have hair that only grows about ten cm, so the girls and women either plait their hair in braids close to the scalp, or for special events add fake hair to do long plaits. There is a huge market here for hairdressing and one sees hair being braided in every family courtyard, on every street corner and in the capital there is a huge hub of about thirty women on benches either braiding, attaching hair or undoing braids. It's a great sight but unfortunately they don't want photos, so it remains a memory only for us.) So, it ended up being an interesting day, with a very festive air, everyone out and about in their fine clothes, families and groups of friends wandering the town enjoying the day off from work and school. The girls were beautiful with their fancy hair and the young boys were all wearing colourful plastic sunnies ( I guess they wanted to feel special too.)
We spent the day wandering around, watching how the families celebrated and closing our eyes to the brutal killing of all the sheep at exactly ten o'clock. They hang it up and slit it's throat, and within ten minutes, the meat's in the pot, the skin is drying in the sun, to sell back to someone who passes later to use the skin to make traditional drums. The intestines are cleaned out, the head and hoofs are burnt, and there's blood everywhere......Let's just say, we were happy when that pert was all over!
Anyway, due to a few factors we decided to move on from Mali and head to Guinea, where Giovanni could learn a different style of drumming and I could begin to learn African dance, which is most famous in Guinea. We spent an exhausting day in the capital searching for the Guinean embassy to purchase our visa. It seemed very dodgy that the taxi driver we asked to take us there, said the address had changed and when he tried on his mobile the number we had for them, that also was apparently not working. But we weren't to worry, as he knew the new address. Therefore we headed off to this new address and when we arrived it didn't seem at all like an embassy, but rather like a house with the Guinea flag. We entered a loungeroom with the tv blaring of traditional music and were ushered into a small room where a secretary sat at a type writer. On seeing the taxi driver she told us happy that this was her little brother, then she began to explain that the price that was in the Lonely Planet guide book that we were carrying was not the right price. That the price for the visa was now triple the price. When we started to question the whole situation, the woman was so rude and turned around on her swivle chair and with her back to us said Au revoir! Well, what a crazy next four hours we spent searching for what we thought was the true embassy, and in the end , after hours in different taxi's found ourselves back inh that very office, forced to pay the new price if we wanted to continue our journey to Guinea. That was the introductory to how corrupt and difficult Guinea turned out to be! Despite this the next day, we packed our bags, farewelled the lovely family in Mali and headed off to the Collective Taxi stand in the capital. As we looked around at the options for transport to Conakry the capital of Guinea, we saw dozens of taxis loading more and more bags, pots, chickens, motorbikes and everything you can think of higher and higher on the top and tying it down with netted rope. I'm not joking when I say the luggage on the top was the same height of the taxi again! Crazy and so dangerous! But when we asked for two places to Conakry, they led us to a taxi which already seemed too full, with 7 passengers already waiting. But everyone was happy, as we were the last two people to fill the car and with us they could head off. I told them I ddin't think it was physically possible to add all our luggage to the mountain already plied high on the car, but they assured me there would be no problem. So, after buying the ticket and paying a fee for the excessive baggage we always seem to carry, we began to load in to the taxi. We were shocked to realise that the space left for one person in the taxi was actually supposed to be for both of us! All I can say, is lucky Giovanni is small because the other big african mammas next to us we taking up so much space. I literally had the women next to me on my lap, Giovanni was squeezed in, our hip bones were grinding against each other, our knees were pressed against the driver's seat and there wasn't enough shoulder space for all of our the sit back, so we had to take turns leaning forward. I can't explain to you how claustophobic we felt, not to mention the stinking heat, the absolutely crazy taxi driver with the cartoon voice who must have bought his license at the Grand Marche' ( big market )!!! It was a nightmare that we will both never forget and which lasted for 26hours too long!!
To top it off, on the border with Guinea we all piled out to show our ID and as the Police checked the vehicle, we discovered, along with the Policeman, that much to our horror, the driver had brought along his brother, his personal mechanic squashed in the trunk of the taxi!!!! We couldn't believe it!!! But after paying a little fine to make the Policeman happy, we continued on our way, with the mechanical brother out of the trunk and riding happliy on top of the luggage on the top of the taxi, completely oblivious to Giovanni's calls from inside to be careful of his newly purchased Balafon ( a big traditional wooden xylophone), which was making for a very comfty bed!!!!! What a trip!
Guinea seemed tropical and tradtional from the view of the taxi, with round mud houses topped by straw roofs, in small villages, palm trees, wide spaces, greenery and long yellow grassland. It was very different from the desert like red dust of Mali. But all our good feelings changed as we entered the capital, which from the beginning, we saw was a typical dirty city, but much worse. The plastic and open sewers, the dirty half-built buildings, the shacks and make-do shop fronts spoke of a poverty we'd never seen even in India. And it got worse as we continued in, blocked by military barrackades which demanded money from the driver to pass, traffic and smog thicker than fog, crowds of people, dressed in leftover's from the west, not even able to afford their own traditional materials. The taxi started to sputter and ended up stopping, not even starting again with a push from behind, so Giovanni and I grabbed our stuff and took another taxi to the only hotel we had read about. It wasn't amazing and it was very expensive, but it did us well to have a bed to crash our on for the next 17hours!! We were shattered!
On awaking, and searching in the market, we discovered it was going to be even harder for us to eat here, as vegetarians, than in Mali ( if that was possible!) The fried fish, fried couscous, beef sauce, fried sweet potatoes, slimey green sauce...... nothing took our fancy, so we turned yet again to dry bread and egg. One definately doesn't come to West Africa for the food! Anyway, at the market we met another guy who offered music lessons and showed us his abode, where we could stay, which was a damp, dank room, heading onto a courtyard with at least 25 members of his family, crowded in doing their daily chores, a goat that pooed on my shoes, a little baby, who must have been sick with some problem as she looked totally shrunken and anorexic..... it was all too much and we headed out of there, in a bit of culture shock at the level of crowded, communal living in such a squalid place. Not to mention when he took us to the port where we were to learn, which involved crossing a train line and passing a shanty town of plastic shacks, sewers, babies, women doing their normal chores in the filth of the plastic pathway. It's hard to explain, but the port was like a nightmare of plastic, people living in such poverty, stinky of rotting fish and open sewers.
When we left felt so shocked at all this that I wanted to get out and leave Guinea, I didn't think it was possible to live in such a place.we contacted the brother of a famous drummer in Sydney, whose contact we had, and after meeting him, headed off in a taxi to Matam, a suburb of the capital. We decided to give it a try and see if this area was a little more possible to think of living in. And what a beautiful family we found!! They were so sweet, they were a different level of society and for Guinea quite well off with a western style house with a loungeroom and lounges, a tv, three rooms and a paved courtyard. Still, not even normal standard in the West, but much cleaner and not squalid. The family were gorgeous with a very hyperactive and funny 6 yr old son and a responsible, mature 8 yr old daughter. The mum was gorgeous and we were looked after very well. The father organising lessons for Giovanni and dance lessons for me. We would go to the bustling market to buy our daily needs and cook for ourselves on their charcoal fireplace, the only way to cook in Guinea as the electricity comes only for 5 hours every second night!! So, cooking for ourselves we began to eat well, eat vegetables and rice and start to fell energetic again after a month of very bad eating in Mali. Our lessons were great and we both were learning very well, when the President of Guinea died and there was a Military Coup which was a bit scary, as there were shots at night in the air, curfew at 8pm for 4 days and a general feeling of unease. That's how we spent Christmas and as the Military ordered a 40 day mouring period of no music, we decided it was probably a good time to leav. As the only reason we were there was for the fact that in this suburb it was amazing. The heart of the music of Guinea, there were youth halls where every day at differnt times, different dance and drumming groups practised their routines to amazing tradtional rythms. It was the most amazing experience to see these poor youths, who live in such crowded but communal living spaces with nothing, cole alive with the music anf give everything in that moment of estatix dance or drumming. What an amazing culture and what an amazing suburb! Poor but so rich with music!!
anyway, we plan to come back again there again, but for now, we've headed back to Bamako in Mali and we've decided to head back to Europe and then on to Thailand, to do our designs for our clothing business and enjoy a bit of easy travelling, after a fairly difficult but amazing month and a half in West Africa.
We have to admit we're looking forwrd to spending New Year's with Gio's family, telling loads of crazy African tales and tasting again Mamma's delicious cooking!!!!!!
Love and light
Jess and Giovanni
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