Guinea's elections by motorbike part 2

Fri, 29 Oct 2010 16:19:20 +0000

Ks 1900-1975
The road towards Ganta got patchier but was still pretty impressive. Once I arrived in town I swung a left, following a signpost that read ‘Guinea Road’ and after a couple of miles of dirt track I discovered the border post. There was a large, USAID-built concrete terminal on the Liberian side and a bamboo hut full of soldiers on the other. In the no man’s land between them, a river festered beneath a mouldy iron bridge.
After half an hour of wretched interaction with the authorities, I was allowed to leave the country and I rode my bike over the clattering iron slats towards the Guinean army. Obligingly they were wearing the berets and chrome sunglasses that I was used to seeing on the news and assorted small arms were lying around. The atmosphere was heavy and grim. Who the fuck was I? The soldiers wondered aloud as they inspected my papers and looked with bewilderment at the Bajaj. One of them asked me for some money. ‘Sorry chief,’ I replied in French, trying to exude the air of a recent deserter from the foreign legion. Mysteriously though, there were no hard feelings and he slapped me on the back and wished me a safe journey.
Kms 1975-2050
In the following two or three kms there were four more checkpoints. At each I had to park the bike and go into a colonial-era administrative hut so the police or army could record my details in broad-leafed ledgers. But with each road block the officials grew more welcoming and I slowly began to regain my internal composure. A great deal of planning had gone into the trip and I had no idea what the hell I’d do if they didn’t let me cross the border.
The fragrant countryside soon opened up before me and I passed gorgeous women bathing their children in streams and kind-faced men plodding along with hunting shotguns strapped across their shoulders. Although the war had washed back and forth across the border at times, it somehow seemed tragically obvious that the people I was meeting here hadn’t endured the 14 years of hyper-violence that still echoed behind me in Liberia.
Sometimes you notice these differences more when you leave a disturbed place than when you enter for the first time.
I rode through cool palm and rubber plantations into hills covered with tall, singing rainforest. It was the most enchanted stretch of road the Bajaj had ever known and it climbed the steep slopes dutifully in first gear. It was too heavily-laden to brake quickly on the way back down though and a couple of times the rear tyre swung out and I almost came off. Coming around one bend, I even saw a giant black scorpion lying dead in the middle of the road and had to pull over and take a look.
After a few hours’ drive through the gargantuan trees, the road descended into the deforested area surrounding Nzerekore, the NGO capital of southern Guinea. I asked for directions to l’Hotel Le Mont Nimba, which was owned by the late president Lansana Conté and was empty and cavernous. I washed and sat in the silent restaurant later on, as Special Forces soldiers replete with Kalashnikovs, pistols, knives and radios stood around glued to the state news channel. They were there guarding a high-ranking officer whose cammo humvee was parked out front. After last week’s ethnic/political violence in Nzerekore, the town is awash in soldiers. The electoral run-off is now reslated for November 7th.

Guinea's elections by motorbike

Thu, 28 Oct 2010 15:54:37 +0000

28/11/2010
KMS 1702- 1900.
A grey morning checking my gear and watching rain traverse Monrovia. I then mounted the heavily laden Bajaj motorcyle and wobbled off out of town, taking the noisy road through Red Light market that slowly turns north towards the interior. I remember thinking about the old saying that the hardest step in any journey is the first. Oh what dreadful bullshit that would turn out to be. Months would pass before I’d be back in Liberia, and many friends would be leaving before then. This last journey out of town, alone and fearful on an over-laden moped, marked the end of an era.
It continued to rain on and off during the afternoon as I headed for Gbarnga, licking the bugs from my teeth. The usual heavy Liberian cloud-furniture passed in waves over head and I rode in and out of banks of rain, sometimes feeling I was accelerating ahead of them. I stopped at roadside shops when the downpours made me worry about my cameras and ate bread and mayonnaise while bleary-eyed kids came in and bought little bottles of whisky.
During the last of the 200 kms to Gbarnga my buttocks were numbed to point that I couldn’t feel anything below my stomach, but I consoled myself that there was something of the grand and horrifyingly iniquitous pre-1970s Liberia to be seen up there. The road itself had been so well built as to still be in almost perfect condition, though it hadn’t been maintained for decades. I also passed the ‘Coocoo’s Nest’, a creepy guesthouse that was a former dacha of President Tubman.
All reports suggested that security along the roads in Guinea was deteriorating wildly. Armed thieves were putting in a lot of work during the election instability, using spotters to phone the details of juicy targets ahead to other colleagues up the road. I’m fairly exposed given that I’m alone with cameras, a wad of cash (in my boots) and a small but noble motorbike. I’ve packed a can of ‘Heatwave’ mace that a friend gave me, but given the West African zeal for highly spiced food, I fear assailants may not consider this a deterrent.
I arrived in Gbarnga at about 6 pm and was promptly arrested by the local police. Flagged down at the side of the road, I was told I must come to the station to answer to the charge of ‘failing to stop and pay respects to the Liberian flag as it was being lowered’. As many of us know, the first rule of Liberia is never ever allow yourself to be taken to a police station.
Barely deadpan, I replied I was unaware this was an offence. I was told that acquiring a knowledge of the laws of a land through which one passes is the obligation of any honest traveller. I showed the arresting officer my UN press pass, (which had previously been known to deflate the pouting of Liberia’s finest) but he was unperturbed - and then refused to give it back. We proceeded to wrestle awkwardly over it at the roadside, like two siblings struggling noiselessly so as not to alert their parents.
When I finally got it back off him I put the bike in gear and drove back to immigration, somehow thinking they’d decide to make enemies with the local police in order to stick up for this tiresome white man, whose origins and motives were beyond the comprehension of sensible folk. My pursuer gave chase on the back of a mototaxi and when we arrived he chirped loudly that I was resisting arrest. ‘But arrest for what?’ I again enquired. The immigration guards, with whom I’d shared some strained joviality only minutes earlier, washed their hands of me with a casual shrug.
It was getting dark, and, growing bolder, the policeman lunged to snatch my bike keys from the ignition. Again, a silent bout of grappling ensued and when at length I clawed them for his sinewy fingers, he produced a pair of handcuffs. I knew I had to run for it. Sensing my impending flight through an alcoholic haze, he stooped awkwardly and tried to lock the cuffs onto my front wheel. Farcically I began walking the bike backwards, turning the spokes so he couldn’t block my escape.
Now a few yards away, I managed to choke the engine onto life and fled into the darkness to a UN base outside town. After some honking they lifted the gate and I scrambled to park the bike out of sight of the road. I sat in the guard tower until a young Pakistani officer fetched me indoors and a robed youth with pale eyes and dark red hair offered me a glass of juice on a tray.
Shortly the Major turned up and with the wide eyes of a Dickensian street urchin, I outlined my Kafkaesque experience with the police. (That’s right dear readers, it was Dickensian and Kafkaesque; to say nothing of Conradian)
The cops were after me, I continued. Who could say why. I couldn’t go back into town - could I stay the night?
They bent the rules for me and soon I found myself sitting at the dining table in the officer’s mess, eating curry and naan bread and chatting with a young captain about Karen Armstrong’s A History of God.
Later when I was in bed, with the sounds of evening prayer wafting through the plastic walls, I felt an urge to prostrate myself on the prayer matt in my room and thank God for delivering me from Liberia for a while. I’d been working there alone as a cameraman for a year and any long-term visitor will tell you that sometimes these dark thoughts triumph. That said, who can imagine a more singular, layered and unfathomable country – one that often doesn’t feel like Africa at all.
The next morning I awoke full of nerves, knowing I’d have to drive past the police station again to continue on my way. I left at about 9 and thrashed the bike through town; but this time they let me be and I began the final 75 kilometre stretch to the border.

Patrick Wells in West Africa

Guinea's elections by motorbike part 2

Guinea's elections by motorbike