|
Articles
- - - - - - - - - -
- -
Armchair Travel
- - - - - - - - - - - -
From the Editors
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Directory
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Submissions
- - - - - - - - - - - -
About
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Contact
- - - - - - - - - - - -
|
Life Between Two Nations
by Matt Brown
It looked like just another collection of small, round, mud-walled
huts. A thick, bare baobab tree kept a solitary watch as a woman
with a baby tied to her back rhythmically pounded cassava leaves
behind a bamboo fence. A few dusty, half naked kids rolled around
in the dry grass while an old man, fingering a string of prayer
beads, lounged beneath a mango tree. To me riding through on my
bike, this was just another West African village, but these people
called it home.
Having just passed the Guinean border post, I had yet to reach the
Senegalese side. I was riding through the 13 km stretch of No
Man’s Land. And that got me wondering, “What do these people call
home?”
 I
left the mountainous Guinean town of Mali-ville early in the
morning, hoping to ride my bike to Kedougou, Senegal by that
evening. The 120 km route steeply descended the Fouta Djallon
mountains and the first two hours were an exhilarating downhill
coast requiring not one bit of pedaling. I passed through thick
bamboo forests inhabited by curious baboons who barked out at this
strange two-wheeled intruder.
Though people had told me the road was passable by car, I couldn’t
imagine any vehicle but a tank making it up the boulder strewn
track. It was so steep and treacherous that I had to constantly
keep the brakes on, and soon my forearms began to bulge like
Popeye on steroids.
Around noon, I hit the Guinean border post and found little more
than a few mud huts and a woman selling mangoes. I steeled myself
for the hassle that is Third World officialdom. Knowing that a
little smooth talking helps speed up African bureaucracy and
minimizes bribe requests, I entered the Army hut and greeted the
border guards in the few words I had learned of the local
language, Pular. It was immediately apparent who the chief soldier
was, the oldest, fattest, and dressed in the nicest fatigues. He
was lounging on a bamboo cot, and I walked over and sat next to
him to shoot the breeze.
 “How’s
your work?” I asked in Pular. “And the family, are they all
healthy? What village is this? Lougee? Is there any evil here in
Lougee?”
A little local language goes a long way, especially with
gun-toting officials who could have made my life a lot more
difficult. The chief soldier quickly warmed up to me and I could
tell the border formalities would be no problem. I surveyed the
hut and counted four younger soldiers in ratty looking fatigues
squatting on low wooden stools around a fuzzy radio crackling out
a Salif Keita tune. One of the soldiers crouched over a tiny pink
teapot above a small charcoal fire. At length, he daintily poured
the brown, steaming brew using just his thumb and fore finger into
petite glasses and passed them around reminding me of my little
sister playing tea party when she was five.
I sat and sipped a round of strong, sweet tea with the soldiers,
then the chief stamped my passport and I was on my way into No
Man’s Land.
I wasn’t expecting to see anyone until I got to the Senegal side,
so when I arrived at this small village between two nations, I
couldn’t help but wonder, “What country are these people from?”
When there are national elections, which leader are these people
coerced into voting for, Senegal’s Abdoulaye Wade or Guinea’s
Lansana Conte? If someone in the village started a Britney Spears
internet site, would the web site end in .gn or .sn? Supposing an
enterprising villager decided to open a Mercedes Benz dealership
in the village, would I be paying for that new SL series in
Guinean Francs or Senegalese CFA? What if one of the village
inhabitants took up the luge and was good enough to qualify for
the Winter Olympics? Behind which flag would he march into the
Olympic Stadium in 2006?
 These
are the kind of hard-hitting questions I couldn’t let go
unanswered, so I stopped my bike to chat with the woman pounding
leaves. I asked in French (my Pular only goes so far), “Is this
Guinea?”
“Yes,” she answered.
Surprised that she even understood French, I posed a follow-up
question. “Is this Senegal,” I asked.
“Yes,” came the reply.
“That’s more like it,” I thought. Just for final confirmation, I
asked, “Is this France?”
“Yes,” she said.
Wow! I had biked all the way to France! I would have never guessed
that the French still live in straw-roofed huts.
I rode on a little further past the village and sat down on a
nationless rock to eat a tuna sandwich and ponder my unanswered
questions. Maybe these villagers can’t be bothered by archaic,
nonsensical national borders drawn up by greedy European leaders
at the Conference of Berlin over 100 years ago. Perhaps they
simply consider themselves African and are content to farm their
corn and raise their cattle without needing to cling to a
synthetic national identity. Or, maybe they have a Guinean Red,
Yellow, and Green waiting in one of their huts to wave proudly at
the luge gold medal ceremony.
© Matt Brown, 2004
|
|
|
|
Read More
Articles From Around the World
|
|
|
|
