Talk Back Beautiful Woman

As the bus hurdles south, the piles of mangos by the side of the road grow bigger and bigger. Slowly but surely, the dirt turns a little redder, the landscape fills in with greenery and trees. We are on vacation, Joe and Ashley, Jennifer and I. Leaving Bamako, we take a car into Guinea on our way to Sierra Leone. The windows are rolled down, and I lean out of mine to eat a mango. The wind pushes against me, hard, and there is mango juice flying everywhere, covering my arms and face.

We exchange money at the border, and I come away with a wad of bills so large and fat, I'm sure I'm a millionaire. I stuff the money wherever I can fit it, in my wallet, every pocket of my backpack. We feel so uncomfortable with a half million Guinean francs each, until we realize that everyone is standing around with thick stacks of cash, inflation has risen so high in Guinea that all these bills are worth nothing. It is easy to be deceived, to think that 10,000 francs is a lot of money, when really, it's barely two dollars. Later, we'll treat ourselves to a nice dinner out in Conakry. We'll leave the house with about 200,000 francs. We'll enjoy pizza and beers until late in the evening. And it will be only as we open our wallets after we've asked for the check that we'll realize 200,000 francs doesn't get you very far, that we don't have enough money to pay the bill.

Mohammed is our driver from Conakry to Freetown. He's savvy and knows how to cross the border, how to treat the guards and policemen. He knows which soldiers must be bribed, which men have donned a uniform but are not actually soldiers (like the man who stops our car in a Canadian policeman's uniform). He signals to us with a shake of the head or a finger to his lips when then the police approach our car at checkpoints. When we approach checkpoints, Mohammed's hand is already out the window, bills pressed into his hand. He drops them on the ground and speeds off, or hands them to a soldier with whom he does not make eye contact.

The pavement ends at the border to Sierra Leone, but the soldiers and checkpoints don't. One soldier pulls us over to ask Joe for his book. At customs, the men ask Jennifer and I for our hand in marriage. They are not joking, they tell us their qualifications: one has dual citizenship in Guinea and Sierra Leone; another is willing to move to Mali. I tell them I'll mull over their offers for a week and let them know on our way back to Mali.

Crossing into Sierra Leone

We reach Freetown at sunset. It is loud and bright, the streets are narrow, the buildings colonial and skinny and tall. Freetown is perched at the top of a hill, overlooking the ocean. Especially after we've seen the beech, it's easy to forget why Sierra Leone hasn't become a tourist hotspot. But the signs are there. In the morning, we walk to a grocery store, and I see a man with both his hands cut off ("No hand, no vote); at the beach, hotels stand in ruins: It was the war that did it.

We set up camp in a fishing village, Tokeh Beach. Mountains rise up behind us and the ocean stretches out forever in front. Fishing boats with names like Talk Back Beautiful Woman and Time is Money dot the water, and men repair their nets along the shore. Kids run naked and shouting into the water with us. I float on my back and wonder how I'll be able to return to the stark landscape of Mali, to the dry, forbidding heat.

After days spent on the beach, we'd wander into town for snacks and the catch of the day.
Mountains meet the ocean

One day we take a trip to Banana Island. Our captain is Scott. He worked at a French-owned hotel before the war, and now makes his living mostly from fishing. There are few tourists these days. Downing a sachet of gin, he maneuvers our pirogue, pointing out the small villages that line the peninsula. At Banana Island, we are invited up to the retreat of two ex-Soviets, Yuri and Caesar. They are building a campement on the island, a break, as far as we can tell, from their efforts in the diamond mining business. Caesar arrived in Sierra Leone during the war, and Yuri is younger, the owner of a diamond polishing factory, with a fierce mustache and cocky soldiers. They have been drinking all day and keep our drinks full with heavy hands. Yuri holds forth on the diamond business and the lies of the film Blood Diamond. He tells us diamond smuggling is rampant and begins in on off-color remarks about the native population and the hypocrisy of Americans. As Caesar's hand travels from my back to my shoulders to my thigh, it is time to go.

Ashley, Joe, me and Jennifer on Banana Island

Leaving the pristine white sand and cool of the Atlantic is hard to to, but we hop into a car again, back to Guinea, this time to the Fouta Djalon, where a man named Hassan Ba runs a small campement for hikers, leading day hikes. Driving in, we begin to wonder if the long journey and hours of bargaining to get to the tiny village of Douky have been worth it. It's beautiful pasture and farmland, but there doesn't seem to be anything too special to see. It is when we begin our hike, descending into a crater and then up and around huge cliffs spotted with cascading waterfalls and monkeys that we realize the beauty of this place, so carefully hidden from the untrained eye.
Shoots and Ladders



Hassan speaks in acronyms and walks fast: We are BP's (Back Packers), he says, not BT's (Back Trackers). Hassan sees shapes in every cliff and rock formation. There is George Washington, there is an elephant, there is a woman brushing her hair, there is an advertisement for Viagra. The next morning, Hassan is busy getting ready for the next hike, running around in a peach colored boubou. "You're a vision in peach, Hassan," she tells him. "Yes! I am an early pigeon!" he cries back.
Hassan Ba, ready to BP

One of the hikes we did was called Indiana Jones

Hassan waves us goodbye and it is time to start for home. The greenery flashes by us, and slowly, slowly, the ground dries out, the water dries up, we are returning to the Sahel. Mud huts replace concrete houses with glass windows, and we can no longer by fresh pineapple and the biggest avocados I've ever seen on the roadside. But crossing the border back into Mali, I'm comforted to be speaking Bambara again. And this time, when the soldiers ask to marry us, they just laugh when Jennifer tells them they'll have to give Joe a whole lot of goats and cows in exchange for her. We're on our way home.


Sunset over the Fouta