Guinean Truck Stop Food (Please God don't let it kill me!)

As I set off in the white LandRover with the IRC Community Renewal team, I asked the English speaking guard to ask the driver to be sure there was somewhere that we grab some lunch. Got the nod, and we set off to Macenta.

Half way there, we pulled over to the side of the road and James, the Guinean driver, said "Food." I saw a stand with women selling bananas and bread, and thought that I we were grabbing something to eat in the car. Bananas and bread are safe.

But, the Community Renewal team is a hearty eatin' bunch and opted for a sit-down meal at what would likely be the Guinean equivalent of a truck stop. I've eaten many a "steak on garlic" (chicken fried steak on garlic toast/heart attack on a plate) in the truck stop in Bellevue, Texas ("The Fryin' Pan"). And they have some mighty fine coconut pie there too.

But I could tell that this was not going to be a "Fryin' Pan" experience.

The boys sitting at the table behind where James decided to sit turned to stare and then started laughing... I hoped it wasn't a "Let's see if the foreigner dies eating this food" laugh.

James said something in the local dialect to the woman huddled over the big steaming pot outside near the road, and she brought out one big plate of rice with sauce over it and four spoons. Time to dig in. All four of us in the one plate.


These are the times when, even though I'm not Catholic, I feel like I should say a few Hail Marys over my food. "Hail Mary, full of grace... .... please.... please.... please.... don't let this food kill me." Then, I think back to Peru, of the meals in the indigenous communities on plank tables with dogs, cats, chickens, guinea pigs, and children running on the dirt floor under my feet... and I take comfort knowing that maybe growin' up in the country and drinking water from a well in the pasture have given me a stronger stomach than most foreigners who have been drinking treated/purified water their whole lives.

I'm not dead yet. Didn't even get sick during the next 8 hours of bouncing up and down over the amazingly bad roads visiting one government official to the next official collecting the 5 necessary signatures to be able to finally, at sunset, visit the Guinean community near the Kuankan refugee camp, and announce, "We are going to train you to create a committee to decide what your priorities are for community development."


It's hard to feel like you made any progress in the day with just collecting signatures, but it helps me realize the difficulty of operating in this environment. There is no email or phone or fax or ?? to just ask the regional governor, prefectural governor, sub-prefectural governor and sub-sub prefectural governor, "Hey, we're going to ___ village to talk to them about community development and to see if they want to start a project there. Do we have your approval?"

Instead, you spend entire days popping in and out of offices with huge propaganda photos of President Conté saying "Ce Va?" over and over and over again. Other times, as you go further down the ranks to the community level, the meetings are sitting under the tree with the kids/grandkids nearby.

And the added difficulty of having to meet personally with all the bigwigs is the roads: A truck broke down in the middle of the dirt road to the community, and the passengers were outside with a huge stick trying to pry it out of the hole. James and the Community Renewal team assisted atleast enough to get our LandRover by so we could go on about our work. (that's not fog in the trees... it's smoke off of the wheels of the LandRover trying to get through the mud)