My stepdad
pretty much dropped everything in the US to come here and start working on this
year’s cashew campaign. At 60 years old, I’d say it’s a pretty courageous thing
to do because there is no guarantee how things will turn out. He told me he often can’t sleep at night
because he is up thinking about how we are going to pull this cashew project
off. Mamudo offered a solution to ease his worries.
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| Village boys carving out gourds |
Mamudo is a
guy who comes by to help Avo Alice with housework.
At 24 he hasn’t been able to finish high
school because it is too expensive (public schools are not free here) and
finding work with out a college degree, let alone high school diploma is slim. He
is at the house all the time so my stepdad and I have gotten to know him pretty
well. He is Fula and his mother is from a Tabanka (Village) called
Seao Folbe which is 54kilometers outside of
Gabu. He told my step dad about a man named
Yaya who is a Muslim spiritual leader or Imam in one of the villages near his
mother’s village. This man, Yaya, gives spiritual guidance, does future
readings,
and provides “assistance” with
resolving problems or obstacles in peoples lives. He has received visitors from
as far as Cape Verde, Sweden, America, and Senegal.
My step dad
is not Muslim, but he wanted to see what Yaya had to offer. So off we went to
Gabu, this time via public transportation.
On a bus in the US, an aisle is an aisle so
people can move around. Here, aisles mean more space for more passengers. The
autocaro, or our greyhound bus equivalent, was packed! People were stilling in
the aisles, there were at least 7 people standing up next to the driver and we
all still had to get on and off the bus to show our ID’s at the rest stops. As
you might image, it was a very long process.
After 4
hours we arrived in Gabu to wait another 4 hours for another vehicle that would
take us to the tabanka. This vehicle was
bigger then a van but smaller then a small bus. It was probably one of the
scariest rides of my life! The van was filled with 40 people and the top was
loaded with personal belongings, bikes, and there was even a goat up there at
one point.
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| The Van we rode to get to the Village Seao Folbe |
I say the ride was scary because the roads
were HORRIBLE and given the weight of the van any excessive lean to the left or
right felt like we were going to tip over.
On theses roads transportation casualties are not out of the ordinary. A
one point Mamadu turned up the music on his cell phone to drown out the voices
of women saying “Aos! Aos!”. “Aos” means today in Creole, and in this context
it meant “today is the day it’s tipping over!” It got to the point where I
began to think about how I would maneuver to avoid being crushed buy 3 rows of
people in the event that it did.
After
three and a half hours of rocky riding at 10 mph it’s hard not to let your mind
to get to that point.
The driver stopped along the road to left
people off at different tabankas and eventually we arrived at our destination; sweaty,
tired but in one piece. The tabanka we arrived in was made up of maybe 20
families, the neighboring tabankas being a 5/10 minute walk away. We were
stayed at Mamudo’s Aunt’s house. Her husband had passed several years before
but she lived with lots of Mamadu’s other family members.
Here is a rough summary of my week there:
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| Mamudu and Imam Yaya |
Day 1: We walked one and a half hours to Yaya’s tabanka. He
only speaks Fula, so Mamudu translated Fula to Creole for Ramos. Much to my
disappointment I had to wait outside with Buba, Mamudu’s cousin and our guide,
while they went into his room. I was
told that Yaya would ask for my step-dads name and the name of his mother. He
was going to pray that night and would have news for us in the morning. When I got back to Mamadu’s Aunts house I
met the infamous Concoran. The Conoran deserves its own blog post but, to be
brief, it is a spirit or a human in a trans? I’m not exactly sure what it is,
but it is something not human that comes to the villages when young boys get
circumcised.
I had not
been in any way prepped for this. So when everyone was running away from this
thing looking like a pile of carrot shreddings come to life, I, out of ignorance
or amazement, but definitely out of confusion stood around and watched.
Mamudo’s aunt had to come and grab me to tell me to get out of the way.
Apparently the Concoran is a women beater, which is why all the women were
running. For some reason in my mind I
thought I was untouchable. Spirits can tell the difference between locals and
foreigners too right?
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| The Concuran and women drumming |
The Concorans
chased people for a while and then wanted everyone to dance. So young men and
women began to drum and chant while the Concorons danced. Did I mention there
were two of them? I learned that what I saw was just people dressed in costume
(which is what I figured but everyone one around me made it seem so real that I
second guessed myself), but a real Concoran does exist and when it comes you
want to be nowhere in sight. Fortunately it cannot enter your house, but it can
fly and it is known to kill. It is controlled can called to the village by the
village chief.
The entire situation
reminded me of M. Night Shamalons, The Village. And now that I think about it,
he must have stolen the story of the Concoran and made it into a movie.
Day 2: We woke up
early and made the same hour and a half walk to Yaya’s tabanka. This walk was a
lot more quiet. We were all wondering what the ‘divine revelations’ would be.
He gave Ramos some really good news about how
everything is going to turn out, so that was a great relief. But he also told
Ramos he needs to be careful. Apparently Ramos has enemy’s who don’t want him
to be successful, some of them being close friends and family members, and that
he needs to learn to keep them at a distance.
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| Ramos and Mamudu give bread to school children |
The next
day 2 days at the village were homework days. Ramos was given the assignment of
giving bread and sardines to school children and 7 bananas to a rich man. He
also gave Ramos a bottle of water that was infused with magical things that no
one but him can know. He is supposed to wash himself with this water to give
him influence when speaking to people he needs something from. One example is
getting help from folks with getting his container and truck out of the
port.
He was given some other
assignments, but he payed Yaya to do them for him. He said if he had too much
“homework” he knew he wasn’t going to do it, so it was better that Yaya did it
instead to be sure it gets done. Does magical/mysical stuff work like that
where you can pay someone to do it for you? I guess we will find out.
A quick
note on the location: As much as it felt
like the middle of nowhere, the international presence in this region was much greater
then I would have thought. The Chinese came and put in a water pump, the
Spanish had several red cross building, the Japanese had invested in building several
schools and I herd that folks from Brazil come every year to help with the
bolanhas, or community gardens. There was also a huge absence of men. Women and
children could be found everywhere, but grown men were hit by the plague of
emigration. They left make money and find better lives for their family. So in
the villages it was women running the show.
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| Mamudu's Aunt and neighbors pounding rice |
Getting
home was an adventure in-and-of itself. We took the same van back into Gabu,
which, surprisingly was the smooth part.
As I’ve mentioned, transportation here isn’t like the US. There are no
set schedules and departure times. Only when vehicles are filled to the max do
they even think about hitting the road.
It was noon,
so we paid for the bus that said it was leaving at 2 o’clock. 3:30 rolled around
and we still hadn’t left. We were told the bus wasn’t going to leave because
there weren’t enough passengers. So instead we paid for a car to drive us,
which is 3 times as expensive, but it’s a much faster trip and guaranteed to
leave Gabu that day. As we waited for more people to fill up the car we saw a
sudden wave of people filling up the bus we just got off. The look on my
stepdads face was priceless. He had just gotten his money back from the bus to
pay for the car only to watch more people get on the bus. It was a game of claiming a seat on the
vehicle that leaves first. Fortunately after
about 30 minutes enough people filled the car so we could hit the road. As we
were leaving we watched more people filling the bus. The driver of our told us
it was better we took the car because the bus wouldn’t arrive in Bissau before midnight.
It was just past 4 pm at this point.
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| Women working on the community garden |
So we made
the drive home. It was hot, but smooth enough until, in the midst of all the
commotion at one of the ID checking points, the car gets a flat tire. While I
waited for the tire to be changed some folks on the side of the road were
hassling me about money. It was one of those “we are so close and all I wanna
do is go home” moments. Traveling through Guinea-Bissau is tiring!
It’s no wonder so many people have never left
the main city.
The driver was nice
enough to take us directly home, but only after he dropped off the 7 other
passengers first.
After a
week of bucket showers outside in the open and sleeping next to people I didn’t
know, I am more then happy to be back in Bissau taking bucket showers indoors
and sleeping next to people I do know (I share a bed with Avo Alice).
I spent the
first 2 days of carnival at the barakas The environment here is actually pretty
child friendly (or there were just a lot of children there). They play music and
there is lots of chatter and laughter. Occasionally a really popular song would
come on and people would get up and dance, but for the most part dancing isn’t a part of this
scene. In Barrio Ajuda there is a stage
for live music, but I didn’t get the chance to check it out. The roads close at
3pm everyday of carnival, so if your going anywhere you are walking and Barrio
Ajuda is at least a 30minute walk one way. 
The last 2
days of carnival were the days Bissau put its colorful culture on expose. Monday
was battle of the barrios or neighborhoods. Every neighborhood participated and
had 4-5 different dance groups to represent it. Each dance group had their own
dance, which was usually the dance of one of the ethnicities. Guinea Bissau has
13+ ethnicities, each with their own culture and language and dance. 
I got
really lucky and was able to snap some pictures without getting a permit. If
the police catch someone who looks like a foreigner taking pictures with out a
permit they will take your camera. They are really strict about this because of
the history of foreigners taking pictures and selling them abroad for thousands
of dollars without the people in the pictures receiving anything. To avoid that
they make you go through a permit process that ensures you wont be selling any
of the pictures they are taking.
