A very real African Adventure

My name is Jerremy. I first went to Guinea in 1992. At that time it was a country emerging from socialism and it was very apparent that the country had been held back in its development. I found it a country that was innocent, in that there was very little evidence of outside influence. The population had an emerging middle class and the energy of the youth was all around.

At that time I travelled to the forest region for the first time. It was amazing to see the remnants of colonial exploitation in the forestry industry and to see at first hand how the people were trying to take the industry into their own hands and make a living out of the natural resources.

I have visited Guinea many times now and have lived there continually for a period of 5 years when I got to know the country very well indeed.

I met Anne Marie in 1998 and were married in Conakry in 2000.

Conakry is now a modern and vibrant capital city, business opportunities abound and the government has made sure that corruption is a thing of the past.

Guinea is now a stable country where investment is safe and the law is there to protect potential investors and the population against exploitation.

The business community in Guinea is no different now from any other place of business. The port is free and import and export opportunities offer an exciting challenge to outside investment, weather in the mining sector or in agriculture, fishing, forestry or tourism.

The costal region is lush and tropical with beautiful beaches and stunning off shore islands. The sea is very calm as the continental shelf extends far out into the Gulf of Guinea. The sea food is extraordinarily rich and varied and the fishing can be exciting if you hook a barracuda.

The cuisine in general is very varied and the restaurants in Conakry are a delight. You can chose from wonderful street food freshly prepared in front of you to local eating houses with a choice of dishes from Senegal, Sierra Leone and Guinea. Then you can chose from Lebanese, Thai, Chinese French Korean, Moroccan etc the list goes on.

Just outside of Conakry in Coyah, you can find a restaurant in the mangroves where they specialize in chicken and chips. When you arrive you find a table under one of the many thatched eating sites and whilst you wait for the chicken to be caught and prepared you can watch the mud fish that come out of the water and walk around using their flippers like legs or take a ride on one of the local fisherman’s dug out canoes.

On one trip to Guinea I decided to visit Lola a small village beyond N’zerekore, which is about as far as you can go in Guinea by road without crossing a border. Lola is the village where, my wife Anne Marie’s father was born so to me it feels like home.

Lola is in the mountainous forest region on the border with Liberia, Sierra Leone and Ivory coast. And when my mother in law said she was planning a trip there, I jumped at the chance to join her.

Because it is mountainous it is much cooler than the coastal region where the capital Conakry is situated and much less humid. The roads are very poorly maintained, only the main roads are tarmacked and there is no electricity in the villages where most of the houses are of traditional design, being made of mud brick and thatch.

The pace of life is slow and although the people don’t have T.V. cars or any of the mod cons that we take for granted, the people are kind and generous and rich in tradition and spirit.

Before leaving Conakry Anne Marie said “Whilst you are there go and visit the Fish oracle and tell them about your problems with your client and ask them for their help”. “Yeh Yeh” I said , promptly forgetting all about it.

The client that she was referring to had invited me to refurbish his house in France. However, towards the end of the contract it became obvious that my client was struggling for money, his business having been hit hard by 9. 11. He was an art restorer and relied heavily on his clients flying art to him from other parts of the world, most notably The United States.

After the twin towers were destroyed, owners were reluctant to trust their art works to the air and insurance premiums for such voyages for expensive Paintings became prohibitive.

I should have seen it coming. The final payment was withheld and there ensued a lengthy fight involving solicitors.

In the end I was forced, reluctantly, to give up the fight for my right because I could not afford the solicitors legal fees.

When we had been in Lola for about a week my mother in law said tomorrow we are going to see the Fish !.

Although I thought it was total nonsense, I am always up for a new experience.

We set out in a shared taxi.

Forget black cabs.

Forget New York Yellow Cabs. For although the taxis in Guinea are all painted yellow, the resemblance stops there.

I counted 11 people in a four seater not including the driver. The roof was piled high with goods and chicken hung by their legs tied to the baggage. There was even a goat in the boot and the younger passengers hung on wherever they could find a hand and foot hold. I was squashed in the front, there were three of us on the passenger seat and the hand break was sticking painfully into my left buttock.

Another nice touch was that the front and rear lights had long ago disappeared and the space had been welded over with sheet metal, probably recycled from another car, and the front and rear lights had peen painted in quite realistically.

Good job we were travelling in daylight.!!

The ride took us to the end of the road and then we had to walk.

Around 8km later we arrived at a village, deep in the forest, it was full of the noise of birds and children playing.

The huts here were round with a conical thatched roof and well built on a raised mud platform to keep them up out of the worst of the rain forest flooding. The day was hot and small yellow birds were catching flies in the thatch of a near by hut.

We sat and waited.

You do a lot of that in places where time is counted differently and clocks are non existent.

Some time later A young man approached and asked if we had come to see the Fish. He spoke French and Sierra Leone Creole English so I was able to understand him quite well. He explained that his father was the person who had inherited the position of the ‘Fish keeper’. And would be back soon.

“Many people come here to see the fish” he said, “but not everyone is lucky. There is a young woman who wants a child, she comes here every year to ask the fish to grant her a child but they have never appeared for her.

“Last year we had a film crew from Germany, they also went away disappointed, so don’t expect to see the fish.”

I hadn’t really expected to see fish in the first place let alone those that granted your wishes, but it was a beautiful spot and reward in its self.

An Old man arrived, just back from his field. He was small and wiry with deep set piercing black eyes. Although he must have been in his 80’s he looked fit and strong from a life of subsistence farming and a diet of rice and vegetables cooked with palm oil that he made from his own trees.

Hanging round his neck was a gourd which his son explained was palm wine.

Here in the forest where the palm wine is fresh, it is delicious.

Each evening the old man climbed his palm wine palm and made a small cut near the base of the flower stem and placed the gourd under to catch the dripping sap. It comes out of the tree at about 3% alcohol and is free. No wonder the villagers all looked care free.

The young man explained to his father that we had come to see the fish and we were asked if we had brought ‘cola’.

In West Africa the cola nut is used as a ceremonial gift, and as a mild stimulant if chewed. The taste is extremely bitter and after chewing for a few minutes the pulp in your mouth is so dry that it is hard to swallow or spit out. However cola is a mark of respect and without it you don’t go visiting.

Needless to say my mother in law had come equipped. We were asked for 4 white cola and 4 purple cola.

As soon as we handed over the gift the old man set off at a brisk trot and despite his Age I found it hard to keep up.

He headed into the forest by a narrow, well warn winding foot path. The trees were tall and huge around with buttress roots starting about 15 feet off the ground.

There were mahogany and iroko trees with coffee bushes and cocoa plants growing around their huge bases.

It took about 10 minutes to reach a small, round pond in a clearing in the forest.

There were lily pads and white lily flowers floating on the surface and an old mango tree leaning out over the pond.

At its base there was a bare patch of earth. The old man reached up into the mango and from a cleft he withdrew a palm frond hand brush and swept the bare patch clean.

When he was satisfied he took the cola nuts from his pocket and threw them onto the ground then he picked up a few of them and repeated the process.

Looking up he asked me something, which his son interpreted, “Is there something you want to ask the fish” so I told him about my loss of money and my desire to be treated fairly by my client. With that the old man stood up and :-

IN A VERY LOUD VOICE HE SAID SOMETHING TO THE POND IN HIS OWN LANGUAGE, THIS TIRADE SEEMED TO GO ON FOR ABOUT 5 MINUTES.

When he stopped talking, silence once more fell over the pond. A green frog jumped from lily pad to lily pad and the only sound was the plop it made as it jumped into the water.

Everyone looked out over the water.

I remember thinking to myself That I didn’t expect to see any fish but I couldn’t help feeling just a little disappointed.

I was mesmerized by the pond and its clear almost black water with the reflections of the trees on its still surface and felt sorry when without a word everyone marched off in the direction that we had come.

Last to start, I was trailing behind the small group. When they turned off the path that we had come on, I was about to point out that this wasn’t the way that we had come when the old man came to a halt before some water no more than a few centimetres deep. The water was overhung with bushes and its source was obscured by the undergrowth.

There to my astonishment were some 5 or 6 half meter long catfish, half out of the water because of the depth. They were all facing us, and quite unafraid, just looking at us with their large black eyes. The shiny, smooth grey skin of their backs and their whiskery feelers, each side of their mouths were fully out of the water and they were opening and closing their mouths, as if trying to tell us something in their fishy language.

The old man spoke to the fish and our young guide told me to tell them what I had come for.

I felt a little silly talking to fish but what the hell.

I cant remember exactly what I said but I muttered something about wanting justice and the money owed to me.

It was one of those moments when the magic of the situation seems to exist in a bubble.

“Have you brought any food for them”? No I hadn’t but the old man broke a cola nut to pieces in his mouth and gave the bits to me. I bent down and fed them directly into their awaiting mouths and was even able to stroke them without causing any alarm.

“Have you brought a camera”? Again no, but the image has stayed with me, and the pictures that I carry in my head are far better than any that I could have taken with a camera.

A year later we were back in London. I had forgotten altogether the link between the fish and my ex client. However Anne Marie has a longer memory than me and she is very persistent. She suggested that the next day we would go and see him in his studio in Putney. He wouldn’t have opened the door if he had known that we were coming so we rang his bell unannounced.

He was clearly surprised to see us and reluctantly let us in.

Without Preamble he announce that he would not give us a penny and as far as he was concerned the matter was closed.

In response I told him the minimum sum that I was prepared to accept, and that he would be very unwise not to accept.

“A builder has many ways of sabotaging a house in France that is visited only occasionally”, I told Anne Marie in French as we left.

Surprisingly two days later we received a letter from his solicitors offering the sum that I had suggested in full and final payment With a clause to sign that we would not go to his house in France. He had clearly been learning French since I had last had dealings with him.

All of this is true, you can read into it what you like but on balance, with only cola nuts for payment I got a better deal from the fish than I had from my solicitor.