Return to Guinea

So here I am on my 5th trip to Guinea, West Africa. My last visit was almost 5 years ago. This is my first non-solo visit. My four previous trips I have come by myself, but this time I am joined by my husband, four year old twins (who I was pregnant with on my last trip!) and my 12 year old daughter.

We arrived in Guinea on December 18, 2010 after way too many hours of travel. Besides the fact that I had not been here in almost 5 years, my 12 year old daughter had not been here for 7 years and my husband had not been here in 10 years! I decided to create this blog to try to share some of this experience with my friends, family and co-workers. I'm hoping to be able to share some of the culture of daily life and drum and dance as well as to try to describe what makes this very foreign place feel like home to me!

We walked off the plane and into the airport,  and the process had changed some - there used to be a line for Guineans and one for all others - I was all excited with my new passport that I could finally join the line for Guineans, but no, there's no differentiation anymore. So all that anticipation for nothing. We all just crowded into a hot stuffy room (I seem to remember the walls being open in the past too, so that there was actually a breeze...) and waited our turn to show our passports to the checker and be pointed to a window to show our customs papers.

On all previous visits, I had a military family member waiting for me at the customs place, and had not had any issues. Our family member was a few minutes late, so the folks checking passports took advantage of their opportunity, and gave us a hard time about the fact that when my husband's and daughter's previous passports expired, they had a friend bring new ones from Guinea, and thus there was no stamp to show that they had exited the country. Even though they told us that was a problem, they still let us pass and told us to come back after getting our baggage. We probably could have left the airport without any problems if we had pulled the white customs forms out of our passports so they weren't waving around, but if we had done that then we probably would have had a bigger problem when trying to go home if we had no stamps to show we entered the country....

So we moved toward baggage claim, and had our Yellow Fever cards reviewed, and those women also tried to turn us back when they saw that we still had our customs forms, but then they waved us on. We went into baggage claim, and Aly went to see if he could get a good spot to watch for the bags while I waited in the middle of the floor with our 10 carry on items.  I knew we had so many bags there was no way we could carry them out ourselves, and that if we wanted our passports stamped we would fare better with help from a family member. I also knew that military accompaniment would also make it easier for us to leave without someone insisting on searching our bags. So I was thrilled to see Aly's first cousins, Diego and Tutu, arrive with another member of the military. Three strong men to carry our bags and look official and help us out! And just a couple of minutes later, Aly's stepfather walked in, and he is now a commandant in the military. So he went and negotiated to get our passports stamped and we ended up being the last people to leave baggage claim.

I had heard the drumming outside earlier, so I knew there were folks waiting outside for us. It's nice to be welcomed warmly with music and dance! I've posted a short video on Youtube of our arrival. My videography was not stable at all, and the video has been working on uploading for the last couple of hours over my cellular connection, after three days i think i've finally gotten an upload that works!!! Or at least, youtube finally says it was successful 40 error messages later...

In the video you see Aly looking around, then his older sister, Fanta, who is a doctor, dancing, then his younger brother Seydouba comes to greet him. Then is mom crosses in front of the camera, and we have a little shot of a very serious Bountou watching everything.  Then you see Fanta dancing again, and Aly's brother's best friend, Yaoudi, smiling and giving a thumbs up!

Update on 3/18 - here's a couple of additional videos of our arrival, we all look rather dazed, but the music is good!

this one starts with Sophie dancing