under siege - through the jungle - on the beach
Frank
2,370 Posts
Earlier this month, the general strike in Guinea has led into a full scale uprising. Last week, the Guinean government has declared the state of emergency and announced a curfew that had covered 3/4 of the day. The government has decided to show it's iron fist. President Conte introduced his new propaganda that the Fula people are behind this so called attempt to overthrow the government. That is complete bullshit. This was an uprising lead by a youth that is sick of growing up without any sort of perspective, living under horrendous conditions while everyone connected to the government drives around in Hummer Limousines and builds one Villa after the other. Now the government has decided to give its people a scapegoat instead of a perspective. There never were any ethnic conflicts in Guinea before. This might change now.Once the state of emergency was announced, the military started moving into one "quartier" of the city after the other Always beginning at dusk, the thunder of shots could be heard all over town. Theft, destruction of property, shooting injuries, beatings and rapes started being reported. There seems to be close to zero international press. The only two indepenent Radio Stations in Conakry were raided and destroyed.The americans have started evacuating last week. the French have a ship with 10 helicopters on hold and we got ordered to fly out of the country by the German embassy on Saturday. There are still flights by Air France but the waiting list is long, the only other European Airline to fly out of Guinea, SN have suspended all flights. We would not have been able to take the dogs along because they would need a proof of vaccination and an implanted chip to enter Europe.We decided to not leave them behind and packed the car.I'm typing this from an internet cafe in Freetown.We made it from Conakry over the border yesterday and it was probably the most adventurous day in my life. Scary, surreal and for sure something I don't want toexperience ever again. Lots of military road blocks, all in all 10 of them, or more, very much possible I forgot one or two.We had drugged our dogs with sleeping pills and valium so they kept quiet and didn't puke all over the car when driving down bumpy dirt roads at high speed. I wore a fake uniform with a clipped on photoshopped fantasy "head of security at German embassy"-ID. Inbetween seats was a stack with give-away T-shirts and bundles of prestacked cash for bribes were deposited in the ashtray. My wife was white as a wall for the entire trip. They seem to have let a whole otherbreed of soldiers out of the caves, scary motherfuckers with gold teeth, mirrored sunglasses, huge fucking guns,- forget about the usual AK47s or chinese burpguns, these were big, heavy MGs, the kind that come with tripods attached to the barrel. The most bizarre road block was in front of the last town before the Sierra Leone border. There is a wide river you have to cross over an old, damaged stone bridge. There were a couple of soldiers on one side and we had already reached the middle of the bridge, thinking that that was it when we noticed a helicopter on the oposite river bench and a larger group of soldiers on street at the other side of the bridge. The apparent man in charge was wearing civil clothes and was sitting in a plastic chair. He just looked mean and studied our papers without comment or even looking at us. I handed out some cash to the uniform closest to the car, tried to look as relaxed as possible and started a bit of small talk. Luckily, we were let through as on every other road block without having the vehicle searched or any other hassle. Probably also due to my wife constantly acting like she was on the phone, speaking either to some diplomats or military official, reporting our location and mentioning that "the road blocks are no problem and everybody was treating us nicely. Whenever one of the uniforms mentioned that at this particular location, there was no cell phone reception, I explained that we had some hi-tech satelite phone that would work everywhere...We had left at 9:00 in the morning and crossed over into Sierra Leone at noon. A few hours later, we had arrived at Hamilton beach, one hour out of Freetown. I was sitting in front of a rented beach hut with an ice cold Star beer in hand when out of a sudden, my knees started to tremble and wy eyes got wet.This morning, I already contacted my record buying agents in town and we ordered a crayfish dinner for the evening.
Comments
so glad to hear that you and your wife are safe.
simon was telling me some of the details last night.
this must have been a truly frightening experience.
i can understand the dilemma of not wanting to leave behind your loved ones (the dogs) to die.
take good care of yourself.
and maybe put the records on hold for the day, my friend.
peace,
ari
later cuz...
Glad to know you got out of there safe and sound.
I'm forwarding your text now, in hope to raise awareness of the issue and get information circulating as soon as possible. Hope you don't mind.
kind of puts into perspective the easy lives most of us lead.
its good to hear you and the wife are ok (and the dogs too).
next stop Amsterdam?
The international press can only report on things that they can verify. With everyone leaving, there can be no verification. It is up to the international non-press, i.e. Frank at an internet cafe in Freetown, to get the word out about Guinea. This kind of attention takes a very long time to spread into the mainstream outlets.
Reuters did report about the struggle to get information about Guinea today. I took this from the NYTimes.com. You can read it here if the formatting in the quoted text below is too tough on your eyes. Does anyone know why it does that to the paragraph breaks in the quote box?
The situation looks very very bleak. We're all glad you're alive and well.
I hope that more people remain that way.
Praying,
JRoot