Guinea Trip

Guinea Trip

My CAUSE Canada friends, Travis and Nadim, and I decided a number of months ago to make a motorcycle trip for a weekend up North into Guinea. We decided collectively to make the trip last weekend, given that Monday was Independence Day, and a day off.

Things we thought we needed in order to get through the Guinea border from the North of Sierra Leone:

1. A VISA purchased from the Guinea embassy in Freetown. This was a great experience. First of all, I went to the Guinea embassy straight from the British High Commission, which was obviously very organized, secure, etc. Inside the Guinea embassy was one man sitting behind a desk smoking a cigar, and another sitting on a couch reading a magazine. I inquired about getting a VISA, and the man behind the desk said I needed $50 American. I asked about passport photos, and he just said “pas de problem”. I didn’t have my passport with me at the time, so Adrienne went back for me a few weeks later, filled out a form, and 10 minutes and $50 later had my VISA.
When Nadim went, his passport photos were tossed on a pile of others. After his passport was stamped, him and the man who stamped it got to talking, and they decided to exchange numbers. The guy actually took the form Nadim just filled out, ripped it in half, wrote his own phone # on the back and gave it back to Nadim.
2. Papers for your motorbike.
We spent some significant time in Kabala before we left making sure our bikes were OK to take across in terms of the number plates, registration, permission letters from owners, and so on.
3. Other official documents.

Things you actually need to get though the Guinea border:

1. About 50 000 Guinea Francs ($10) divided up into small bills to pay the fee/bribe/appreciation price at the numerous checkpoints along the way.

2. Someone who speaks either French or a myriad of tribal languages.

So we arrive to the first official checkpoint in Guinea having been stamped out of Sierra Leone. We park our bikes and walk inside a small pagoda – like structure, where we find two men in army pants and white tank tops lying in hammocks, smoking. From the wall beside each of them hang AK-47’s (I would have a picture, but I didn’t think it would be best to pull out the camera at this point). They ask for our documents, and we hand them our passports and most of our other official documents we have attained. They begin to leaf through them, obviously not caring or in some cases even understanding what any of them say. A number of the officers actually looked at our passports upside down. They asked us a few formality questions about our business in Guinea, length of stay, etc. (during this conversation one officer gets up, turns around and starts peeing), but the conversation would immediately turn to the only thing the officers actually cared about: the “fee.” We soon realized any official document attained was useless – the fee was the only thing that mattered. We could have breezed through with army tanks instead of motorbikes as long as we had the fee. This scene played itself out at various checkpoints heading into and out of the country.
To help up with these checkpoints was Moseray, a local guy who owns one of the honda repair shops in town, and his friend, Mohamed. The fact that they have crossed that border many times, and also that between them they spoke 6 languages made navigating our crew through the checkpoints much easier.