13th May - Mali-Ville

Pleased to report it was indeed cool overnight. We both slept better than we have since leaving Fansu's beach. The Auberge is right at the top of a hill, so there was a pleasant breeze for some time.

One of the hubs on the truck has been leaking, and I thought whilst we were staying at a place which was not too dusty or sandy, and had some shade, I'd take a look at it. I have spare oil seals, and it's not a major job to do, providing you can keep stuff mostly clean. As I started to unpack the bits and pieces, Moussa, the brother of the custodian at the Auberge came along and started to give me a hand. I dismantled the hub, but like an idiot, I got a bit distracted and carried on and removed the stub axle too; this was irritating, as it didn't need to come off, the gasket was destroyed in the process, I lost some of the one-shot grease I put in it last week, and I don't carry a spare gasket. Doh! So I put it back on using Loctite liquid gasket, which I hope will do the job instead. Time will tell.

Replacing the oil seal on the hub went straightforwardly after that, except one of the gaskets I brought with me was too small and split; more liquid gasket. With the wheel off the truck, however, I could see that the anti-roll bar mounting on the right hand side was rubbing on the chassis. The anti-roll bar has been forced to one side, so needed re-setting. With help from the brother, we undid the clamps, but the bar is gripped by rubber bushes, which don't give up without a fight. In the end, with a combination of hammering, levering, and using the hydraulic bottle jack, we got it back where it should be. At this point I was really glad to have the extra pair of hands, because it was a bit of a bugger to do. Moussa also gave us a huge bag of mangoes from the tree in his compound.

I put half of our remaining 120l of fuel in the tank, and Moussa told me that since two days ago, when we tried to buy fuel in Koundara and found they'd run out, petrol has gone up from 4,600 Guinean Francs per litre to FG 5,500! (About 70p. Compare this with a loaf of bread for 9p, or a meal in a café for 60p.) There is a petrol station in Mali-ville, but it's not had any fuel at all for some years. Petrol is sold by the side of the road from wine bottles, but it's not really a practical way to buy 260l of the stuff, which is what we will need when we next fill up. I'm glad now that we have all the jerry cans on-board; up until now I thought they might be a waste of time. Let's hope there's petrol for sale in Labé.

Apart from the above, the truck is, touch wood, faring well. Just as well it's one of the toughest vehicles Land Rover ever made, because it's taking a real hammering here. There is, however, no way to keep the dust out, so the interior is full of dust. Nicki does well at keeping on top of it in the bits we use, like the bed and the sink, but the cubby holes at the back are just full of dust. I don't think we'll be able to do much about this until we get home and have the use of the Dyson.

Moussa invited us to come and visit his village, which is just round the corner. The village has about 185 inhabitants, and every last one of them is a relative of Moussa. We visited a few different compounds, and met some of the relatives, who were very warm and welcoming, and told us (in Foulla) that we were regarded as family. I took some photos of some of the family, and wondered briefly about taking a family portrait, but then I realised what a futile task it would be! As we went around, Moussa pointed out all the various edible fruits and seeds on the trees, and I tried most of them. There was a real variety, the majority of which were unfamiliar, but of course we recognised mangoes and also avocadoes. Two of the children in the village shinned up a tree to pick mangoes, which they threw down to us (to add to the huge collection we already have!) I climbed the tree too, but because of my extra weight, I couldn't get near enough to the ends of the branches where the fruits were. We now have something like 10kg of mangoes! Mango, anybody?

We returned to the truck and I decided to go into town with Moussa to buy bread. It's about a 10 minute walk to the market from here, but it took some time, because everybody greets you with endless cries of "Ca va?", and a good proportion of the people we saw were relatives of Moussa. We were on a quest to find Sprite, to decant into a plastic water bottle I took with me, but although we tried just about every little shop and stall in the village, the town is devoid of Sprite. I bought bread at the market, a little hall full of stalls with women selling gourds, sauces, onions, rice, dried fish, fruits and all sorts. I had the inspiration to make an omelette for late lunch, so I also bought some spring onion stems, and bananas. On the way back up the hill, we stopped at a little stall on the hill manned by a couple of young children, and bought some eggs (about 4p each), two purple avocados (that's how you tell they're ripe here) and some more dough-ball "gateaux".

Guinea is one of the poorest countries in the world, and generally ranks at or near the bottom of the worldwide index of standards of living. There is very little infrastructure here (I'm not sure if they have any tarmac roads at all), no electricity in most of the country, and in the mountains, despite having the highest rainfall in the world, water is a problem for half the year. Jobs are few and far between, so many people live a subsistence lifestyle, making what little they can by selling food at the side of the road. Moussa doesn't have a job, and made a start on building a little campement for tourists, but he doesn't have any money to finish it off, and even if he did, the country has precious few tourists, because the infrastructure's so poor. Despite all this, the Guineans are relaxed, cheerful, happy and friendly people, in this area at least. They may not have much, but they seem very positive about what they have. People here are nicely dressed, almost always in western-style clothes, and apart from a few grubby children, always smart and tidy, unlike me, who has been clad in dirty, dusty clothes for days.

Moussa speaks excellent English, which he taught himself entirely on his own initiative. It's sad to see somebody who is such a genuinely decent bloke, not afraid to work hard, trying to carve a niche for himself in a place with few opportunities. He'd do brilliantly with tourists, if there was a way to get more of them to come here.

As I write we're sitting in the compound of the Auberge under some trees. It's hot here, but only Europe hot, not Africa hot, because we're at the top of a mountain. From time to time, goats wander by (one just farted voluminously), and cows. There's a cockerel just next door, which may not have long to live, as Nicki gets very annoyed by farmyard animal noises, particularly bleating goats and crowing cockerels.

Later: Moussa took us to the edge of the village to watch the sun go down. We could see right across the mountain range. The government owns several big buildings in the prime spots on the hill, but they're all derelict. Today is approximately the half way point of the trip, and it was nice to sit and watch the sun setting over the green Guinean mountains to mark the event.

Afterwards, we went to the Café Montreal in the town centre for dinner, and treated Moussa as well. They rustled up omelettes for Moussa and Nicki, and some sort of beef for me, with French fries, salad and fresh bread. The meal for three, including drinks of Coke, cost just over £2, and was very pleasant. There is no electricity, of course, so we sat in the light of a single candle and the moon. I wondered when their last customers were; it's quite likely that the chef and waiter have been sitting around for weeks on end waiting for somebody to come by. That's the way things are out here. It's an odd situation.

Our intention was to suss out whether it's safe to head south to Sierra Leone, which means going all the way through Guinea and past the capital, Conakry, which we know is not great. We wanted to go from here to Labé and then on to Kindia before bypassing Conakry, but Moussa and his brothers reckon that Kindia is also an unpleasant and dangerous place. It's hard to tell whether this is accurate or not, but we're not sure it's worth covering the extra thousand or so kilometres heading south just to get to Sierra Leone, particularly if we're going through unpleasant country in order to do so. So we will head to Labé, and then turn back north for the return journey to England.