Ed: The following is an assignment for my book writing class that is due tomorrow on the theme of “Ties that Bind”. I just finished it. We’re supposed to practice writing narrative non-fiction. Comments always welcome. This is a tale from my adventures in Guinea-Bissau in 2003.
Farivar, Cyrus
February 21, 2005
Prof. Freedman
“Ties that Bind”
WC: 2572
When we arrived on the island, we were told it was like the Hotel California.
Lucienne, Sara and I had just spent the better part of two days on a small 30-foot motor canoe, and we had finally reached our destination. It was the Ilha de Orango, roughly 70 miles off the coast of Bissau, and the capital of the formerly war-wracked nation of Guinea-Bissau. Why were we there? Because our guidebook had told us that we might be able to find saltwater hippos there. And heck, we didn’t have anything better in mind. This was our vacation, and would be an adventure, no matter what.
Our canoe dropped us off onto a white sandy beach. We each hopped into shallow water and said goodbye to our Sierra Leonean boat captain and his assorted crew. Turning toward the shore, after we’d snapped our last photograph; we found a pristine beach, untouched by most human hands. At least untouched by the standards of the beach that I grew up nearby in Southern California, where the shore was dotted with lifeguard towers, bike trails, beer bottles, cigarette butts and assorted rubbish along the beach.
This was truly untouched beach. But there was supposed to be a hotel. Or at least our Lonely Planet guidebook told us so. About 20 yards from the beach was a rise in the island, a mini hill, surrounded by assorted trees. We headed towards the trees, and soon came up a path, a gate, and finally, the hotel. Shortly thereafter Fredrico, the friendly Italian hotel owner, greeted us.
We were the only guests, and either for the business or for the companionship, Fredrico was grateful and gracious to have us. As we settled into the lounge chairs near the bar, he started asking us a few questions about where we were from and what we were doing in Bissau.
“How’d you get here?” he asked.
“Oh, we just came with a boat that was heading this way,” I replied.
“And how are you going to get back?” he said.
“What do you mean?” Lucienne said.
“Well, this place is a lot like the Hotel California,” he said with a straight face. “You can come, but you can’t leave.”
We were stunned for a moment.
“We figured we’d just go with some fishermen,” Sara said.
“There aren’t any fishermen here,” he said. “I’d take you myself, but I’m all out of gas,” he answered.
“There’s no gas at all?” I asked.
“Well there might be some at one of the other villages, but I’m not sure.”
We settled into our chairs and eventually our Italian pasta that he fixed for us as we pondered this problem. A tank of gas wasn’t about to spoil our hippo trip — but eventually we’d have to face the fact that we needed a means to leave the island. Sara really didn’t have anything to worry about. She was just a young American traveler that we’d picked up in Bissau and were grateful to have along as a friend. But Lucienne had to teach back at the university in Senegal in a few days. And I was supposed to be back there as well, as a student.
The hotel was quite nice, particularly given what we’d been through in the last few days. Nearly two days at sea will make anyone grateful for things like running water (from a reservoir anyway), towels and something other than rice and grilled fish to eat. The girls shared a double bed, and I took the single. We slept well that first night.
Our first day on the Ilha de Orango was spent at the beach. Lucienne and I frolicked in Fredrico’s canoe and gleefully enjoyed observing the low tide, which stretched out at what seemed like for hundreds of yards, with just translucent turquoise ankle-deep water outlining the shore. Sara sunbathed and watched us.
We all needed a break. After spending a day and a half trying to find a boat to even get us out there, we’d been stuck at sea, trudged through ocean silt at an attempt to reach a deserted island to camp out on, had slept overnight at sea and waited for hours and hour with nothing but short wave French radio to keep us entertained while our captain went back to Bissau to retrieve a new motor. Following that, we ended up spending the better part of a day on an island that we didn’t even know about, the Ilha de Urakane. Our gracious Senegalese host saw us back onto our boat, with our Sierra Leonean captain, who deposited us at Orango a few hours later.
This captain, and anyone else had failed to mention that we might have some trouble getting back. Of course, we were rich foreigners; of course we would have a way back. But we knew that we weren’t rich foreigners. More like starving 20 and 30 something young adults filled with more wanderlust than money.
We were faced with the problem of the gasoline again, once we’d returned from the beach. Fredrico had mentioned that instead of going straight to the village on the far side of the island, we could go to the one that was about a mile down the beach from where the hotel was. Perhaps they had some information that could help us.
We meandered down the beach near dusk. I marveled yet again at the whiteness, the purity of this beach. The only people who touched it were some villagers, who lived up in the small hills, and the Italian hotel owner with his Portuguese wife. The beach extended out seemingly in two directions, with nothing but some small scrubby bushes and a few low-hanging trees to punctuate its own loneliness.
The nearby village required about a mile walk down the beach, and then a short 10-minute hike up a hill. The path was clearly marked, and was definitely wide enough to drive a truck up it. But there was nothing of the sort in sight. The closest thing that we had to such technology was the generator that Fredrico used to watch European soccer on television with. Lined with brush on each side, it was clear that the trail was well maintained. The hill continued to rise, until we arrived at dirt clearing.
As we crested the hill, we saw a small structure that might have been a school off to the right, and further down, something that looked like a store. Where was the village life? Where were the people? Our trio continued inward, into the heart of the village, very obviously standing out. I almost felt as if we were in a Western or something, entering a ghost town.
Eventually some of the villagers peered out and came to see who these strange people were. Lucienne and I stayed behind Sara, who was our de facto leader by virtue of speaking Portuguese and just smiled and waved, trying to be as non-threatening as possible. The lingua franca of the region is Portuguese Creole. Sara spoke Portuguese, which was much closer than our French and English (and Lucienne’s Mandarin Chinese) to the locals.
Basically, our task was to find out if there were any fishermen that we could hitch a ride with. Fredrico had claimed there weren’t, but we needed to make sure. After asking around a little bit, we had found out that there were indeed fishermen, and that one guy would keep an eye out for us. That was nice, but we needed something a little more immediate. Our stroll continued, past the shop and past a large centrally located tree, and into the more residential area of the village.
It was there that we met Agosto. This stocky man told us that he worked for the Bissauan equivalent of the National Park Service (there was a small wildlife preserve on the island). He informed us that he would be happy to take us in his boat, but like Fredrico, had the problem of no gas. He also said, unlike the first villager that we encountered, that the fishermen only came around once every few weeks.
Agosto seemed fairly confident that there was gas to be had on the far side of the island, at another village that was 18 kilometers (12 miles) away. He said that it would take about three hours to walk it. Within a short time, we’d arranged to pay a local teenage boy 4000 CFA (about $8), in addition to the cost of the gasoline, to make the 36 kilometer round trip for us. We handed him enough cash to cover the cost of the gasoline but withheld payment to him until he returned. Within a few minutes of negotiating, we’d agreed that Agosto would take us so long as we provided the gas, about 40 hours later, on Friday morning. We shook hands, and paid him, and headed back to the hotel.
Upon returning to the hotel, we informed Fredrico as to what we had done. He was aghast.
“You did WHAT?” he exclaimed.
“We paid a guy to get gasoline for us,” we said.
“How could you be so dumb?” he retorted. “How could you pay all this money to people that you don’t even know?”
He had a point.
“Whom did you give the money to?” he asked.
“Agosto.”
“Oh, Agosto, he’s ok.” he said, his voice decrescendoing.
The three of us were a bit shaken at his strong reaction of distrust against the villagers, but perhaps he was right. Or perhaps he was just an overly paranoid European reactionary. We had no way to tell.
The next day, we headed out to see the hippos. We didn’t find them. Instead, we had a nice hike through some jungle type territory and I taught some local kids how to juggle with a small plum-sized fruit called “tambacounda.” Despite the fact that I didn’t speak the same language, teaching by example seemed to go over well.
We returned to the hotel by the later afternoon, and were ready to take off. Staying in the hotel another night was going to be too expensive for us young, cheap wanderlust types. The same village where we’d paid for the gas had a few beds in a room used for traveling scientists who came there to study the wildlife in their nature preserve. But this was February, the low point of the tourist (and scientific) season. The closest other foreigners were probably back in Bissau.
As we climbed the hill that rose from the beach, we passed a group of fishermen settling in along the water to their evening meal. There weren’t supposed to be fishermen in this area. And yet, there they were. We waved and continued walking.
Once we were settled in to our new confines in the village, we had to go find Agosto, to make sure everything was set with our gasoline. He had the canister of gasoline. The three of us decided that we should pay this kid, who had spent almost all day walking to and from this other village hauling our gasoline an extra 1000 CFA, for a total of 5000 CFA. This wasn’t exactly a princely sum, but relative to these small villages, it became clear that it was more extravagant than we had realized.
Agosto, who at first had been accommodating and kind to us, had now turned. Instead of taking us for free as we had agreed, he now wanted 7500 CFA a head, almost $12. This was ridiculous. It wasn’t more than an hour away to Urakane, and we had enough gasoline to get him and us there back, and now he was ripping us off? Well, more like he was taking advantage of the situation. He wanted his piece. This kid had gotten more than was expected — but really, how were we supposed to know what the going rate of walking 36 kilometers, carrying 10 gallons of gasoline for half that distance, was?
Sara, who was doing all the translating and direct negotiating for us, called off the deal. We would figure out another way. She snatched the gasoline near from where he stood and we walked away. There had to be another way off this island. Perhaps the fishermen down below, that we had passed earlier in the day?
Leaving Lucienne to rest in the village, Sara and I trotted back down the hill to the fishermen to see if we could strike a better deal with them. We explained our situation. We had gas but no boat. They had a boat, and presumably could use the extra fuel. Were they headed that way anyway? They had reached the end of the Bijagos Archipelago, the string of islands that extends out from Bissau, so it was likely that they were going to have to start heading back anyway. The fishermen agreed; they would be leaving the following morning. They sent one of their men back up with us to take our gasoline back down to the beach to store for us, to save us another trip.
But once he disappeared back down the hill, we realized that we’d committed another blunder. The fishermen had our gas, and we had no guarantee that they would actually take us. But what could we do, walk back down the hill and demand that they give us something as collateral?
We spent the rest of the night huddled around our small camping stove, our dinner of tomato paste, pasta and canned sweetened condensed milk, and Sarah’s short-wave radio, where we toggled between the BBC World Service and a faint CBC signal.
At dawn, Sarah and I headed back down to the beach to make sure that everything was going according to plan. The fishermen assured us that it would be ok, and just to return in a couple of hours. After gathering our things and coming back down the hill, the fishermen had gone. They were nowhere to be seen. We started to worry, but a woman who was with the fishermen, whom they’d left on the beach, defused our fears. They were fishing a few kilometers down the coast, near where Fredrico’s hotel was. We looked, and sure enough, they were there.
So we had nothing to do but wait. It was only 10 o’clock in the morning, and the fishermen weren’t due back for another five hours. I spent the next seven and a half hours lying on this beach, listening to the BBC World Service. (The fishermen were almost three hours late.)
That day was February 14, 2003. The only reason why I remember that so precisely was because that was the day that Hans Blix went before the United Nations Security Council to talk about WMD in Iraq. A couple of those hours, that afternoon, I spent listening to Hans Blix over the BBC. I have never felt more removed from world affairs. But there I was, on the most remote beach that I had ever been to, and my country, thousands of miles to the west, was set to invade another country, more thousands of miles to the east. They were talking about weapons of mass destruction, war, suffering — and I felt compelled to listen.
But I was on an isolated pristine beach in Guinea-Bissau, at the mercy of a few fishermen.
