Mes chers amis et ma famille,

On a Friday afternoon, I ask a resident named O. what he does for fun on the weekend. He smiles, and within seconds he’s making plans to show me around the town. We’ll get together tomorrow around 8pm; if I just get ready to show up, they’ll take care of the driving, he says. The next day, he moves our rendezvous to 10pm. By the time I get the call that my ride is arriving, it’s after 11pm. I’m getting too old for this, I think, and inhale a cup of coffee before heading out the door. 

Even at this hour, the streets breathe life. I step outside my hotel and the intersection is nearly as busy as during the midday peak. My ride is another one of the residents named H., who arrives in a sports coat on a motorbike and tells me to sit on the back. I wonder if I’ve miscalculated in my faded yellow button-down and jeans. We head out from Kaloum, weaving through traffic that grows increasingly dense as we head north. As we drive, he yells at me in broken English and I yell back in broken French – knowing what little I speak will be of small use once we’re inside a bar. 

It’s not my first time on a motorbike, nor is it my first time in a country where the rules of the road are improvised, but as we get further along, I’m only more grateful that I’m not the one driving. I’ve navigated Southeast Asian traffic on a motorbike before (sorry, mom) but with the unpredictably worn roads of Guinea, driving is a whole other game here. Motos and pedestrians appear suddenly out of the dark, blaring their horns, spewing exhaust fumes, cutting through traffic and winding around trucks; we swerve to avoid debris, potholes, and other drivers; the sea of vehicles flows on. 

The fight through traffic to our destination takes about forty minutes, but eventually we find O. on the sidewalk of another busy intersection. He’s accompanied by a nephrology resident whom he introduces as J. When I extend my hand and introduce myself in French, J. says “sorry, I don’t speak English,” and I see what little French I speak may be of small use outside the bar, too. O. points down a dimly lit street and says we’re headed to a club a few minutes away. I walk beside O. and J. while they talk at a speed I can’t contribute to as H. cruises alongside us on his bike, taking calls along the way from what sound like patients from the fragments of speech I can grasp. Even on a Saturday night, the calls don’t stop. Cars and bikes blaze by us, honking as they pass. Obstacles spring continuously from the dark, but every time I almost collide with something, O. steers me gently out of the way without missing a beat in conversation. I see that I am in good hands.

Eventually we arrive at a short building with a pair of overhead flood lights that illuminates a line of people dressed nicer than I am. There are a group of men who look like bouncers standing adjacent to a row of parked motorbikes. I hand O. 80,000 GNF ($9) to pay for all of us to get in as H. parks. Inside, there’s a small white room with another door in a corner ominously labeled “prohibited” and someone leaning against the wall looking at his cell phone. We pass through the second door inside.

The club is a large room with a low ceiling and mirrored walls. A DJ booth occupies one corner, a bar another; scattered along the walls are clusters of couches surrounding tables of various sizes that all look like VIP sections. In the center of the room is a wooden dance floor, but the room is mostly filled with seated groups. No one else here looks like me. Laser lights cut through the darkness and scatter geometric patterns off the walls. We are greeted by a doorman who leads us to one of the tables in the corner. We sprawl out on the couches, feeling large. 

As J. and O. go to get beers, H. disappears on the phone. The place would fit right in an American city, I think as I sit by myself. The music feels familiar enough to move to. I sway in my perch and look around. Beside the few braving the dance floor, nearly everyone seems to be sitting and looking at their phones, assuming the casually disengaged posture of someone scrolling through an Instagram feed. Adjacent to one of the bigger squares and passed a large group of intimates is a door that leads to a single restroom. I resolve not to go to the bathroom as the logistics of navigating this setup seem intimidating. 

The two come back from the bar with handfuls of Heineken and offer me a beer. O. sees me moving and tells me I should go dance; I tell him let’s talk after some beers. As they sit, I ask where H. is. He says because he’s Muslim he doesn’t drink, so he doesn’t like dancing, either. We’ll see about that, I tease. Occasionally they’ll yell something loudly enough in my direction for me to understand, and I’ll yell a few words back, and that’s the best my French can do here. 

Not long after we sit down, the doorman leads a group of three strangers to our table and signals that he wants us to make room for them. We cram ourselves in, suddenly without the space we were rich with moments before, and somehow, I end up getting sandwiched between the two groups. I try to nod hello at our new acquaintances. The woman seems displeased to be sitting next to me. I just smile and enjoy the music. When the third in their group soon goes to the floor, leaving an entire segment of couch unoccupied, the two next to me demonstrate no intention of accommodating the newly relinquished space, which seems unusual to the guy stuck in the middle. The newcomers chat among themselves as J. and O. carry on, and I make myself at ease in the corner, bobbing along. 

The dance floor fills up over the next half hour. H. returns briefly from somewhere and then disappears again. J. and O. talk over the music. There’s a part of me that longs for the comradery of familiar company and another part that knows it doesn’t matter – it is up to me to enjoy the evening. After a second beer, my nerves leave my body. I sway with increasing amplitude in my seat. O., taking notice, asks me again if I want to dance. Lead the way, I say. I follow him as he rises and makes toward the floor. 

On the short journey to the middle of the room, I become aware of the particular anxiety that people are watching. My eyes quickly scan the crowd – actually, everyone is looking at me. This isn’t the first time the gringo has been out of place in a nightclub, but I feel my nerves returning with a vengeance, making me suddenly stiff as the distance between the safe haven of our table and the dancefloor evaporates. The thought occurs to me that my audience is expecting some kind of spectacle. I wish they’d play a song I knew. What am I supposed to do with my hands? I close my eyes as I make way towards O. feeling grateful for the months I spent shuffling to reggaeton in South America. 

I close my eyes, feeling the bass vibrating through the floor and into my soles. I can’t look any more ridiculous than anyone else out here – well, even if that’s not true, nothing quiets a socially anxious mind than deciding not to care. They’ll laugh and whisper something to their neighbors, and then spark of interest in my lack of rhythmic coordination will fade into the evening. I dance. Opening my eyes, I see O. shuffling opposite me. He is smiling. Moments later, J. comes to join us. I spot H. back at our table, waving his arms to cheer me on. He is smiling, too. 

If you’ve ever seen me dance, you know that it takes me all of ten minutes on a dance floor to sweat through my shirt. I dance in the middle of the crowd until my faded yellow button-down is dark with my labors. We retreat to the table, exchange fist bumps, and collapse, cooling off under a ceiling fan before repeating the cycle again. By 3:30am, I realize these guys will stay out as long I want to, but I am already spent. I tell them I am ready to leave. H. escorts me back home. We make plans to do it all again, someday.

On my last weekend, the professor invites me to lunch. He picks me up from my hotel in an oversized white truck even more pristine than his last and drives us to an unassuming, unmarked building somewhere along Kaloum’s southern coast. We pass through the front door and enter an open-air courtyard decorated with tiki huts and torches; as the door closes behind us, I feel the chaos of Conakry disappear as we retreat into this new, strange, tropical world. It’s the first time I’ve found anything relaxing in this city. I follow him along wooden floorboards that cross over sand, scarcely keeping up with a pace that says he’s been here before. He leads us to a table in the back, then disappears to hunt down someone to take our order. When they appear with menus, one scarcely enters his hand before he’s ordered. I ask for one of the same. 

Over the next several hours, we make up for the conversations we haven’t had during my month here. We speak a mix of French and English, each of us trying to meet the other in their native tongue and defaulting to our own when describing something elusive. He’s curious what the outsider thinks of his country. He asks questions about my experience at the hospital and my life back home; I ask him about healthcare in the country and their political system. He laments the physical state of the hospital, noting with a twinkle in his eye that the word hospital takes it root from the same word as hospitality, and mentions that there used to be a garden for patients across the street, but it was replaced by that fancy hotel – it is hard to convince people the value of public spaces when money and utility seem paramount anywhere, but here that seems especially true. 

Throughout the conversation, the professor makes references to English books I haven’t read. He tells me that he used to be a devout Muslim, but he hung up the faith long ago. After years of praying for more, he found himself in the same place, and realized that if he ever wanted something else, he needed to rely on himself: the thing about religion is that it turns people to God for help when they should be educating themselves. If there’s a way for their society to grow, he says, he believes that the answer is in books. From all I’ve seen here – children sent from home to the streets to find money instead of to school – it’s going to be a tough sell.  

Our entrée, it turns out, is a whole fish – the best I’ve had in the country, though I silently hope it came from waters distant to Kaloum’s shores. When I mention I haven’t yet been to a beach in Guinea, he scrunches his face. The next second, he’s on the phone with one of the younger neurology attendings, telling him that he’s to take me to the beach tomorrow with one of the residents who speaks English. Suddenly I have two escorts to the beach. I must give the professor credit: anytime I’ve needed something, he snaps his fingers and something good happens. 

The next day is my last. I am collected by the summoned squadron who arrive with someone else whom I eventually realize is our driver for the day. We make a stop for libations and then weave our way through Kaloum to a small port on its outskirts. My companions negotiate to secure a small boat. I see large handfuls of cash being exchanged and make an effort to contribute but am quickly dismissed by the resident. The boat drifts from the port along the coastline, passing enormous shipping vessels as we depart westward to a group of islands in the distance. As Conakary disappears behind us and the boat gains speed, I feel the free air blowing through my hair and an involuntary smile spreading across my face. My companions laugh with me as I stand in the back of the boat, raising my arms to the sky and shouting with all the vigor alive in me. Twenty minutes pass by in seconds. We approach the islands, snaking our way between the two largest to a smaller one named Tayire nestled in the middle. 

We dock and make our way through the shallows onto the soft sands. Heading from the shore, we walk towards a fortress of tropical trees that spring from the coast towards the heavens. As we enter among them, a trio of local musicians appears out of nowhere to greet us with that popular song about Africa whose name no one can recall. Following a dirt path that climbs rocky terrain before dipping down onto the opposite coast, we break through the trees to find a cove of mostly tourists nestled among beach tents and tables. Apparently Conakary’s best kept secret has already spread. There are more white faces here than I have seen in my entire month in Guinea. I have already forgotten the noise of city. I cannot believe this place exists, I say to one of my companions; I would have been coming here every weekend. He notes the price of renting the boat for the day is well over $100, explaining why there are more tourists than locals. I make a second futile gesture to pay, which the resident once more dismisses with a wave of his hand. Everything is paid for by the department of neurology, he says. After all this time, I still have trouble grasping the fact that I am their honored guest.

After claiming one of the beach tents as our own, over the next several hours, we refresh ourselves with grilled fish and cold beer. Music emanates from someplace in the forest, carried down the shoreline on the breeze. We swim in cool waters unblemished by the commercial life of the city, talking about the good things. I feel the sweat from the ride over and the last month washing away. Wave after wave splashes over me as the tide pulls me out further to sea, worlds away from Kaloum; I am keenly aware that tomorrow, my temporary residency here will end. Despite the longing for the familiar comforts of home, there’s that strange sense of sadness that accompanies departures. I know the man who will return shall be different in somehow from he who traveled here with the best of intentions, overflowing with naivety. The sun passes overhead towards horizon too quickly, and the three of us relish the remainder of the golden afternoon, feeling rich as kings.

On the dreary trek back to the boat, all I can think about is that when I board that plane, my work will slowly unravel. Yes, I’ll leave the families and residents with plans that should carry them through the next couple of weeks or months, but what then? I’ll stay in touch with some of them, but inevitably, the stoic hand of time will wipe these labors away like the waves on our footprints on the shore. For all I’ve given, I’ve gained so much more. Who was the real benefactor?

It’s hard for me to understand that a place like Tayire can exist so close to the urban heart of the city. Hidden away from the cacophony of the urban jungle, this utopia was always within reach – for me, at least. Here I am, a passing visitor; tomorrow I’ll board a plane that will leave this world and all these experiences behind to fade further into my memory. I can come and go as I please, but so many of the city will still be wandering through those dusty streets, selling secondhand goods and doing whatever it takes to earn enough for a meal: adjacent to but financially forbidden from that paradise. 

Bien à vous,

Le Gringo

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