The 198th Episode : Looks like a mushroom
[June, 2009 Kouroussa, Guinea]
We left Conakry at 5:00 a.m. but the sun had already raised high in the sky. The view through the window was changed from that in Conakry to feel being in Africa. Houses look like mushroom dotted in the open land. They were simple ones that a round enclosure with walls made of a mixture of soil, grass and sometimes cow dung, and straw was used for a roof. They were traditional houses of Africa.
Cattle, hens and cocks were grazing freely around the houses. Their number was not half as large. Cars are sometimes stopped by herds of cattle that crosses streets leisurely. They were used to humans and didn't even try to avoid us even when we honked the horns. At times like that, the driver got fed up and sometimes crashed the car into a cow. I asked him "is that alright?" but he smiled and kept on driving in such a way.
We arrived at the destination village. It was the cluster of the houses like mushroom that we saw just before and they had livestock. When I got off the car a big cow slowly walked by me and chickens were playing impatiently at our feet. Children were playing but some of them, especially very young, were wearing nothing. Utterly stark-naked.
Here again we greeted the village head. It was not so formal like in Ghana but many village people were sitting on chairs in the open field. A woman holding a baby was also there. They might just want to see strange foreigners like us!?
