Guinea Border Crossing
We hit the Guinea Border around noon after a torturous journey there from our bushcamp. When we arrived at the frontier, it was very different to what we might have expected. It was like a scene from the wild west or some post apocalypse movie. I almost expected to see a tumbleweed blow across the scene. We expected a regular border, similar to the others we gave crossed over the past 5 or 6 weeks. This was completely different.
We exit from Guinea-Bassau and had our passports stamped with an exit stamp. This was fairly standard. Then we made our way down to a fairly long no man’s land which was like the river bed of an old river. When we got to the Guinea frontier itself, it was like an old World War 2 bomb site. There were a few ramshackle buildings and three or four cops sitting under a tree in the the shade. There was just one building that seem to be the immigration department and consisted of a barred window. Immediately a young efficious looking policeman said no entry because we apparently had to have two copies of our E-Visa printout. We all had one with the 3xceprion of one guy who had two.
Just a quick overview of the visa application procedure for Guinea. We had to initially make a online application for an E-Visa and that would go to head office in the capital and be processed. However, this was the first time Guinea has offered this service. Brfore, I guess, you would make a paper application or get a Visa On Arrival. Also, the system they used was very clunky and I continuouly got server error notices when I was applying for mine. When the immigration office in the capital processed the application, they would send an email back with a paper copy of the evisa. We had to print this out and take it along to the border post. There was no mention of the need to have two copies but the guard insisted. He said we have to go back to the nearest town, Gubú, which was about 50 kilometres away, a full day due to the awful roads, and get a second copy.
One rule about borders is you don’t argue or get angry at the border guards or shout and tell them they’re feckin’ gobshites, which these ones were, because they are little rajas who have a lot of power over you at a very vulnerable stage of travel. So, it’s foolish to make them angry. We tried to remain cool and collected and just argue the case. Eventually, a friendly customs officer took pity on us. We went through the rigmarole of connecting a phone to a laptop one of us had and then connecting to a printer at the customs office. Then we were able to print off second copies of the E-Visa. This we all did and finally we got our all importance stamp. However, this time they didn’t put the stamp in the passport, as is standard in almost every other country I’ve travelled through. Instead they put the stamp on the back of the paper visa certificate that has to be presented when we leave Guinea next week for Sierra Leona and heaven help anybody who has lost it because there will be a mountain of trouble and hassle and probably a large fine. So we’re all guarding our E-Visa paper like it’s made of gold.
While all this was going on, I was sitting in the shade on a bockety old chair thinking it’s too hot to get hot and bothered. What’s going to happen is going to happen. I just looked around at the post itself and had an occasional glance at a very cute looking young policeman in a tight uniform while contemplating the hilariousness and pointlessness of old men’s lust.
Like railway stations in India, border posts in Africa often have a little permanent settlement of small shops, traders, money changers and hawkers selling souvenirs to the tourists. There was an emaciated version of that at this post but the shops looked like bunches of old sticks holding up torn sheets of rusty corregated iron. The people looked listless and the abject poverty was the worst I’ve seen to date. I was to see worse later on.
We exited the border post and started to drive along the road into Guinea proper. If it’s possible, the roads were even worse than the other roads we had encountered in Guiné-Bissau and in Senegal.
We motored on slowly and eventually reached our destination.
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