Lunch at Mamou
Stopped here at this typical West African town to get lunch and also to allow the cook team to get grub for dinner and breakfast tomorrow morning.
I went out with a few other lads to search for some food but soon lost them, unintentionally. I’m not really a group person and much prefer to ramble around on my own. I found a stall selling my staple lunch food item, a large baguette, freshly made and still warm. It only cost 4000 francs or around 40¢. I smear some triangles of processed cheese on this and that’s my lunch. The bread itself is delicious enough to eat on its own but it needs a bit of flavour too. I found a place to sit down and washed it down with some cold Fanta. I never drink soft drinks at home, in fact I loath them. Here, needs must.
No doubt a more experienced eye than mine would notice many differences between Mamou and other African towns but I don’t have that discernment, alas. It seemed pretty ramshackle but I knew it wasn’t. In the absence of central planning, it evelved slowly and over the years to meet the needs of the people living here and they used the minimum of resources available the achieve the optimum outcome: food and shelter and maybe a surplus to invest in their children’s education or to put adide for a rainy day.
Like we say back home, the best thing that came out of Cork is the road to Dublin. Well, the best thing to come out of Mamou is the road to the capital, Conakry. It was a decent road, up to international standards almost and the truck whizzed along. I nodded off during most of this leg of the trip.
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