Labé is the second-largest city in Guinea (60,000+
inhabitants), the capital of the Fouta, a veritable metropolis compared to the
villages and towns that dot my map. I always arrive from the east, just before
dusk, covered in dust. One of the corporals at the checkpoint knows me, and so
never lets me pass without first chatting for a bit. On days he isn’t there,
just remember: greet people with guns, the bigger the gun, the bigger the
greeting.
Just like any other big city, the roads are worse within the
municipality than outside it. Heavy truck and motorcycle traffic chokes the
narrow bridges, alleys, and everyone’s lungs. Trucks that aren’t going
somewhere with a full load of things and extra people on top are parked along
the sides of the road, receiving long-neglected and now critical repairs. Dogs
and sheep lay in their shade.
Unlike towns en
brousse, buildings in Labé have signs, lightbulbs (not illuminated, of
course), and customers. Unlike in the village, bottled water, onions, and
diesel are cheaper, and taxi rides and plates of rice and sauce are more
expensive. There are more choices, more refrigerators, more foreigners (few compared
to none), more schoolchildren, and more metalworkers’ shops. You need to watch
where you’re going.
The most striking aspect of Labé is the people. Because the
Peuls of the Fouta are part of the much larger Fula group, and because it is a commercial
and administrative center, there are more different looking people here than
anywhere except Conakry.
Light and dark skin, all sorts of facial features in all
combinations, all heights, and every possible definition of clothing are well
represented. Students wear uniforms: red, blue or green gingham for primary
school, khaki for middle school, and white on top with blue or green bottoms
for high school. Hair and shoes: anything goes, and does. Wigs are more common
than long colorful extensions woven into the braids, and dreadlocks are
discouraged. Workers wear dirty jumpsuits, businessmen wear suit jackets or
colorful, krinkly boubous, and young men wear impossibly bright and clean
button-downs with a heavy coat of perfume. What women do can be inferred from
their attire as well: Market ladies wear a simple complet of colorful fabric (or a an old tshirt supporting a
forgotten candidate and a wrap skirt, if they sell fish or peanut butter), alarmingly
young mothers wear tight dresses and babies, linked by a tight towel, and
wealthy women wear expensive looking cheap jeans and glittery tops, or
complicated layers of imported Malian fabric. Children wear what’s left:
tattered shorts, sports jerseys, and snowsuits.
The combination of massive market, towering (relatively) but
crumbling administrative buildings, and just-installed power poles (the future
cabling lying on the ground between in tangles or spools) gives Labé the
feeling of a real place to live; where things are often changing, but nothing ever
really becomes different. The same potholes are there, along with new ones, the
same broken trucks are being hammered upon, along with older ones, the same sandals are being sold by
a different vendor, four doors down, and the bread is always just beyond fresh.
I like Labé.
