When I first entered the port in Bissau the officials that were hanging out at the gate thought I was a straggling passenger from the cruiseship "Africa Queen".
I explained that I had stranded in Bissau after five months of travels in West Africa, not a penny left in my pockets and now I was thirsting to get back home to my continent. I knew there were freighters going upwards to Porto, Portugal from here, at least every week or so, and I asked if they could not help me arrange a lift on one of them. They looked at me with puzzlement and told me that things simply did not go this way, but of course I was determined not to give up that easily, to come back tomorrow and daily after and work them till they would change their mind.
For the moment I left them and, wandering round aimlessly and hungrily after this fruitless attempt, I decided I would probably have to head back up to the bus station for some cheap food. Since the streets were swept empty of people here there were logically no food vendors around neither. On my trundling way a young guy greeted me and undertook the effort to start up a conversation. He seemed just like any of those young Africans trying to chat me up -like alright company on a company starved afternoon in a dead town like Bissau, and as such welcome as someone to pay me lunch.
Bissau really was a peculiar place, arriving at four in the afternoon there was NO ONE on the streets, shops were closed, you had the feeling it was a ghost town. It was not till the next morning that I was to get to see what the inhabitants looked like. Not like I was expecting anything special, and Guineans of course would turn out to look nothing much different of their neighbours, but the big contrast would be that then, the place would be close to packed. Especially round the port area there would be large groups of guys just hanging out and the streets further up would be bustling with people just like any shop lined town centre. However, this all would go on only till about 12, then the flow of people would start to trickle down, and by two it would be as dead as it was the day before. The only movement you could spot were plastic bags wandering with the breeze and stray cats darting round corners and up walls to take position for lazy look out.
Anyway, this guy was another Immanuel, and Gambian. We gabbled the sort of insignificant palaver you always exchange with brand new acquaintances and he came to tell me that he was working in the travel agency on rua de angola. Evidently, since all shops close at 2 p.m., he always had afternoons off to go for strolls like now. I explained my undertaking to him unfolded the whole fictitious dilemma of having run out of money etc. and he said heґd see what he could do for me the day after. In the agency they sold boat tickets and worked together with the port after all, and later he said he could take me round the port again and maybe it would make a difference if he asked for me, since he knew people. In any case he might be able to open some doors for me was what he assured me and what I dared to faintly hope.
He led me a bit out of town to a market place : now, this was where everyone was hanging out at this time of day! Working our way through the bustle of people, we took a left turn into a bifurcation under tarpaulin where he greeted a befriended woman from Sierra Leone. They chatted away in English for a bit, seemingly happy to be able to speak their shared colonial language here in formerly Portuguese occupied Bissau and we ordered rice and kasava sauce from her. She was a refugee from the war who still couldn't return home maybe she didn't have the means to travel was my guess, or maybe she has lost everything and everyone and wouldn't know how to start again on her own she didn't smile once and in the short moment I talked to her she seemed perfused by an ingrained sadness. I told her I had just been to her beautiful country and that it was a peaceful and welcoming place now and she appeared genuinely happy to hear someone talk about her home. When I had finished more than my half of the gigantic portion that was actually for two, since Immanuel didn't touch any of his share, I said "Thanks for the chop" and we made our egress from under the shelter.
We went for a bit more of a walk, back into town it will take us another half an hour. To fill the void Immanuel said he would introduce me to his sister, and I thought why not, I had nothing else to do really. So far he seemed to stick out only as another of those nondescript guys that pick me up, possibly pay lunch for me, and then at some point ask to marry me. OK he had six fingers on his left hand, but that did not mean he was a shady person.
...Or that's what I innocently thought before I got to know Bissau better. In that unfortunate place of course it is safe to say that approximately everyone, is shady.
His sister anyway, lived in a large, light flooded but grey room with a double bed in the "Grand hotel", she offered me a glass of ubiquitous coca cola which I declined and when she heard my story she made a very sorry face for me. She offered me to come and stay with her in this room for free her white husband was paying it anyway , so I did not have to pay the expensive hotel and I truthfully answered that I would be thinking about it. I had paid for this night in my hotel so tomorrow morning I would see what news my date at the port would bring and then I might just decide to accept the invitation and carry my bags over around noon time.
On my second day as I traipsed down to the port in the lively morning, Immanuel was hanging round to catch me off, so I imagined, and he actually seemed of some help, not only to translate. The news were that there is a Korean boat that had just come in and that would leave that night. We would be back then.
At night we the approached the floodlit rumble of the boat being unloaded -two dozens of Guineans heaving rice sacks off it, plus the Koreans onboard, plus, dozens of Phillipines hanging around at the side who were caught fishing within Bissau territory without permission.
Immanuel said I had better not talk to anyone, most of all not divulge my intents to anyone, since in case I got found out I would get instantly ousted and never let back again.
I should have sensed that this was a filthy trick since today and yesterday the main problem really seemed to be the communication (I just do not speak any crioulo, you see) and people looking at me like an alien, but: looking benevolently, and lethargically, like they are not really caring, not like they were scheming of chucking me out any soon. I mean he would have been right in any other port outsiders definetely aren't allowed there, but this being Bissau everyone was much laxer about it.
As the evening proceeded, me sitting by the side, him dashing off feigning to be trying to be making progress for my situation, he ends off by saying "let's go for a drink with a few of the sailors, maybe we will be able to set you up with them".
What he didn't bother to declare was that he had left them under the impression that I was one of the prostitutes and so "setting me up with them" took on a rather different meaning than the one I had imagined. While we were in the bar outside the port, he bought me many a drink hoping to blur my judgement of situation (he was not counting on my beer-weaned German blood obviously), then as we were walking to the town centre (to frequent more bars I innocently imagined), he suddenly staid in the back with one of them sailours -there was some hard negotiation going on there now as far as I could tell. When I realized just what they were negotiating about and the Korean that had just shuffled over the money bills to my six-fingered pimp came laying his arm around the exotic blonde fille de joie asking whether I knew the nearest hotel, it was of course not too late for me to shake him off at once and save myself back to my place over a quickly improvised rat-run.
There, I fell on my bed and analysed the night: For one, it seemed I almost got sold to far East Asia -so much for my trying to get local help involved. I reckoned I had to change tactics.
The subsequent days I thus decided to be a bit less trustful but continued talking to the uniformed lads at the port and at one point I earned a few sparks of hope at least, since one of the guys actually started rummaging in some drawers for me, handed me a form and told me to drop in with a copy of my passport the next morning to meet the head of the department. They said they could make me papers which would make my going on a boat possible. There was one cargo coming through about daily, so if I had the papers it would only be a matter of waiting and trying. By now I was living with Hanane, Immanuel's sister, so idling away my days was not a question of money anymore and I readied myself for long days of sipping cola on the hotel porch.
Immanuel actually came in several times visiting his sister and when he saw me sharing the bed with her, started having a major go at me to get out immediately, but since Hanane assured me to stay all the while, he could only bugger off fuming and fruitless.
Only weeks later, actually, when I would be emotional, situational light years away from these days sharing the double bed in that cool grey hotelroom with her, it would dawn on me *why* she was staying out till late after midnight so many evenings and couldn't furnish any more information about her provider-husband other than that he was white, not in the country right now and the guy on the foto in her wallet. And the fact that she and her brother communicated in English which should have been quite the obtrusive clue for me to realise that he wasn't her brother at all.
About her husband, she said he was coming back from France in three months time and when I asked her whether she was looking forward to seeing him then, it wasn't like she didn't answer because there were some problems in her relationship and she didn't really want him to come back, it was that she genuinely didn't understand the question.
That is what at the moment I'd call the Bissau effect on someone's emotions.
What a sweet girl though she was with me.
Sincerely trying to help, she pointed out a man to me who had just arrived that afternoon, showing me him in the hotel court out of her window, laconically remarking "This man is very rich, if you go with him he will pay your ticket home for sure" -meaning of course if I slept with him. Later she introduced him to me as an old friend (customer I think now), we all had lunch together, then she left us with the words "now you can do your little job" whispered to me one hand on my shoulder while he was out washing his hands. Indeed the guy's advances didn't keep me waiting, but I made up an ad hoc boy-friend in Europe to which he replied that that was a shame how we Europeans handle love business, since here in Africa it would not matter if I'd choose him as another lover, he himself had two wifes after all.
He definetely was a sympathetic guy though and let us girls hang out with him paying for our drinks, and mentionned that he indeed owned a cargo boat, soon shipping in with carparts from Ziguinchor in Southern Senegal, tomorrow night to be exact if all went right. Since he seemed such an easy-going lad after all, maybe even if I did not sleep with him and only asked him nicely the vague hope dawned on me that possibly.
I chanced to entreat him that very evening about it and the day after he indeed came back to me in the morning, said he'd see, if the crew was alright with it the boat might be able to advance me, but that they were going to the Cabo Verde before they were going up to Europe, so hopefully I would be able to put up with the detour. That wording, I had to let it sink in, let it cristallize in my head like a video tape played backwards of these five little words drawn into the sand being washed over by the softest of seas lapping over them, ..."put up with the detour" ?! For a split-second the towering rocks and sandy beaches of a hypothetical "Green Cape" sprouted up like mushrooms from the turquoise waters of my imagination - then I quickly shook my head to whip out such a foolhardy dream. I might be able to score a ride, but this, I must call myself back to reality, won't possibly occur.
To make a long story short, though, the boat was not his boat at all.
That of course was that man's fancy. He was only the commercial agent (making a million in CFAs of black money at every transaction nevertheless).It didn't at all go up to Portugal neither, and rather stayed within the shores of Guinea, the Gambia and Senegal usually. And it really was owned by a French carrier. At the moment there was a crew of a white captain, three white sailours and eleven Senegalese sailours on it (this ship of thirty metres was a crowded place I can tell you), and after a short chat with the priviledged white bunch, they agreed to take me on.
I was to sleep on the bench in the office for the three nights it took to get up to Dakar where the eleven Senegalese were reduced to two, and I was converted from blind passanger to ship's cook. The plan was that the vessel was being prepared to go into dry dock for two weeks in order to be brought back to top condition. For this we were off to the Cabo Verde.
The voyage to the stunning landscapes of the archipelago however, surely would be blended out by the voyage to the limits of esculence I would be taking the sailours.
After one of my meals back in Dakar, the owner of the boat who had chanced in to check out the results of the dry dock, tersely remarked that he would have certainly fired me after three days at most, but it had of course been the captain's right and (ir)responsibility to keep me.
In general mealtimes unfurled along the lines of the following ceremony:
As soon as I put my cookery on the table -usually some tomato sauce into which I had mistakenly, by force of too enthusiastic a hand-movement, dumped the better half of either the pepper or the chilly pot, to go with a kilo of half-uncooked, overly salted rice that I hadn't managed to finish in time because the original portion of rice I intended to make had had too much fluid and had stayed a good fifteen minutes too long on the stove and such had thickened into a white watery mass of gelatine consistency which I had had to throw away. As soon as these two main constituents of the meal were on the table set with plates and cutlery for the requisite number of sailours, I would make a bolt for the backroom of the kitchen where I'd be hiding out (sometimes behind the freezer) not to have to listen to the comedy that regularly unfolded in the dining room with everyone going to great lengths of deriding my loving efforts to keep them nourished by mockingly retrieving the whole array of aliment appreciative vocabulary -"delicious", "scrumptious","hmmmm...". Well, you know, I cannot cook and never will learn how to cook now matter how hard I try, but three cheers for a captain who gave me the chance of a lifetime to prove it with a vengeance. Give me a page and I'll treat you to more about him.
Much fun was there to be had, when we went ashore. Stopping over in Dakar we went for drinks in ever the same dive just outside the port,and one evening I had the priviledge of being instructed in the art of ass-shaking by one of the regulars in there, one of the hookers eternally off her face on alcohol. She gave me an indepth lesson to the sound of two drummers, taught me about five different manners of shaking, shaking, shaking my bum and after my display of arduous, with time red-headed effort to keep up with her, she regaled me with a belly chain of colourful pearls that she had been wearing two of the same kind of. Then one of her customers bought us both another drink.
That woman by the way, at least was what you could call one. She was of at least my age and not like so many other prostitutes our Senegalese sailours ran off with, one that you suspected had had better fall to bed tired after playing hopscotch with the neighbour's kids about five hours before the time of day we'd cross her, negotiating business. "Out with the kindegarten tonight, are we", as the captain commented the crew's company one of the nights.
Special moments were the days we taught the remaining two Senegalese sailours how to swim. They had lived their whole lifes in touching distance of the heaving ocean, but had never ever been in it deeper than ankle deep. This is perfectly normal for people and even sailours in those parts of the world. (Even so in Europe thirty years ago only, I am told). In Southern Senegal's Casamance when the passengership "Diola" famously sank four years ago the over 3000 people on it died almost all. The vessel had only just departed from the shore and even lesser able swimmers would still have made it back or even had they only been able to tread water pirogues had been coming soon to fish them out. One of our sailors, Francois, had actually already sunk a handful of times: "Every time we sink I lose all my papers." What a pain in the ass to have to make them again and again, was all he had to say.
Our two sailours now had the rare privilege to enjoy swimming lessons. We stuck them into safety vests and let them swim one after the other out in the middle of the ocean fivehundred metres off the port of Sao Vicente's Mindelo. We made them cling on to a cord tied fast to the railing and swam around them showing them how to do simple swimming movements.
Especially Papys was ecstatic afterwards with appreciation of the glittering masses of blue he had been carried by. For hours he kept repeating how much he loved the sea and promised us he would be training on the flat shores in front of his native village till one day he would be the first person in it who was going to cross the creek without the help of a pirogue.
The captain was a quirky character, he had all kinds of self-made adages about the mariner's life, love and doing the dishes. Interesting tales were to be heard about his successive employments for Shell and Greenpeace, informing the latter about his observations made with the big oil company or about his time as a volontary on Le bel Espoir, a huge French schooner they fill with loonies and highschool drop outs with acid eaten teeth once a year and therapeutically sail them across the Atlantic, where they usually arrive all sane, smiling and holding hands. And there was one story he told over and over again, the pivotal moment of his youth which influenced his life and led him to such abstruse decisions as hiring girls with foreign accents as cooks who had told him beforehand they specialized in microwave dinners. 'Twas the day he hitchhiked to the job interview of his first ever employment on a freighter, and it turned out that the guy who had given him the lift to the port, was the person who was supposed to take the actual interview! Imagine the surprise when that man walked in on our young work seeker waiting on a chair consumed by nervousness, and instead of torturing our future captain with any more questions just took his CV, tore it to shreds, thrust an outstretched hand onto his figure and told the boy he could start next month.
All in all the captain might have been a very interesting lad to talk to. Unfortunately however, the captain had been off shore for over three months and was in dire need of his girl-friend. All the interesting conversations you started with him would inevitably be turned around and pivot around sex. Ok luckily he didn't try and drag me to bed unasked for at any moment, but he consistently insisted on rehashing favourite sex positions (we both agreed on karma sutra no. 42), craziest places (him-a protestant church, me-the royal museum of stamps in Brussels), oldest partner with ever (him-double his age, me-72, during my short geriatric fetish phase), and then he would launch himself into ever a new version of the story of the only hooker ever whose services he had availed himself of. The first ("and only ever time") was in Singapore with one who was set up for him by his workmates (probably was he going through a similarly emergency horny phase as right now I would guess) who paid her for him in advance and later asked the money back after they had seen him leave with her. Of course she had indeed made him pay as well so the result was that he had paid doubly. As you can imagine, I was devastated with pity for him, hearing this miserable story. Especially because two days later he was again to mention "the only time" he went to a prostitute. This time the setting was in Poland and concerned woman "a really old, really fat, really ugly woman" -thus the only *real* prostitute he ever was with, because she was not the kind he usually would also try to chat up in a bar. I suggested he re-examine the logic of his statement which was enough for him to snub and walk off. Only a few days afterwards I again was left to wonder if the real "only" time was not a then laconically mentionned Thai lady on theEast coast of the United States that would blurt out "oh, your dick so big - I scared" at the drop of the trousers because she appearantly thought it turned on her customers. When he related this story (over lunch by the way, to everyones amusement) I couldn't resist to beg him to show us, so we could judge how much exaggeration was to the woman's exclamation. "Fais voire" I said, assuring him that I of course would not be intimidated by his manhood. To the great surprise of all, he actually got up, let down his trousers and exhibited the oblong excrescence, at the sight of which the crew spewed out their mouthfuls of rice.
And that is the note I will leave you all on.