Articles by Doug Nienhuis
I am a Canadian, and I am currently traveling through Asia with a touring bicycle. These are stories and pictures from my trip.
Guinea 005
Wednesday, December 13 9:17 a.m.
I’m back at the same cafe, Le Club Altesse, where I’ve started most of my days in Conakry. The short walk to get here does not overwhelm me anymore. Certain things – the people, the roads, buildings, colors, smells and sounds – are falling into familiar patterns so that it doesn’t hit me all at once and my mind has begun …
Guinea 004
Tuesday December 12, 9:30 a.m.
It turned out there was nothing sinister going on at the cinder block cafe. I was imagining that these men were recruiting soldiers to fight Foufana or forming their own splinter group. Such is the power of arrival disorientation. The truth was so harmless as to be laughable. The men were gambling. The cafe I’d stumbled into was a bookie’s establishment. …
Guinea 003
Monday, December 11 8:51 a.m.
I got up earlier than usual this morning (even though I had trouble sleeping last night), showered, and left the hotel. I followed the same path as yesterday except I extended it just a little bit. I walked past the place where I watched the soccer game and continued to the corner. Here taxis wait for fares and the local mini …
Guinea 002
Sunday, December 10, Le Club Altesse, Conakry
I must skip ahead in my story here. This is the first time I have ventured out by myself. It seems a small thing, but it is not. It’s 2:45 in the afternoon, and the full heat of the day is beating down. It stuns me to think that in a very few days, I will be out there …
Guinea 001
The Guinea Journal
Sunday, December 10 2:30 a.m. Conakry
It’s early in the morning or late at night depending on how you look at it. I went to bed around midnight but couldn’t sleep. My mind was reeling with the images and activities of not just today but the previous couple of days. It’s a sensation unlike any I’ve had before. It felt like a physical assault, …
045 – Gondar
A Ghost in a Silent World
The next morning my eyes snapped open at 4:30. A drunk man was wandering through the Nile Hotel banging on each door in turn, looking, as all Ethiopians seemed to do in the early morning, for a friend. I called out to him when he reached my door and I offered to be his friend if he would go back …
044 – To Infrance
The Escape of the Joads
It was still pitch black when I was woken up by the Joads, their truck, and their rooster. They wanted to get an early start and started warming up their truck at 4:45. Unfortunately it was right outside my door and to my lungs it felt like they’d run a hose from the exhaust pipe directly into my room. I had …
043 – Bahir Dar to Werota
Leaving Bahir Dar
The streets of Bahir Dar were quiet and cold as I cycled through them. A group of men made swishing sounds as they swept up the road with large palm branches. Boys from a school scoccer team chattered and kicked a tattered ball back and forth. The only other people on the street padded by silently on their bare feet and stared at …