To know a person in his home is not to know him at all: to meet him on a country road with only his baggage is to at last contact the core, the inner cell of his personality. - John Tibbetts

4 January 2020, Maneah to Tabéta, 47.9km
Residences Le Rio Pongo 150,000GNF (R225)

I’m not sure if what happened this morning qualifies as an ARREST; it certainly qualifies as UNSETTLING. We were taken into custody after I unwittingly included two military / police types, in PLAINCLOTHES, in a photo of the market at a busy intersection. Yes, I included two men dressed in ordinary shirts and trousers in a photo… from a distance…
We had left Hotel Ben Ben at around 08:00 and cycled as far as the N3 turnoff toward Guinea Bissau. We had made slow progress the last couple of kms due to roadworks and a busy market spilling into our path. Charl turned ahead of me onto the N3, while I stopped to try and capture the Saturday morning mania. I snapped a rather poor distance shot and put my camera-phone away in my handlebar bag.
And the next thing I knew, two young men were yelling at me, grabbing my wrist and tugging at my handlebar bag. I did not know they were military / police, but knew instinctively the photo was the issue. I offered to delete the photo, removing my phone from my bag. The two men physically restrained me from doing so, making a grab also for my, very expensive, mobile. I had to curl my upper body over the phone to prevent them gaining access to it. I could not understand what they were yelling at me, but I kept telling them not to touch me or my things. Probably they could not understand me either, but my message was undoubtedly clear, though entirely ignored.
By the time someone had told Charl, pushing his bike some distance ahead of me, that I was in trouble and he had come back to me, I was surrounded by men: two or three in combat fatigues or black police uniforms, the original two men, and many bystanders. With a lot of confusing yelling and shoving going on.
What was interesting, was that several civilians seemed to query the engagement, to the point of enraging the officials into transferring their rage and shoving onto others. When yet another uniform arrived and I was able at last to tell him we did not speak French, we were made to push our bikes to the police station, a tin shack across a section of broken sidewalk and up some stairs cut into a dirt embankment. I tried parking my bike below the stairs, saying, truthfully, that I could not lift it up the stairs, but the officials, desirous of getting us and the bikes into the hut, took it from me.
I don’t know how many men engaged with us there, but several. One or two spoke some English, and one seemed to be on our side, though cautiously. He asked to see the photo and, having shown it to him, I quickly took the opportunity to delete it, apologising for taking it. His colleagues were not impressed (more yelling), but the evidence was gone… I had the feeling the man had purposefully given me this opportunity, but perhaps I am being fanciful.
We were then told that we had to have a permit to take photos in Guinea and that if we did not have this we would need to pay a fine. I said “We do not pay money”. More yelling, more of us saying we could not understand them. They said either we would have to leave the bikes with them and go into Conakry to get the Ambassador’s permission, or they would get the Ambassador (such nonsense). “We’ll wait for the ambassador”, said we.
I guess at this point they had no idea what to do next. We sat quietly on a bench, Charl getting permission to spoke, while they all congregated outside the hut. Our friend came in at one point to say perhaps we would purchase some food for them. We felt he was trying to find a way for them to save face and release us, but stubbornly said no. Yes, there was dick-measuring going on!
As we had hoped, a more senior officer arrived at last. He examined our passports and looked at literally every photo on my phone. Luckily, I transfer these most days onto my laptop, so there were very few pics of Guinea remaining on the phone, mainly meals and hotel shots from the last day or so … and many shots of South Africa from March last year. After talking to us for a long time, about the police and their role as protectors, and much more we could not understand, he simply let us go.
We were shaken by the entire episode. There is no quick escape on a bike. And the road was too narrow and sometimes too rough for the traffic it carried. But soon we found somewhere to buy cold drinks and hot deep-fried dough cakes, and in no time were responding to cheerful calls of “Bon soir, mama”, and were back on the road amongst those who do not have power to abuse and who perhaps are brave enough to stand up for those being abused. We also got permission for (almost) every photo we took!

For today's route see below photos
For overview route, click on ROUTE tab above…