Guinea-Bissau: Cashew Country

From the beautiful, long palm-fringed beaches of Cap Skirring, we headed back to the Casamance capital, Ziguinchor and then on to the border with Guinea-Bissau.

There are two neighbouring countries, Guinea-Bissau (Bissau is its capital) and one Guinea (known as Guinea-Conakry). Conakry was colonised by the French and Bissau was colonised by the Portuguese and achieved independence as late as 1974.

We crossed the border into Guinea-Bissau and were relieved to come out the other side relatively unscathed, but at the first police checkpoint a cop took us through a long checklist (insurance, licence, emergency triangles, fire extinguisher, windscreen wipers, indicators back & front etc), then asked us to reverse & claimed the rear white light was too faint and that would cost us a fine of 10,000CFA (about £14). We insisted on a receipt which annoyed him as he won’t be able to pocket the fine himself.

However, we were not his only victims. A young man & an older tall, thin man on a moped were at the checkpoint and the older guy spoke some English and helped us in our negotiations with the cop.

It turned out the two of them had been stopped and the cop had found some fault with the bike and they either had to fix it, or give him some money.

Mendhi (the older guy) and his young relative were also on their way to Bissau, as Mendhi needed to visit a sick relative and the young guy was taking him there.

The young relative asked whether we might give Mendhi a lift so that he could avoid the cop’s fine and return to the Senegal border.

Of course we wanted to help, and not only to further annoy the cop.

So Mendhi got in the back with his small suitcase and after we all complained about corrupt cops, he told us he is a truck driver from Gambia and we all complained about the terrible state of the road.

As the cop had cleaned us out of currency, Mendhi offered to pay the fees for the bridge tolls, so it was truly a win-win situation.

We noticed beautiful trees lining both sides of the ‘road’ with large, waxy lime-green and yellow leaves.

Mendhi told us these were cashew trees “cashew, cashew, cashew (repeat 20 times), ALL cashew!” An astonishing 65% of Guinea-Bissau’s population rely on the cashew industry. There is a small town in West Guinea-Bissau called Cacheu, which we didn’t get to visit, but we did stay in Rua Cacheu.

The capital seems a pretty harsh place, with little investment in public infrastructure. It was shocking to see how minimal the infrastructure is that we take for granted.

Many places only have electricity from 7pm-7am, so for example shops can’t run fridges. The roads are a boneshaking mixture of sand, rubble and potholes, this road was typical of those running through the centre.

We did see some nice examples of public realm as well though, like this mosaic neighbourhood outdoor seating.