The Terrifying Incident of the Bike Ride in the Nighttime

I was super busy with school and work, and then super busy with relaxing myself into a Reddit-fueled stupor.  It had totally skipped my mind that I even had a blog, let alone that one is supposed to write in these things.  So, in order to distract myself from stressful things of the moment, I'd like to tell you about The Very Scary Bike Ride Through Kankan.

In order to properly tell you of this ride through Kankan, I should first say something of Kankan itself.  It is the third largest city in Guinea, with between 140,000 and 207,000 people, depending who you ask (Peace Corps and Wikipedia, respectively).  The de facto capital of the Haute Guineé region, it is a major hub in Eastern Guinea, and indeed the broader region.  Here's a picture from Google Earth:

Click for larger version.

However (and this is usually the surprising bit), there is no electrical generation in Kankan beyond individual gasoline generators, nor is there any running water.  While no one visiting Guinea or any other developing country is expecting a Four Seasons (although you'd be surprised some places), it is a little surprising to find such a large, culturally relevant city bereft of even the most basic infrastructure.  I can't say for certain - the internet is, not surprisingly, just as bereft of information about the third largest city in a country no one's ever heard of ("New Guinea? Guiana? Ghana?") - but here's what I heard while I was over there.

Lansana Conté was the "president" of Guinea from 1984 until his death in December of 2008.  During that time, he...well, wasn't very nice, to sum up (badly)?  He did lots of mean things to lots of good people.  The bit that's relevant is that, due to some sort of disagreement with the governor of the Kankan prefecture, he shut down and destroyed Kankan's hydro-electric power generation along the Niger.  So the short answer is that Conté was a bit of a dick, and that's the main reason that Kankan has no power.

So let me set up this ride for you.  I was at my house not far from the city center, and was biking to the Peace Corps Volunteer House on the outskirts of Kankan, where a goodly number of PCVs had gathered. Each region of Guinea had a volunteer house, and I was lucky enough to be placed in the same city as the one in my area.  This meant that I would have had a constant stream of potential buddies to hang out with. Here is the route I took - click the caption to blow it up to a readable size.

Click for larger version.

The trip was just over two miles, but that wasn't part of the problem.  With the amount of biking we'd been doing, I was actually in great shape (for me), and was quite comfortable riding long distances (again, for me). In fact, when I traced the route in Google Earth, I was really surprised at how short it was (until I remembered the time I walked it carrying a suitcase). No, the real problems were: the roads, the people, the darkness, and quite unexpectedly, the light.

THE ROADS in Guinea are...how to put this delicately...shitty.  Not great.  I very distinctly recall a particular pothole on the road to Moribaya that we drove into and out of.  Though there was nothing like that in Kankan, the roads are definitely better suited to walking than any sort of wheeled transport.  Biking is no problem - you just have to watch where you're going and make sure not to run into any of

THE PEOPLE, who expect you to know what the hell you're doing.  As I said, I was quite comfortable on my bike, but I've only ever been called coordinated sarcastically.  There were a lot of people on the roads, which have, obviously, no explicit nor implicit divisions between pedestrian, bike, and vehicle areas. So it's important to watch out for people, which is made particularly difficult due to

THE DARKNESS.  It is dark.  It is really goddamn dark.  It's so dark that you can't see the hand in front of your face sometimes.  There are a number of little lights by the side of the road wherever people are selling things or gathering to hang out, but generally speaking, it's friggin' dark.  Luckily, I brought

THE LIGHT with me.  Specifically, every one of us (as far as I know) brought a headlamp with us.  They're terribly useful things in general, and particularly so for two specific uses: poopin' and bikin'.  It is pretty frikkin' hard to hold a flashlight and do either of those activities (or both for that matter, but I don't know that anyone tried that).  "But Dave," you may ask, "why would the light be a problem for your no-good-very-bad bike ride?"  I'll tell you, and thanks for your question.  The headlight is placed on the forehead, which, because of the normally super-helpful spread of the beam, puts a nice glare right across the front of my glasses, making it just about impossible to see.

So I spent the right going extremely slowly, barely able to see through the glare of my light into the darkness, trying not to hit anyone or fall off my bike.  So I went those 2 or so miles very slowly, and quite scared of, ya know, dying - or worse, looking silly on my bike.  Once I got onto the newer road, it wasn't too much of a problem, though then I had the added difficulty with the sparse traffic.

Long story short (too late), I made it to the Volunteer house, where I vowed to never ever do that again.