probably see), the most precious resource that Africa has. They are much more important than any natural resources, such as oil and gas, palladium, platinum, gold, bauxite, and others, but they are extremely undervalued: the country on its own and the world do not pay any attention to their living accommodations and safety issues.
For example, Joseph Ironsi, a tour guide who was required by Guinea government to follow me due to me being a minor at that time, introduced me to the problems that peoples of Africa are facing nowadays. On my tour, aside from ordinary sights that were perceived tourist attractions in Guinea, he showed some kids playing soccer on the airport take-off line. He also told me that the average life longevity equals 40 years: the same as of Europe in the 17th century. This was shocking, to say the least.
This means that there are many people who die at a young age of approximately
10 years, 15 years, 20 years in the world where we have such good level of medicine, which is just not available in this part of the world. I have seen only two people older than, as they told me, 55 years old: probably, there was a slight misunderstanding (so, they could be even younger) due to the difference in language (most of them speak only French). In Guinea, English isn’t as popular as it is in the rest of the world. The population doesn’t even know how to read either in French or in English or in any other language. More than 50% of people in Guinea are illiterate. So, there were approximately no banners on the street and not a lot of writing what so ever.
People seemed to be forgotten by the government and the rest of the world; in Conakry, as I learned, the electricity was available only in the second half of the day
whenever the sun touched the horizon, unlike water, which wasn’t available at all (of course, if we are not talking about dirty puddles and rivers where people tended to wash
themselves regularly). In the first part of the day, occasional people were carrying enormous jars and baskets on their heads—doing their job, in other words. After the sunset, life immediately awakened from cryogenic sleep: the Internet and cellular connection began working, the lights turned on.
However, in the first part of the day, life resembles (and actually is) the life of the 17th century when people used only coal instead of gas or electricity to cook food, washed themselves in rivers instead of taking showers, went to the farm instead of a grocery store. But something was completely different: containers, a looooot of containers. Everywhere. The only difference was that on some streets, there were four containers (at least four on EACH street), and on others there was a “container-warehouse” with signs Rio Tinto, Rus Al, Maersk, and others.
And this raised a lot of questions: why doesn’t the government help to soothe thie harsh living conditions of its citizens? Why are there so many containers in the capital of the country? What’s inside of them?
In search of answers to these inquiries, I decided to go to the government officials —Joseph Ironsi told me that it was possible in Guinea—to ask them tet-a-tet questions , which my tour guide didn’t have answers to, unfortunately.
