The two worlds of Guinea-Bissau

As I prepare to leave Guinea-Bissau, I find myself overcome with that same nagging sense of guilt I often get when I leave the field. There's something about going back to your comfortable life and leaving the local people in precisely the same state in which you found them that makes it hard to feel good about your work. My brain reminds me that my job is to deal with the long-term, to help lay the foundation for a better life for the next generation. But my gut tells me that I just spent ten days in meetings that may or may not ever impact the lives of an ordinary Bissau-Guinean. It's frustrating.

The guilt is somehow more acute due to the resigned attitude of the locals. In the Congo, there is a sense of entitlement towards internationals that is frankly astonishing, even outrageous. Here, people seem to have accepted that a few people have while the rest have not. Perhaps that's because there are already two worlds in Guinea-Bissau, two totally different orbits. This is always the case, at least to some extent, in poor countries. It is particularly stark in places like South Africa where it was actually institutionalized. It's very stark here too, though in a different way. Instead of slums being juxtaposed with shiny shopping malls, there are tiny islands of wealth here that stand out clearly. Mostly, this is ill-gotten wealth, and the ostentatiousness with which it is flaunted is truly disgusting.

Today, as I was being driven back to the hotel, we had to stop at the gates of the compound to let another car pass. I snorted out loud when I saw it: a shiny black and chrome vehicle that is pretentious even in New York City, its familiar squat square shape rocking back and forth as it trundled along the dust road. Hearing my derision, the driver giggled and turned to me with a big grin. "Hummer!" he declared brightly, using one of the only English words he knows.

It's not the first time I've seen a car like that -- here, in a city where the roads are largely empty and a rust-riddled shit-heap is a luxury. The hotel where I'm staying is something of a magnet for them: Mercedes cabriolets, BMWs, and more than a few hummers. These are the druglords, and everybody knows it. The total impunity with which these thugs drive around in Bissau, flaunting their plunder, is enough to shock even me, a person who has spent time in the company of warlords in more than one country. It would be distasteful to drive around in a car like that regardless of where you got the money. Doing so when there's only one possible source of that wealth demonstrates the status of rule of law in this country. Its total absence is about the only thing that's common to the two worlds of Guinea-Bissau.

I leave these two worlds behind today, but I'll be thinking about them for a while.