Gamechangers — Kindness in a guinean paradise

It was a tip from a Belgian man on the Bissagos Islands to experience the casually epic landscapes of the Fouta Djallon that brought me to Doucki, a mountainous village in the central-western wilds of Guinea. It wasn’t the football. And it certainly wasn’t the tropical disease. But, a day after arriving at the encampment of Hassan Bah, a diminutive local legend of a walking guide, I started to feel strange, so I took to my bed in one of Bah’s huts.

For a 6-month overland trip from Senegal to Ivory Coast, this is not an unusual sensation. You must exert yourself in ways you have not before. A 7-hour crossing from Guinea-Bissau to the Guinea border. The inexplicable, precarious boarding of a large canoe on a motorbike, made more complicated by this motorbike’s subsequent failure. A large border official insisting so fervently on an invented fine that I paid him around ten pounds to avoid being stranded in a forested area with only toddler-equivalent French to help me. And after this: an 11-hour bush taxi from the capital city Conakry to Doucki.

Bush taxis are the mere memory of a car, designed at some point for five people, compelled to hold at least seven (with an entire household’s worth of goods strapped to its roof.) Sitting on a handbrake whilst a woman kisses her teeth at you is all part of the adventure. It is also one of the lesser-known causes of fever-like symptoms. But, as I lay sweating and panicking in my Doucki bed, 200 miles away from Conakry, a doctor who had arrived on a moped from a village a couple of hours away concluded that it was in fact malaria. So, no walking the gargantuan canyons and beautiful waterfalls of the Fouta Djallon just yet.

But that didn’t really matter. As the fever waned and waxed in my system for a week or so, I experienced the purest form of kindness that I had encountered so far in West Africa, where generosity is in abundance, where some, like the Gambian man I met in Senegal in a circle of villagers sharing their lunch, are so perplexed by Western habits of self-preservation that they say things like, “Toubabs [white people] don’t share”.

Mrs Bah cooked me scrambled eggs, cassava leaf stew and bread drenched in local honey. Their eight children taught me how to peel oranges with a knife in a single expert spiral, and giggled in delight as I gave them wheelbarrow rides. Hassan took me to a local wedding where I was fed rich jollof rice and then invited me to a local mosque, where the imam forbade me from entering. And after the recovery-by-community, after the malaria, there was the invitation to play football. 11-a-side. For Doucki F.C.

I had taken part in countless games of football in the street and on the beach along this stretch of coast, but this was no kickabout. This was a competitive game that I had no right to play in, one I was being inserted into out of graciousness - a gift after a terrifying experience with an illness that is a part of everyday life in west Africa. One of Hassan’s sons and I walked from the encampment, past trees bearing the sweetest oranges I have ever tasted, through little clusters of huts and houses, to the football pitch, which was tinged with a red dust that beautifully refracted the low-lying early evening sun as it was kicked up by the players. A lad was selling what I think is called mekoh – an unrealistically acid-green fruit with a thick skin that tasted of atomic apple Hubba Bubba. I stood, rather embarrassed, on the sideline in an old pair of running shoes.

Before I was called on for the second half of the game, before my nerves could set in, before I could get anxious about the space I was taking up as a British outsider, what struck me was the kits. Doucki F.C. wore crisp, fresh 2020 Juve third strips. These were an inexplicable contrast to the wonderfully creative, often loosely interpreted, fake kits I had seen on my journey up until now. As I ran about the pitch, trying, as hard as I could, to make a good impression, to do justice to the invitation, to the player who had to make way for me, I assumed I would be smashed into. Crop the white guy. This was an egotistical, entitled thought.

The overwhelming feeling was a desperate need to impress - the players, the smattering of locals watching, the coach – to be industrious, but to keep my head down. Phil Neville against Arsenal circa 2001, I thought. I sat in midfield. I ran about breathlessly. I was one of the weaker players, but I tried to get stuck in. I hardly touched the ball. I played it short when I did. I should have got on the end of a cross. If only I’d made my late run to the front post rather than the middle of the goal in the last ten. I fantasised about the goal I wasn’t even close to scoring. We won 2-1. This was not a satisfying game of football, but it meant more than any other.

After the match I sat next to a Guinean from Conakry in the central cabin of Hasan’s place. I admired his shirt – a beautiful cream 2021 national away jersey with red, yellow and green piping and a matching crest. He offered it to me. I laughed – no no, it’s OK, I just like your shirt. Again, he offered it to me. How much was it then? His eyes narrowed and his smile left his face. This is a gift, he insisted. It would be ungodly, spiritually peculiar for me to give him anything in return.