So we arrived in Guinea (see the first post if you missed that).
However I will leave you in suspense, as Byron will not be satisfied with my story-telling if I leave out the fact that:
The flight from Paris to Conakry was full of refugees being sent back to Guinea.
"Aidez moi! Aidez moi!" cried the man in hand-cuffs sitting accross the isle from us. He did not relent during the entire eight hour flight.
"You paid how much for these tickets to a place that these people did everything possible NOT to go back to?"
Ah, Byron. Ever logical, he would say.
Guinea is not easy. I've never said it is. But the magic there goes beyond politics, beyond sanitation and disease, right to the core of what it means to be human. To share this Earth together.
It could be any of us. We didn't choose to be born in Canada, any more than they chose to be born in Guinea.
And Guineans teach us what it means to truly be human: to live with compassion for one another, and live openly. To actively share our joys and trials, and to live in Community.
And for any one who has travelled, you know that the learing of self and other takes place because you are completely out of your element. Everything that is me or mine: my thoughts, my house, my work... are changed, if they exist at all, in Guinea.
Hearing French spill from my lips (albeit poorly) I notice my thoughts following a very different path. And without home or possessions save what I intend to give away by the end of the trip, all that is "Lynn" gives way to a different experience.
I am changed by the experience.
Many Westerners travel to Africa to "save" her. I travel to Africa to be saved.
Guinea is my deep personal poem.
