I was in Guinea-Bissau for two months recently. I went as part of an archival restoration project based out of UCLA but spent some time doing research for my own thesis. Not only was it my first time in Africa, but also my first time crossing the Atlantic as well as the longest I'd ever spent away from my native California. Honestly though, the culture shock wasn't quite as extreme as what I was anticipating.
True, Guinea-Bissau is one of the poorest countries in the world and has been plagued by civil war and political unrest for most of its recent history. HIV, polio, and other diseases are rampant. The water is undrinkable, trash fills the streets and the summer monsoons cause the sewers to overflow. But every person I met was incredibly kind and I've never felt safer wandering streets alone at night. Also, the vendors sell the best avocados and mangoes I've ever eaten in my life.
And of course, people are just people wherever you go. We're all the same, and to me, that was most apparent when I looked at the kids in Guinea-Bissau. While it's a little easier to see all the differences between myself and other similarly aged men and women there, whenever I looked at a kid I saw the exact same thing I see in Californian kids. Kids are kids are kids.
One scene that stands out in my memory took place on a sweltering day out by the Bissau docks overlooking the ocean. I was leaning over a low wall watching the shipping containers shift around in the distance when two little boys, aged around ten or eleven, came up next to me. They wore oversized t-shirts and mischievous smiles and one got my attention and showed me something in his hand.
It was a little square plastic bag, the kind that gets filled with clean drinking water and peddled on the streets by Muslim women in full black burqas despite the unrelenting heat. The kid had folded it into a beautiful little boat. "Olha isto," he said. "Watch this." He leaned over the low wall and, aiming carefully, dropped the boat gently into the ocean below while his friend and I watched intently.
It floated down softly, swaying a bit in the breeze like the literal plastic bag in the wind it was, before landing perfectly in the water. I was elated at the success, but the boat immediately ran aground upon a swirling pile of garbage and its delicate folds were undone. The boat was no longer there, just another small piece of trash in the filthy water.
My Portuguese was not good enough to express my sorrow at the capsizing or my gratitude in being included in the boat's maiden voyage, so instead I just gave the kid what I hoped was a sympathetic and encouraging shrug, like "Oh well, better luck next time." He seemed to understand and gave me the same shrug back. He and his friend wandered off. I turned back and tried to find the remains of the plastic boat in the swirling island of trash below. I couldn't.