Guinea: Leaving (Or At Least Trying To)
By Katie Martocci

One would think that after enduring three weeks of intermittent electricity and water at a hotel that serves palm oil with a side of food for dinner, getting out of Guinea would be the fun part.  The drive from Mamou, a small town up country where I often travel for work, to the capital is a jaw clenching, stomach turning experience that leaves even non-Muslims praising Allah by the time they reach their destination. 

The one road connecting the capital to the interior of the country is about the width of an SUV; and with the Fouta’s mountains, cliffs and sprawling valleys, it is no surprise that the road is littered with skeletons of crashed cars, overturned buses, broken-down trucks and their sleeping crews. 

There are no rules on this road; and while most drivers seem to take drastic measures to avoid hitting animals, it often seems as if they are trying to hit one another.  The average driver does not use turning signals, drives too fast, passes other cars while approaching blind curves and fills his car with so many people and random objects that the back fender sparks on the pavement.  Its not uncommon to see loads strapped to a roof that is twice the size of the vehicle itself. 

Some have no windshields; others have windshields so cracked that the driver drives with his head out the window.  Cars often have a large piece of raw red meat attached to the hood “to let it breathe.” Most have four tires that are different sizes and often someone sitting in the trunk.  So when one pulls around a corner to see an overturned taxi in a ravine on the side of the road, wailing women running in circles with their hands over their faces and men stacking dead bodies on a flatbed truck that happens to be headed towards the capital and whose chauffeur has agreed to stop at the morgue, it does not take a genius to figure out how these accidents happen.

Back in Conakry, post-road trip, I am staying the night in a gasoline smelling, cockroach-infested apartment on a busy downtown street, appropriately nicknamed “Wall Street” for the crowds of young men carrying small calculators and accosting anyone lighter than caramel with rapid-fire “Madame, Monsieur…dollars, francs…what do you want?” 

A general practice to avoid missing the evening flight to Paris is to drive down to the capital the day before.  After all, on the off-chance that the military guard sitting at the foot of the ten yard-long bridge en route to Conakry cannot fight off explosive wielding opposition fighters who aim to blow it up, one will want a day to think through alternate routes—even though there aren’t any. 

I have nearly made it through the buffer day—few relaxing hours next to the pool at a nearby hotel balanced by a precarious conversation with five bored camouflage-wearing, automatic weapon-wielding soldiers who wonder where such a young girl is headed by herself and whose mere presence conjures images of rape.  I am pretty content, alive and in one piece.

The drive to the airport usually takes about a half hour; it is Friday evening in Conakry and several hundred thousand people are wandering out of the city’s mosques.  Nearing just over an hour of off-roading, honking, sitting in traffic and alternating between not moving and moving a little too fast, I arrive at the airport. Once inside, everything goes smoothly.

On the plane everyone has settled in, seatbelts buckle, the flight attendants do their last count.  The plane slowly creeps out to the runway while I ignore the emergency movie playing on the screen in front of me.  The flight attendants are asked to take their seats; the plane turns the final corner and readies itself for take-off down Conakry’s one runway.  The cabin goes dark. We are off.

The engines roar, and the plane rolls forward, slowly at first and then faster.  The acceleration has me pressed against my seat, and I strain my neck to keep an eye on the wing.  As we soar down the runway, I watch the lights from the airport blur like a photograph taken of a city street at night with the shutter open a little too long.  We are at full throttle, and I see the last three weeks of a frustrating trip play like a movie on fast forward outside my window, strangely enough, like seeing my life flash before my eyes.

And then it happens. BOOM!  The plane jumps; we hit something; something is broken.  Almost simultaneously I see a large, orange, fiery explosion out of the corner of my eye from the engine on my right.  The plane brakes hard, and we are still on the runway, barely, skidding and screeching down the last few feet of the wet, bumpy pavement.  The seatbelt bites hard against my hips.  I brace myself against the seat in front of me as I feel the back of the plane shift from left to right.  The massive weight of the plane propels us further down the runway.  I grip my armrests; I wonder how much of the runway is left.

The contents of the small compartments in the kitchen are banging furiously in the back of the plane; bags in the overhead compartments are sliding forward; for a long moment I stop breathing.  So this how it ends, I think to myself, on the end of a runway in Guinea.  I close my eyes and brace for impact.

The plane grinds to a halt.  I look around.  I am still alive, still on the plane.  Everyone looks alive.  I start breathing again.  I think I survived.

Aborted take-off.

The captain’s voice emerges over the intercom, nervously addressing the passengers.  “Euuu, ladies and gentlemen,” he says in French, “we just had to abort take-off.”  I hear the click of the receiver.  Everyone is now looking at one another in panic and surprise, still shocked but very confused. 

Moments later, “We seem to have hit something, and we will wait here until the ground crew comes to inspect the plane.”  Still clearly shaken, the captain attempts the English translation and gives up before finishing...

So we sit there on the runway waiting for the ground crew to come.  In the distance, two headlights appear and a small truck nears.  Two men step out of the truck, while another, behind the wheel, takes a few laps around the plane.  The lights are still off in the cabin.

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