A Visit to the University

On Tuesday, June 23, after our morning drumming class, Wally and I went to visit the national university. We were accompanied by Mohammad, Amara’s brother. The university is located on the main road between our house and downtown Conakry, and we have passed it several times on trips into town. It is past the main hospital, the grand mosque, and just before the largest cemetery in town, all of which are right along the same road.

When we leave the house we are supposed to go with one of the Guineans to make sure we don’t get lost and don’t get into trouble. After our morning drumming class, I asked Mohammad if he would go with us to the university. Mohammad only speaks a few words of English and between us Wally and I only speak a few words of French, so communication was somewhat confusing. We were sitting on the patio of the house, and pretty soon everyone around was involved in the discussion. They brought out Ballake, who is one of the drumming instructors and who speaks better English. Then one of the guards, who also speaks some English, got involved. He had gone with us to the Maison de Livre bookstore, and while we were there we had talked about visiting the university to see if they had a bookstore, so he immediately began asking me about the books I was looking for. They then began discussing in Suissui the issue of whether the university had a bookstore or not. I could only follow a little, but as usual the discussion got very heated and involved a lot of shouting and gesticulating, and I think from the few French words I could pick up that they were then discussing whether I wanted to go to the library or the bookstore. After awhile it seemed that their discussion broke down to which direction the university actually was from our house.

In any case, they resolved all these issues, and Wally, Mohammad and I set out. We quickly found a taxi at the crossroads in Conteya, a couple blocks from our place. The taxi took us straight to the university, drove in the front gate, and dropped us off at the front door. We walked in and began looking around the campus. In the discussions before we left, the guys were referring to the university as “Gamal,” and I didn’t know what that meant, but they assured me that was the name of the university. I saw from a bus parked in front of the university that its official name is the Université Gamal Abdel Nasser. We walked into a breezeway under the main building and onto a large courtyard in the back. There were many tropical trees around, a group was playing soccer across the courtyard, and many students and others were walking around. On the backside of the main building, which was four stories tall, we could see many classrooms, which opened to outdoor hallways along the building. The building looked institutional, old and worn, as many buildings do in the harsh tropical environment.

We walked across the courtyard to a newer and nicely painted building, which we found out was the library. Mohammad had taken from the conversation on the patio that we were looking for books, so this seemed like the logical place to take us. After we entered the library, he tried to explain to the woman at the desk what we wanted, although I’m not sure he really knew, nor did we – our main objective was simply to look around and get a feel for the university. The woman didn’t really understand and called the director to come down and speak with us. The director showed up fairly quickly, a very elegant woman in a beautiful colorful African dress and scarf, and she spoke meticulous French. I could follow some of what she said, and she told Mohammad their library collection covered engineering and computer science, primarily, and was all in French. She directed him to the English Department, where she said they had a small English library.

We said good-bye to the director and walked around a few buildings, ended up off campus and walked along the main road for a ways, then went into a courtyard by what appeared to be an elementary school. We continued across the courtyard and it appeared we were reentering the university campus. We passed a small shed where a man had set up an improvised photocopy shop – he had one copier and made a living by making photocopies for students and others. We entered a gate and saw a bulletin board to the side announcing English News Review, so we figured we had arrived to the English Department.

Mohammad saw a young woman he knew and she came over and spoke with us. She talked with Mohammad in Suissui, then spoke to Wally and me in English. She took us over to their small library, which consisted of a few books about taking the SAT and topics like that. The librarian came over to speak with us, and he spoke pretty good English. We more or less said hello, and asked him if there was a bookstore on campus, and he said no, they didn’t have anything like that. We thanked him and the young lady then took us to the director’s office. He was a very nice gentleman who invited us in and had us sit down across his desk. He also spoke very good English. We told him we were visiting and looking around campus, and just wanted to know more about the university. He explained that the English Department was actually part of another university, which had its main campus about 50 km away. He then proceeded to show us the books they use for their English instruction. We spoke with him a little more, and then went back into the courtyard.

As we were walking out I pulled out my camera to take a picture of the English Department building, and a few students who were standing around came over and began practicing their English with Wally and me. They actually spoke very well, and they wanted me to take a picture of them. I did so, and then they wanted to know how they could get a copy. I asked if they had e-mail, and they all wrote down their e-mail addresses, and I promised to send them the picture. A young lady walked up and wanted a picture of us with her camera. She had a nice, new red Sony camera. Many more crowded around, all speaking in their student English, and we took several more photos.

We walked back to the main university and across campus, taking some photos of the buildings, people and gardens. The university’s marching band was practicing and we could hear the music in the distance. I found it remarkable that the university would have such a band, but we did not take time to follow the music and find them. As we crossed the campus, we passed departments that specialized in architecture and in computers. Mohammad communicated to us that the university is very big, and also very bad. I’m not sure exactly what he meant by bad, but it appeared that he was repeating what he had heard people say. As we walked to the main building, Wally was identifying several tropical tree species that he knew from living in Florida and from spending time in the Caribbean. He noted how unusual it was, from the point of view of our American eyes, to see tropical species on a university campus. The trees certainly added a lot of character to the place, and also provided some shade in Guinea’s relentless tropical sun.

We walked back to the main gate and out onto the very busy main avenue, where we caught a bus and continued on our way. Our visit to this campus was rather short but interesting. We were able to get a sense of how colleges operate by talking to the librarian and the director and students in the English Department. As noted in previous postings, a university like this is perhaps an anomaly in Guinea, but also an important agent of change and development for the people in this country. Just before we left the house, one of the vendors explained to me that he had a degree in economics, and sold handicrafts because that was the family business. He said 60 percent of the people in Guinea don’t go to school, and he shook his head and said “that is very, very bad.”