An Evening at the Palace

NOTE: I am way behind on my posts. This one is from over a month ago...

After I had been in Bissau for a week, I began to think that I was invincible, that somehow the multiple episodes of food poisoning that I experienced while living in Brazil were exceptions. Of course, it is right at that moment when you begin to think your body is capable of taking the punishment that it falls apart.

The day I arrived in Bissau I was up until 3 a.m. working with my boss on a proposal due the next day. This pace continued through the weekend, as I somehow timed my visit precisely before the moment when all the proposals and paperwork were due. Somehow, on Saturday evening, we found respite in Bissau’s “nightlife.” Abraão, a young man who hangs around the hotel, works as an event promotor for the omnipresent cell phone company Orange, one of the few employers of local youth in Bissau. He got us tickets to see Bidinte, a famous local artist who played traditional Guinean music and also happens to be the boyfriend of the owner of the hotel.

(to see part of the show: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=mJROdlmtedA, under my videos “Aimeez123” you can also see a couple other of my clips)

The show took place in one of the few musical venues in Bissau, a monstrous pink hotel built by the Lebanese called the Palace (“Pah-lass-ee”) Hotel. It somewhat depressed me that the President’s residence, and every Ministry that I had seen so far were dwarfed in comparison to the size and luxury of the Palace. There was light and air conditioning, which in itself is considered supreme excess in Bissau, and when you top that off with ice cubes and imported whisky, we are talking paradise.

Not surprisingly, there were barely 15 people in attendance, as the tickets were too expensive for anyone other than the expat community or the small cadre of Guinean elite. Bidinte did his best to pretend the audience was packed, and put on a great show, along with his group of young dancers, back-up singers, and the gumbe player (plays an upside-down calabash in a bucket of water, which makes a sort of hollow thudding sound). Bidinte does not live in Bissau, much like the few lucky ones who have immigrated to Europe (Although Bidinte is probably one of the few who arrives with nothing illegal in his baggage). We ate dinner at the hotel, and of course, I got sick not from the street food, but from the food at the Guinean equivalent of the Four Seasons. I had racking colic all night and other stomach ailments for two days.