"GREETINGS FROM …" are short field notes. Friends of OLLI send us their impressions from their travels.
Guinea, West Africa. When Sophie set out from Dresden in her 1994 Toyota 4Runner headed for Cape Town, she knew little more about Guinea than its name. Yet this country, of all places, turned out to be one of the highlights of her journey across Africa: red dirt roads, deep-green forests, waterfalls—and encounters that have stayed with her to this day.
Dear Travel Enthusiasts
Ironically, I’d only ever heard the name Guinea before. Today I can say: Spending December there was one of the highlights of my trip through Africa.
Above all, I found the people incredibly warm and open-minded—even though we often didn’t even speak the same language. We danced together; in Conakry, someone bought me a beer; and at Christmas, I showed a few curious kids how to make German dumplings and red cabbage.
Unfortunately, they weren’t convinced, haha.
And as if the people hadn’t already impressed me enough, there was the landscape to boot: red roads, deep-green forests, and waterfalls unlike any I’d ever seen before. I’ll never forget my time in Guinea.
💡 Did you know that some of the water flowing through West Africa thousands of kilometers away actually originates in the mountains of Guinea? It’s no coincidence that the Fouta-Djallon Highlands are known as the “water castle of West Africa.” Several of the region’s major international rivers—including the Niger, the Senegal, and the Gambia—have their source here. The FAO counts approximately 1,165 rivers and watercourses that originate in the Fouta Djallon and along the Guinean mountain range.
Perhaps the most remarkable of these is the Niger River: Starting in Guinea, it flows for about 4,000 kilometers through West Africa to the Gulf of Guinea.
This means that anyone traveling through the Fouta Djallon Highlands isn’t just crossing a green mountainous landscape—they’re traveling over one of West Africa’s most important water reservoirs.
Warm regards from Guinea
Sophie
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