Photo Story: Guinea Bissau

Some people might think all Africans dress like this. The truth is most don’t, so I knew these young men were heading somewhere for an occasion when I saw them walking towards me. Where exactly I wasn’t sure.

Guinea Bissau was once a Portuguese colony, but even had my knowledge of the language been better than the basic greetings I knew, I doubt these men would have spoken much. I’d left the capital, Bissau, that morning and was heading east on a surprisingly well-paved road towards the second city, Bafata. Those trees in the background are cashew-nut trees. Guinea Bissau is full of them.

Few tourists visit Guinea Bissau. Most people probably can’t place it on a map. As the men looked at me and the bike I reached for the camera. They were happy to pose. Travelling by bicycle through Africa threw up hundreds of random encounters like this. I wrote a blog post with this picture included here.