The hotel in Koundara that made us rent twelve rooms

We crossed into Guinea in the afternoon and the paperwork ate the rest of the
day, so it was properly dark by the time twelve of us started looking for
somewhere in Koundara to sleep. We tried several places. I will be diplomatic and
say that we kept driving.

The last one looked more or less reasonable, which by that point in the evening
was an enormous compliment. We asked for six rooms – twelve people, two to a
room, the arithmetic every group of travellers does without thinking about it.

The manager looked at the twelve of us, all men, and said no. Not no to the
rooms: no to two men sharing a bed. He was completely unmoved on the point. So we
rented twelve rooms, one each, and went off to them slightly stunned by our own
good fortune in a town where we had nearly slept in the cars.

Mine was not good. I got into my own sleeping bag on top of everything and did my
best to touch nothing else in the room, which is a way of sleeping I have got
better at over the years and still do not enjoy.

And then, from a building inside the same compound, a DJ started. There were
people going in and out all evening, and it turned out to be a graduation party.
Some of the group went over with a few beers and spent the night celebrating with
a room full of strangers marking something that had nothing to do with us.

I slept through it in my sleeping bag, which I think says everything about the
difference between the two halves of that crew. The worst hotel of the trip had
the best evening of the trip going on forty metres from my door.