The three Guineas: which one you actually mean

Three countries in Africa are called Guinea, and hardly anyone can tell you which is
which. I have now been to all three, and I can report that the confusion is not your
fault.

Start with the name, because Guinea was never a country to begin with. It was what
Europeans called the whole West African coast between the Sahel and the forest belt,
from the fifteenth century onward – likely from a Berber word for the lands south of
the Sahara, though the etymology is genuinely disputed. Three colonial powers ended
up holding pieces of that single coast: France, Portugal and Spain.

Then each of them left, and each colony kept the regional name and added something
to tell itself apart. French Guinea went first, in 1958, and simply stayed Guinea.
Spanish Guinea followed in 1968 and became Equatorial Guinea, for its position on
the gulf near the equator. Portuguese Guinea declared independence in 1973 and
appended the name of its capital: Guinea-Bissau. No committee handed out the names.
Each country chose its own.

On the ground they are far easier to tell apart than they are on paper.

Guinea is the big one, French-speaking, with Conakry on the coast and the green
highlands of the Fouta Djallon stacked up behind it. I drove in over a border marked
by a rope, on a road built about fifty years ago and never resurfaced, and I left
one of our cars behind in the country.

Guinea-Bissau is small, Portuguese-speaking and among the least visited
countries anywhere. Its one listed sight is a colonial old town standing half
empty, because ordinary life happens somewhere else entirely.

Equatorial Guinea is the outlier: Spanish-speaking, oil-rich, mostly on an
island, and it felt less like West Africa than like a Spanish province that had
drifted a long way south.

One coast, one old name, three very different countries. Now you know which one you
meant.