Return to Guinea

I traveled back to this intensely alive place last month. It was my fourth time visiting in twenty years. My dear friends and teachers, Pam and Mimo Camara, hosted a group of women dancers from the Hudson Valley. We danced, made music, did batik dyeing, and connected with each other and this complex world of family, musicians and dance teachers. 

Guinea is a broken down world in many ways. Yet each time I travel there I also see it as whole at the core. People live with grace and dignity and love in the face of the difficulty. Experiencing this always opens me up. 

I also opened the sketchbook and looked out . . .

Here is the title page, created at the end of the trip to record the dates and encapsulate the time with a wax print of a radiating sun.  

In the tropics around the world the palm tree is always a good place to start loosening up the line and brush. My weakening eyes are allowing me to be more relaxed with my painting. 

Everyone went off to the huge medina market one morning. I had shopped there on previous trips and knew I wasn't up to its intensity, so I stayed back, sitting on the upper porch, finding beauty in the view 

 

Outside the walls of our compound these unusual trees were growing. I had seen them throughout India as well. I researched online their common and Latin names and Hindu meaning. 

 

I began to draw the musical instruments around us, starting with the bolon harp. I tried to fit it on one page and soon realized it had to stretch up much further. 

Here is our dance and drum teacher Mohammed with the bolon. See below for a video of him playing it with others.

 Next it was the Gongoma, a huge thumb piano. 

 Here I am drawing the gongoma and being watched closely- 

 And Mariama, one of our wonderful dance teachers, playing the gongoma - 

The balafon, a wooden xylophone, was left leaning up again the wall showing its underside. The small gourds strapped to the bottom looked like gathered fruit. 

We visited the largest baobab tree in Conakry. I stood under its immensity and had my picture taken. Back at the house I drew from the photo, listening to the balafon being played down below in the courtyard. Listen to a clip of this at the end -

Here are Pam and Mimo, whose love has created the space for all of us to experience this world. 

And me having a dancing moment with Djeli Kany, our longtime teacher and senior dancer with the Balletes Africanes. 

This was the world of music and voice and movement we were surrounded by each day . . .

 And here we are - all of us together in the aliveness - dancers - teachers - friends.

If you made it all the way through - and want to go deeper - here are my sketchbooks from previous trips to Guinea - 

Guinea Sketchbook - Part One

Guinea Sketchbook - Part Two 

Guinea Sketchbook - Part Three

Under the Mango Tree

And at the end here is Djeli Guinee our master balafonist and singer offering her heart -  take it in -  

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VATJgXNodly1-rJa-qgAV3SV0IWNK6A3/view?usp=drive_link