The offense was trying to take photos of the carnival without being an official photographer.

Instead of telling me that photography was not permitted, or that I would have to obtain a permit, a guy of Guardia Nacional started yelling at me, grabbed my camera, and pushed me into the police station. All my questions  to understand what I had done wrong remained unheard, the guy was just yelling at me in Portuguese. He got even more angry when he realized that in the meantime Craig and Milos had run away with Michal’s camera.

After a half an hour of yelling and fighting over my camera a lady came around with a bag full of press passes. She wanted to have 35000CFA (more than 50EUR) which I quickly bargained to 10EUR.

As soon as I had my photographer pass the guy let go of me and never harassed me again.

I am still proudly wearing the badge stating that I am an official photographer of the Ministry of National Education, Youth and Cultural Affairs of the Republic of Guinea – Bissau.

Nevertheless it is a sad story. To even the smallest delict the police replies with pure violence. They were beating children and women with their batons and old car v-belts for standing too close to the street and similarly serious offenses.

The carnival was closed today by a beautiful costume parade. Here some impressions:

We have checked out from our rooms and are waiting for the last carnival day to start. Around noon it is too hot to do anything outside.

The last two weeks were an unforgettable experience (I fell in love with the people of sub-saharan Africa again), a tough challenge (I can’t remember to ever have slept that little, except perhaps during some crazy training sessions in Belgium in 2007), and I found one of the still existing real banana republics in the world: Guinea-Bissau. It is all about corruption here, everybody is trying to rip you off, you are constantly at the mercy of the many shady officials (or would-be officials, everybody is a minister or a former minister or a relative of a minister or at least a friend of a minister here and they all derive special privileges and rights from their “status”).

Despotism at its best. Nice to experience firsthand, but even nicer to leave behind. 12 hours until departure …

We wanted to hire a boat and go to one of the islands of Guinea Bissau today but prices were too high. Our best offer for a one day trip was 450.000 CFA, around 700 EUR, far beyond our budget. The islands are around 100km away, but still 700EUR is heavily overpriced. Or our bargaining skills are too limited. Or both.

We are hanging out at the hotel pool instead, drinking beer, and waiting for the temperature to fall before we go to the city again.

There are still a lot of teams trying to sell their car, or even worse,  waiting for the money for an already sold one. The whole country seems to have run out of money.