A typical house in the Bandim district of Bissau.

I was quite amazed by these paintings on this house wall. It somehow reminded me of the America's - maybe that was also what the artist had in mind. So also in Bissau they listen to too much American rap music about how cool it is to do drive-by shootings and enjoy big-boob girls.

A mantis I managed to take snap-shots of in front of the parliament in Bissau. It was not moving at all except for some strange regular shaking of its body. It observed me with as a great an interest as I observed it:-)

A Total gas station in the centre of Bissau not far form the harbor. Notice the red ribbon on the wall which is a symbol for solidarity with HIV-positive people and those living with AIDS. On the right of the ribbon there was some additional information about the disease written in Portuguese. This kind of information could be found all around the inner city. Unfortunately many people are illiterate, they cannot afford condoms and even if they could it is very hard to find places where you can buy them. If we also consider that men in this area have several wives and several lovers you suddenly have an escalating HIV problem in the country. In continuation of this no treatment is provided for HIV and AIDS patients in Guinea-Bissau - the country is simply bankrupt.

On the façade is written "Belem's health centre". The centre was one of the centers used by the Bandim Health Project to test for tuberculosis and other diseases. The building's general outdoor renovation also reflected its indoor condition:-( Here I by the way met two doctors who spoke fluent Russian since they got their degree from Russian universities. The level of education in Guinea-Bissau is overall very low and those few with good education primarily got their degrees abroad. 

Morten in the laboratory facilities he is using for his study. The facilities are part of the National Laboratory in Guinea-Bissau e.g. a facility somewhat equal to Statens Serum Institut in Denmark. A thing which certainly differs from the Danish variant is that the National Laboratory does not receive any funding from the state. Actually almost all funding come from Swedish and Danish projects/companies. On this visit we where so unlucky to experience one of the very frequent black-outs which lasted around 5 minutes until the backup generators were running and the power came back on.

On Friday the 27th October the project had visitors from MRC in The Gambia and one of the visitors held a presentation of his work with AIDS treatment and research in The Gambia. Even I as not being a doctor got some good facts and information from his presentation. Later in the evening I lost two games of Settlers to him and Karen (the girl to the right on the picture). To my defense it was the first board game of Settlers I ever played.

On one of the last days in Bissau I went souvenir shopping with Marie (left) and Karen (right) to buy nice wooden figures. We had a good time bargaining with the locals in the heat. A small tip for before you go on your next trip to Bissau is that you can approximately get the wooden souvenirs for a bit less than half the price they are asking (without "killing" them and their family).

18th November 2006