Le Grave

I think that's how that's spelled. Le grave. In the end of febuary all commerce in Guinee's capital city, Conakry came to a standstill. At first I thought that Guinees football (soccer) team must be playing a game, because when they play everyone is in front of the telly, the government even turns on electricity to every neighborhood in the day time. But there was no football. And then we heard "pop! pop! pop!" We went home. Manimou told me that it had happened before and that the police were only firing "stuff that makes your face and eyes burn", tear gas. So I stayed at home for a few days, and Manimou only left to try to find rice and sauce to eat.
We didn't know what it was about, no one really did, government workers were demanding higher wages and the taxi drivers were demanding that the government subsidize the price of gas. That or the taxi unions would have to almost double all taxi fares which were already high for your average Guinean.
What happened over the next few days was that everyone walked everywhere. when you looked down the auto route you could see a few cabbies trying to eek a living without results; everyone was walking. It was like having only pedestrian traffic on I-5 in Los Angelas.
Eventually President Lasana Conte gave all goverment workers a raise of $2.50usd a month and relieved gasoline prices and everything went back to what it was before.
One month later I received an email from my sister that explained the cause of the price in gasoline, Shell Oil pulled out of Guinee. My sister new why when no one around me did, in the forest they thought maybe it had something to do with Liberia because many of their issues are inflamed by the situation in Liberia.