Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
B & B Restaurant Corp. in Manhattan
Guineans living in New York City do have reminders of their home in West Africa. There are restaurants like the B & B in midtown Manhattan, which serves Guinean dishes and employs a number of Guineans. But given the violence that has gripped their homeland in recent weeks, many Guineans in New York are looking home anxiously, and awaiting news from their friends and family. Some Guineans in New York are even organizing opposition to the country’s military rulers. The World’s Alex Gallafent takes the pulse of Guineans in New York.
Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.
MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston. In the West African country of Guinea, a national strike today left streets and workplaces deserted. People were protesting an incident two weeks ago in which soldiers opened fire on a crowd in a soccer stadium. Human rights groups say more than 150 people were killed. Fifty thousand people had gathered in the stadium, in the capital Conakry, to protest the country’s military regime. For Guineans living here in the United States, the situation back home is confusing and frightening. The World’s Alex Gallafent reports from New York.
ALEX GALLAFENT: Mamadou Sidy Barry is a Guinean in New York, and here’s here on his own.
MAMDOU SIDY BARRY: All my family members are over there in Guinea, my wife, my daughter, and my father, brothers, everybody. So I am here by myself and I’m here for political asylum
GALLAFENT: I caught up with Barry at the West African restaurant he runs in midtown Manhattan. It’s a small place, and Barry’s staff is getting for the lunch rush. But back in Guinea, Barry was a political activist, working for an opposition party. He says he was arrested during a local election in 2005 and jailed for three weeks. On his release, he fled to neighboring Mali. He didn’t feel safe there either.
BARRY: So from there I decided to come to the United States of America.
GALLAFENT: He hasn’t seen his family in years. And since the violence of two weeks ago, Mamadou Sidy Barry has found it hard to reach them. He says communication lines into Guinea have been disrupted, and he’s worried about his daughter in particular.
BARRY: My daughter is three years, so she’s a very small girl, and she’s really living on the panic, on the trauma, you know. A little girl of three years, hearing every time sounds of guns, you know. All over the night, they are in the streets of Conakry, blowing up guns, you know. It’s crazy.
GALLAFENT: What does it feel like to be here while your family is there?
BARRY: It is very, very, very hard, very difficult. When they tell you some people lost their beloved ones, they never see their bodies, they never seem them in jail, they never see them in hospital, so it means that these people have been pulled away, or they have been buried, but who knows where and how? What happened to the other person can happen to your own too, so it is really a very hard time for us.
GALLAFENT: Many of the workers in Barry’s restaurant are from Guinea themselves.
BARRY: Ismael!
GALLAFENT: Barry calls one of them from out of the kitchen, where a grill is piled high with chunks of meat.
ISMAEL: [speaking Guinean Creole]
GALLAFENT: He says, “My wife and three children are in Guinea. It’s safe here in New York, but if my family isn’t safe, I can’t be at peace.” Finally, Mamadou Sidy Barry introduces me to a young woman named Mariama. She comes out from the kitchen in an apron smeared with cooking juices and tells her story.
MARIAMA: [speaking Guinean Creole]
GALLAFENT: Barry translates.
MARIAMA: [speaking Guinean Creole]
BARRY: Really I’m very worried, because what is going on back home in my country is terrible. They are raping women, killing them, taking off their clothes in the street in public and rape them in front of everybody, kill children. My family is over there. My husband, my children, my mother, my brothers and even they killed one of my brothers and I am terrified about what is going on.
GALLAFENT: The reports they’re hearing suggest that the violence didn’t spread beyond the events of two weeks ago, but that doesn’t ease the minds of these Guineans in the United States. The Guinean community here is tiny, but Mamadou Sidy Barry says they plan to organize a series of rallies in Washington to protest what happened back home. For The World, I’m Alex Gallafent in New York.
Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.
Small countries like this get so little press – THANKS NPR!!! Please follow thru and provide updates when the rallies get organized!