A Hard Lesson from Memory Lane
By Francis X. Maier
The plane from Dakar into Guinea-Bissau was ninety minutes late and, as luck would have it, half a dozen other Americans had flopped themselves around the waiting room. They were kids in their late teens, part of a high-end adventure travel group, the sort that specializes in appealing to enlightened cultural elites. They were on their way to a three-week "cultural plunge" into the achievements of African socialism. A former Portuguese colony on Africa's western hump, Guinea-Bissau had won its independence just a few years before. Now – in the summer of 1981 – it was a…
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