Labé

Labé takes its name and its standing from the Fula state that formed in these highlands. Jallonke and other farming peoples held the plateau before Fula herders moved in over several centuries, and in the early eighteenth century Muslim Fula leaders launched a jihad that produced the imamate of Futa Jallon, a state ruled by an almamy, with its political capital at Timbo and its religious centre at Fougoumba. Labé became the seat of one of its nine provinces, and a powerful one, controlling trade routes north and west towards the Gambia and the coast.

Its rulers were powerful enough to act almost independently. When the French advanced from the coast in the late nineteenth century and imposed a protectorate after the death of the almamy Bokar Biro in 1896, Alfa Yaya of Labé attempted to preserve his province's autonomy; he was arrested, exiled and died in exile in 1912, and is remembered in Guinea as a figure of resistance.

Under colonial rule Labé became an administrative centre and the commercial hub of the highlands, a gathering point for cattle, hides and oranges. After independence, relations between Sékou Touré's government and the Fula elite were poor, and the region lost many people to detention and to exile in Senegal, Sierra Leone, Côte d'Ivoire and later France and the United States. That emigration became a permanent feature: money sent home by Fula traders abroad has built much of the modern town, which gained a university and remains the capital of the highlands in everything but name.

Labé is the cultural capital of the Fouta Djallon and of Guinea's Fula, and the tone of the town follows from that. Pular is spoken everywhere, and the region's long scholarly tradition — Koranic schools, manuscripts written in Pular using Arabic script, and respected teaching families — gives religion an intellectual as well as devotional weight. Mosques are central, Ramadan and Tabaski are the high points of the year, and emigrants return for them.

Restraint is the social ideal. Pulaaku, the Fula code of dignity, patience and self-control, discourages display and loud behaviour; greetings are elaborate, elders are deferred to, and visitors who follow the forms are treated with considerable generosity. Guests are offered milk, food and a place to rest almost as a matter of course.

Cattle remain a marker of identity and wealth even for families who now trade or farm, and village life keeps its old pattern of round houses, hedged gardens and orange trees. Crafts include indigo-dyed cloth, leatherwork, basketry and embroidery, sold in the market. Music here is quieter than the drumming traditions of the coast and the Mande east, leaning on flute, voice and religious song, and weddings and naming ceremonies are the main public celebrations.

About 200,000 people live in Labé, the main town of the highlands and the service centre for a wide, thinly settled region of villages.

The economy is trade, farming and remittances. The market gathers oranges, potatoes, fonio, maize, rice, vegetables and cattle from the plateau and sends them down to Conakry, and brings back rice, fuel, cement and manufactured goods. Government offices, the university, schools and the hospital provide salaried work, and money from the very large Fula diaspora in West Africa, Europe and North America supports many households and pays for much of the building visible around the town.

Days follow the prayers, the market and the farming calendar, and the cool climate makes work easier than on the coast. Electricity and water supplies are uneven, and the rains cut tracks to the villages for months at a time. The concerns raised locally are the state of the Conakry road, jobs for young people, who continue to leave in numbers, soil erosion and deforestation on the plateaux, and the drying of springs in a region that feeds several of West Africa's major rivers.

Highland food is built on fonio, milk and garden produce rather than the fish and palm oil of the coast. Fonio, a tiny grain that grows on poor hillside soils, is steamed like couscous and eaten with a leaf or groundnut sauce, or served with sour milk as a dish in its own right; it is the food most closely identified with the Fouta Djallon.

Rice is eaten too, with sauce feuille made from cassava or sweet-potato leaves cooked with palm oil, or with a groundnut sauce. Maize and millet appear as porridge, and potatoes — an important highland crop — go into stews or are fried. Meat is saved largely for festivals, when sheep are slaughtered for Tabaski, though brochettes and grilled beef are sold in town.

Milk is essential: fresh or soured milk, kossam, is drunk on its own, poured over fonio or grain, and churned into butter in the villages. The plateau's gardens and orchards give oranges, mangoes, avocados, bananas and guavas in season, sold in quantity at the market. Sweet tea poured in small rounds and sharp ginger juice are the everyday drinks, and alcohol is rare and largely disapproved of in this strongly Muslim region.