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Keeping in Touch in Guinea
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Important
phones and addresses
Telephones in Guinea
Mailing to and from Guinea
Packages sent to Guinea
Email access
Important
phones and addresses
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Phones in Guinea: dial
011, and then...
- Peace Corps Houses:
- Conakry Transit House: 224-62-35-02-44
- Labe:
224-62-35-02-41 (land)
224-60-26-03-45 (cell)
224-64-46-32-84 (cell)
- Boke:
224-62-35-02-42 (land)
224-60-25-15-38 (cell)
224-64-43-71-48 (cell)
- Kankan:
224-62-35-02-43 (land)
- Peace Corps HQ Office, Conakry 224-62-35-02-40
- ENATEF (Mamou) 224-60-68-06-34
Peace Corps Address, Conakry
Corps de la Paix Americain
BP 1927
Conakry, Guinea
West Africa
Tel: 011-224-62-35-02-40
US Embassy in Guinea
American Embassy
2d Blvd. and 9th Ave, B.P. 603
Conakry, Guinea
West Africa
Tel: 245-441-520
Guinean Embassy in the US
Embassy of the Republic of Guinea
2112 Leroy Place NW
Washington, DC 20008
202-986-4300
The Consul was Bapate Barry, Tel: 202 325-6495 or
202-986-4300.
For visa requirements, see our visiting
Guinea page.
Peace Corps Headquarters, Washington
DC - Guinea Desk
Contact person is:
Ryan Derni
Country Desk Assistant
Cape Verde, The Gambia, Guinea, Senegal
RPCV Guinea 2005-2007
Tel: 1-800-424-8580 ext. 2318 or (202) 692-2318
Fax: (202) 692-2301
rderni@ peacecorps.gov
(at the Africa Region Desk of the Peace Corps
in Washington DC)
DHL Service
Note : Always address the DHL packages to the
Peace Corps Director, but include the volunteer's
name inside the package.
Peace Corps Director
Corps de la Paix, Guinée
Quartier Taouyah, Commune de Ratoma
B.P. 1927
Conakry
Guinea
International Refugee Commission
(IRC)
Timothy Bishop
West Africa Regional Coordinator
International Rescue Committee
122 East 42nd Street
New York, NY 10168
Tel 212-551-0989
Fax 212-551-3185
There are phones in most towns and
cities, and mobile phones are available in most
prefectural capitals.
Phone calls to Guinea are still quite
expensive, so shop around for
the lowest rate. Feel free to ask the Guinea
List e-mail list for suggestions. The
following are some good places to start:
| AT&T
International Calling Plan |
- A flat dollar amount a month
and then pay a substantially discounted per-minute
rate.
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| CallDepot |
- This is a direct-dial
service for 50 cents a minute that is billed
to your regular telephone number at the end
of the month. You can reach them at
1-888-223-1610.
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| Uniontelecard
database |
- Check out www.uniontelecard.com
for a large database of calling cards. They
allow you to search for the least expensive
card by country.
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| Callback |
- For people in Guinea to call
the states, there is Callback. Callback
works like a switch. You subscribe to the
service, and you can use it anywhere in the
world and pay US fees. A Guinean friend of
Stephanie Chasteen, Ousmane Barry, is an agent
for one of them, Globaltel. It's only $ .315
per minute from Guinea or you can buy a pre-paid
phone card of $25, $50 or $100. Here is his
website
or email Ousmane at [email protected]
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prepaid international calling cards |
- Pre-paid calling cards
can get you rates under 33 cents a minute,
but may be unreliable. The following information
should be verified, as it changes rapidly:
- www.speedypin.com
This company boasts calls to Guinea for 5.8
cents a minute from the U.S. They sent us
two cards to try out, and the PCV parents
that used them experienced no problems.
STi Safari Guinea calling card
http://speedypin.com/phone/cards/Guinea
Purchase a $20 card here:
http://speedypin.com/prepaid/phone-card/SAF20
- Prepaid AT&T phone
card, 14 cents a minute to Guinea
(as of Feb 1, 2006), purchased at Walmart.
With this card dial the access number and
the card number (both printed on the card).
Do not dial the "011" international
code but do dial the country code "224"
and then the phone number. After you dial
these numbers, there's a 10-15 second pause.
If the number rings through, you'll hear a
long buzz with stops and then buzzes again.
This is the phone ringing at the other end.
If you hear a warbling tone and a message
in French (with or without music in the background)
your call will not go through. Unfortunately,
if you wait until you hear the French message,
you will be charged for the call. We spent
$15 figuring this out. My advice is to hang
up if you hear the warbling tone, wait a few
minutes, and try again.
- MCI Global calling
card can be purchased at Costco for
$20.00. On the front of the card it said "MCI
575 minutes rechargable prepaid phone card."
The cost using this card for calls to Guinea
is 38 cents per minute.
- Nobel.com
- Rates from 13 - 20 cents for Guinea. Gets
some high ratings from parents. One says,
"The one-second card seems to be a better
value even though the cost per minute is higher
because sometimes when I call nothing happens
but somehow I've connected and time (= money)
is deducted. Better to lose seconds than 3
minutes. "
- www.enjoyprepaid.com.
STAY AWAY! WARNING:
One parent says:. "Today they said we
dialed incorrectly and now we are being charged
with a $335 phone bill for a call to Guinea.
Be very careful of this company." Another
says they had trouble getting through, and
Enjoy.com said that since they use land lines,
it is very difficult to call Guinea using
them.
- Prepaid
Call has phone cards to a variety
of countries. Their best rate to Guinea without
a connection fee was $0.141 as of January
2008.
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Mailing
to and from Guinea
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Mail is slow and letters to and from Guinea can
get lost. There are post offices in prefectural
and regional capitals, but if you live in the bush,
you will have to travel to send and receive mail.
Most Peace Corps volunteers use an informal mail
system, since their sites have no post office. Once
mail to PCVs makes it to Conakry, it sits in the
Embassy until Peace Corps picks it up. Once Peace
Corps picks it up, it sits in the PC office until:
a) the volunteer comes to get it. b) someone else
takes it to the regional capital. If someone takes
it to the regional capital, then it sits in the
regional house until either the volunteer comes
and gets it or another person (usually a volunteer)
comes through the regional capital on their way
to visit the volunteer who has mail.
For PCVs using the informal system, the length
of time varies mostly depending on distance from
the regional capitol or from a roadway frequently
passed by Peace Corps or other friendly expat vehicles.
If all of the stars are in alignment, a letter can
arrive in a volunteer's hands up-country within
two weeks of being sent. This is enough of a rarity
that volunteers marvel over it when it happens.
One or two months is not rare. For packages, 2-
12 months is average.
Mail sent by PCVs from Guiniea is often dependent
on someone being willing to take it to the States.
People travel to Guinea often and are willing to
take packages/mail. There are frequent updates on
who is going on the Guinea List.
When you send mail to a PCV, be sure to include
and highlight the words "Corps de la Paix Américain"
in the address. Not all Guineans write the numbers
the way we do in the States--especially the numbers
1, 7, and 9, and those are 3 of the numbers in our
Peace Corps address's "B.P. 1927." Yet
everyone in Guinea knows about Peace Corps, and
every letter or package with "Corps de la Paix"
on it will go straight to the Peace Corps's mailbox
in Conakry.
Post Boxes
Guinea residents (including PCVs) can obtain
a PO Box (Boite Postale, or BP) in the prefecture
nearest where they live for a fee. Each prefecture's
post office has a different level of reliability
and requires testing. Send a few test mails, and
if the address works consistently, it could be
distributed more frequently.
If the PO Box works, it's tremendously useful
for letters (not for packages). Instead
of receiving mail once every two or three months
when visiting regional capitals, some people report
receiving mail once or twice a week. If you are
in the prefectoral capital with any frequency,
this is an option to consider.
We have good reports on the Post Offices in Fria,
Pita, Kissidougou, Dinguiraye, and Mamou.
It is best
to send small packages. The Guinean mail system
is not reliable, particularly with packages.
| surface
mail |
Do
not, by any means, send packages by surface
mail. They will never arrive. |
| airmail
packages |
Airmail packages
sometimes arrive (50-75% receive rate).
Padded 9"x12" envelopes seemed to work well--they're
much cheaper to send than boxes and I suspect
they're "inspected" less frequently. |
| DHL |
DHL
is expensive and may cost the volunteer to
receive it, but if it is very important, it
is more certain to arrive. |
| Fed
Ex |
Fed Ex
does not deliver to Guinea. |
| air
cargo |
You can send packages
via air cargo with Delta
Airlines/Air France. It's $16.72/kilo, at
least out of New York (1 kg = 2.2 lb). Whereas
a 10 lb box costs over $200 to send with DHL,
it's about $80 via air cargo. |
|
M-Bag |
M-Bag is for books,
and costs less than other mail. It costs about
$4 a pound with a minimum of 11 pounds to
send an M-bag to Guinea. |
As with the mail, be sure to include
and highlight the words "Corps de la Paix Américain
" in the address. This eliminates the confusion
of not recognizing the way we write 1927.
Suggestions of things to send:
- Newspaper clippings, magazines,
small paperback books
- Photos and pictures
- Music tapes, tapes from the radio,
voice recordings
- Batteries and film
- DVDs for the Conakry house
- Edible goodies: junk food, pasta
sauce mix, koolaid, instant meals, ramen noodles,
dried fruit, mac & cheese, spices., hot chocolate,
granola bars, cocoa
- Frivolous surprises (stickers, bookmarks,
etc.)
- Coloring books for the kids
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