Guinea

One more card for today.. and this one is more than special. Honestly, I was sooo excited to find this in my mailbox. It's not like I get mail from Guinea every day, and the card itself is pretty amazing, too!



I still can't quite believe I actually have this card. Madeleine, who is currently living in Guinea and teaching literacy teaching there, sent me a message asking me if I'd like to swap! I would've never expected anything like that as it's such a rare country and I would've imagined she gets tons of swap requests, but as she asked first, of course I wanted to swap. And she got me such a special card, too, a handmade painting by a local artist Oumar Diallo. It's a very typical Guinean painting, Madeleine tells me you won't find this style anywhere else. The painter is pretty amazing, too - his studio is tiny, with only one little (broken) table and a few chairs, but out of nothing, he creates these wonderful paintings. I'd say that really is something to admire!



Madeleine sent the card (and another, a vintage card of a waterfall) in an envelope because she said postmen in Guinea like postcards as much as she does, and if you tried to send a written and stamped postcard it most likely would just disappear. That is such a shame :( The stamps are very pretty but I couldn't find any info on them. Most Guinean stamps look *really* strange and don't seem to have any relation to the country. Take a look at these and you'll see what I mean. It seems like most of the stamp issues there are just pretty pieces of paper intended for collectors, never to be used as actual postage.