Although the rutted main streets of Guinea’s capital, Conakry, remained mostly deserted and shops were shuttered because of a nationwide strike, kiosks were opening for business on Thursday– to turn a profit.

“I came to the market to buy rice and sauce ingredients because there’s nothing left at home,” said Camara Saran Traore, shopping for a family of five in the Taouyah district. “I found that with my 50,000 GNF (US $9) I can’t buy anything. I have had to completely scale down what we are going to eat.”

The strike called by Guinea’s powerful labour unions - the third in a year - was prompted in large part by soaring inflation over the last three years that has made basic goods unaffordable for most Guineans. But with the ports shut down and most shops remaining closed, businesses that do open their doors have doubled prices.

“The traders are profiting well from us now in this crisis,” sighed Bilguissa Barry, who had likewise toured all the kiosks in her suburb but had not been able to afford anything.

Rice prices double

Rice, a local staple that is mostly imported from Asia and elsewhere, despite the vast expanses of suitable but unexploited land in Guinea, is even further out of reach than before the strike.

Enough rice to feed a family of six for three or four days, had cost 126,000 GNF ($22) before the strike. On Wednesday, the same 50kg bag was selling for 230,000 GNF ($40) in Conakry, and 300,000 GNF ($53) in Kissidougou, a main town in the country’s southeast.

The Guinean government's agreement to cut the cost of a 50kg sack of rice from $24 to $16 was central to ending a different, city-wide strike the unions called in Conakry last June.

“When is the strike going to end which is making us even more miserable than before it started?” griped Asmaou Barry, trailing back from the market with empty bags. She usually spends her days cleaning other people’s houses, but for the last two weeks she has been stuck in her own, waiting for normality to return.

“We are in business to make profit not to lose,” countered rice merchant Yalikatou Soumah, pointing to the quadrupling cost of fuel as a new expense clients should factor in.

Unprecedented violence

While some people are venturing out to look for food or make a quick profit, many more families are still staying at home.

For Sory Diawara, a police administrator shopping around to find supplies for his family, it is fear of violence, not the desire to exert more pressure on the government, that is keeping his relatives at home. “I don’t want them to get caught up in the clashes between the security forces and the youths,” Diawara said.

Since President Lansana Conte seized power in 1984, Guinea has rarely seen violence to the same extent as during the last two weeks. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which through the Guinean Red Cross has delegates in all 33 of Guinea’s provinces, said in a statement on Wednesday that it had recorded 370 people injured since the strike began and 35 deaths.

ICRC said of those 24 were killed in Conakry on Monday when thousands of people who turned out there and in provincial towns to protest for change were dispersed by the army and police.

Djoulde Barry, director general of Donka hospital in Conakry, the largest medical facility in the country, told IRIN on Thursday that 33 dead have been registered at that hospital alone. Residents in the worst-hit suburbs say many more people were killed in the violence but were buried without being brought to the hospital. Government officials have told journalists that at least 10 people were killed in provincial cities.

Talks ongoing

On Thursday evening it was unclear how far talks meant to end the strike had progressed. Union leaders have said they will not call an end to their action until all their demands have been met, including their top request that President Conte hand over all his powers to a prime minister acceptable to the unions.

Union leaders said on Wednesday that Conte had agreed to appoint a new prime minister to head the government. However, talks on Thursday to thrash out the details of how to devolve Conte’s powers, and who should be appointed, dragged on throughout the day.

In the meantime the strike is biting deeper into Guinea’s economy. It has hit the country’s main official source of earnings, its bauxite and gold exports hard enough to rattle world bauxite markets. However, unofficial estimates of the size of Guinea’s informal economy rank it as amounting to perhaps 85 percent again of the official economy, and most people make a living trading or bartering basic necessities.

“I don’t know where our country is going,” said Camara Saran Traore as she trailed back from shops in the Taouyah district of Conakry. “All I know is Guinea has everything, and yet still we lack everything.”