What’s the deal with all the Guinea?

Heaven help me, but I have begun the process of learning Africa’s geography. Here are the main reasons why this is a struggle:

1. There are tons of countries in Africa (54 to be precise), most of which have indistinct shapes.
2. The countries are often difficult to spell… like Mozambique and Mauritius.
3. There are quite of few countries that I have never heard of (let alone, know their geographical location)… like Seychelles, Eritrea and Burkina Faso.
4. There are some countries that have several versions of the same name. For example: Guinea, Guinea-Bissau and Equatorial Guinea. Can’t these governments come up with more original names? Oh, and then there’s Papua New Guinea, but that’s in Oceania [You have my permission to be impressed that I knew that without looking it up].

So basically, Africa is going to be a challenge. When I initially took the sporcle quiz for Africa, I believe my score was something close to 5 out of 54. I had heard of many of these countries, but was not able to name them on command and definitely could not locate them.

Story time:

It’s my sophomore year of college. I’m sitting in my apartment on a Friday night (because I’m cool) with two of my roommates. We were probably playing cards or acting a fool or watching Gilmore Girls. Those were the stand-by activities of choice. Suddenly, we heard a thud on our door. Not a knock. A
knock usually comes in threes… but this was just one loud noise. One of my lovely roommates went to investigate the situation by looking through the peep hole. She busted out laughing because all she was through the peep hole was a pair of legs lying on the ground. For some reason, after this discovery, she decided it would be an excellent idea to then open the door.

So she opens the door and a guy falls (literally) into our apartment. And… he is unconscious. It was evident from the smell that this unconsciousness was due to a large helping of alcohol. We had never seen this fellow before in our lives and we not sure whether to laugh or be concerned that there was an unconscious, average-height and weight, white male sprawled on the floor of our apartment. We all looked at each other to gauge what our reaction should be. Utter confusion was the verdict.

Thankfully, he only laid there for a little while before awakening. Not surprisingly, he was quite confused about how he arrived at his location. We were not able to help him much. He quickly stood up and the proceeded to introduce himself to each one of us individually, complete with a handshake.
His name was Ryan and I wish we had become best friends, but I never saw him again. I guess we just didn’t roll with the same crowd.