21st-25th September 2012 – Abidjan, Côte D'Ivoire
The bush taxi ride back to Abidjan from Grand-Bassam was not long – a 30km drive down the coast during which we would get dropped off at Cap Sud shopping centre, just near where we were staying. It was the same road we had taken to go to Grand-Bassam and I watched the same things glide by – an endless string of maquis, palm trees and roadside furniture salesmen, and then the closer we got to Abidjan, small buildings, the lagoon to the left. The same police checkpoint we had come through on the way was there but this time, it had a small difference – a corpse was sprawled out on the floor. A big guy with a shaved head, lying in a crucifix shape in his underwear surrounded by police. Gossip and rumour took hold in the bush taxi immediately although no concrete explanation for this event had surfaced by the time we got to Cap Sud.
Newspapers we looked at later that evening, though, provided the explanation. The previous night, armed men had launched an attack on two police stations in Abidjan and on that checkpoint. An attack had also taken place at a post on the border with Ghana. Twelve people had been killed altogether although no one was able to tell who the attackers really were, or if the Abidjan and Ghana border incidents had been related. Our flight was due to leave on the 23rd and so we went for a beer to plot our final two days. The result was a planned trip to Treichville market for one day and a wander around the Cocody district on the second.
"La Patisserie Abidjanaise", breakfast place par excellence
The Treichville market we finally made it to turned out not to be Treichville market at all but a smaller market which was also in Treichville but went by a different name. A market it was all the same, though, and we bought a bunch of traditional take-home stuff such as textiles and a kilo of limes. It was surprisingly hassle-free for the wandering toubabs, and apart from a few slightly overly insistent salesmen we were largely left to wander around and look at whatever we wanted. Our walk back to the hotel featured a lot of nostalgia for the last two weeks and we talked about what we'd seen, what we'd done and what we'd felt. It was to be out last night and, to celebrate, we went to Cap Sud and bought some beers and some olives to eat and drink on the balcony outside the room. It all seemed so serene. I reflected on how we'd had 2 catastrophe-free weeks and told my mother that I had a feeling that it couldn't continue like this. I was sure that tomorrow would bring us a surprise, I told her with a smile. Maybe there would be a coup d'état, she responded with the same smile.
Treichville-Belleville market's most pleasant lime seller
"The last night" - Mk1
We went to eat and came back to the room, looking for a film to watch and ended up watching the news on Ivorian TV, our attention attracted by a story featuring the corpse we'd seen the evening before.
“As a response to the attacks”, the reporter said, “President Ouattara has ordered the total closure of all air, land and sea frontiers with Ghana”.
We looked at each other and supressed a laugh of surprise. Our flight touched down in Accra before coming to Abidjan. This closure, if it stayed that way, would prevent our plane from coming into Côte D'Ivoire and we would have the surprise I suspected. It wasn't quite a coup d'état, but we were to be stranded anyway.
The rainy season in Abidjan...
...is definitely not yet over
Cocody took a backseat the next day as we spent the morning in “Le Rallye”, checking the internet for details on our flight from time to time, until my mother suggested in the early afternoon that we just go to the airport and try to find out what was going on. The ladies at the Turkish Airlines desk were very friendly but utterly useless, telling us in effect to sort ourselves out and come back in two days when a plane would be coming out to pick us up. They had received no instructions at all from headquarters, they said, and were as lost as we were. All of the other planes leaving Abidjan were supposedly full and so, rather than leaving tonight, we would have another two days. More phone calls to insurance companies followed and, after six hours in the airport, we finally ended up heading to the Novotel to enjoy the insurance company's largesse. The now-traditional Flag-beer-and-meat evening was enjoyed by all and we went to bed, ending an eventful day and ready to hit Cocody the next day.
"Please go away and sort yourselves out"
"A billion reasons to believe in Africa" - the airlines serving it not being among them
True to our way of doing things so far, we decided to walk to Cocody. Leaving the map behind wasn't a great idea but Abidjan is reasonably easy to navigate, set around lagoons as it is. The high-rises of the Plateau, where we were now staying, are an easily visible landmark as is the 25-storey Hôtel Ivoire in Cocody. Naturally, this didn't prevent us from going the wrong way and ending up Adjamé, but with a few helpful pointers from people we eventually navigated our way to Cocody and, three hours after leaving the hotel, we ended up at the Hôtel Ivoire. The aim here was a reconstruction of our drink in the Hôtel Président in Yamoussoukro – the only difference being that the top-floor bar here was twice as high as the one in Yamoussoukro and we expected a fantastic view of Abidjan, the lagoons and the sea. The security men at the door were very friendly but told us that the top-floor bar only opened at 7pm, which I thought slightly strange given that this would be after nightfall and the view would therefore not be accessible. They directed us to another bar which hovered over the gigantic swimming pool, around which were dotted signs informing us that swimming was forbidden. Logic didn't seem to take hold in this hotel.
The view from the Novotel - we're going up in the world
We wandered off back out and towards the Alocodrome, a big open-air complex of eating spots specialising in aloco, fried plantains. As we waited, my mother took pictures of the place and was then accosted by a couple of guys who asked her why she was taking pictures.
“Because I'm a tourist...” she responded.
“I don't know. It seems strange that you are taking pictures of this place”, one of them said.
“But I am a tourist, I take pictures !”
“Do you have any paperwork which proves that you are a tourist ?”
The conversation went on a little bit and I'd been watching on slightly amused and waiting to see how she would extract herself from this situation but eventually I decided to try and intervene myself.
“Do we need a permit to take photos here ?” I asked.
“Well... no. But why is she taking pictures ?”
They seemed surprised.
“Well, if we do not have any aloco, then sure it would make sense that we don't have any Alocodromes ?”
They hesitantly agreed.
“And so this is new to us. We are taking pictures because this is something that we don't have back home”.
"The forbidden picture"
They seemed appeased and we sat down. They followed us, however, and struck up a conversation again, although this time they were trying to persuade us to join their business venture. They worked in vegetable distribution, they said, but needed a partner in Europe to send them second-hand vans to transport the vegetables in. We tried to explain that this wasn't really very easy for us but they kept insisting that it was. Eventually my mother decided to offer them our e-mail addresses, telling them to send their details and we would get back to them. They were duly dispatched with two fake e-mail addresses and our chicken finally arrived.
“What if they try the addresses and realise they're fake and come back...?” she asked.
Our chicken went down quickly and we made our exit, back to the Plateau. We went for a wander to mark what at the time we were only moderately sure would be our last evening. The sun was setting on the Plateau district and people were leaving to head to their homes. In the descending silence, a piercing shriek went up and that could only mean one thing – my mother had just spotted a rat. We walked on, looking back at this rat going about its business and saw a security guard creeping up behind it. He positioned himself, lifted his foot back and, with the aim and power of a rugby player but with the added advantage of a pair of heavy duty boots, booted the unsuspecting rat which flew threw the air across the road, landed ungraciously before running around for a few seconds and suddenly dropping dead. The security man went back to his post, one more disease bag had been eliminated from the face of the earth and all that without the use of any harmful rat poisons. Judging by the security man's approach, it wasn't the first time he'd done this.
Le Plateau - now partially more rat-free
Eventually, two days late, our plane came. It had been an interesting trip for me and a trip down memory lane for my mother. She spent half of the trip back talking about the next place we would go together. Even at her grand age, she isn't ready to hang her backpack up yet !
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