Abidjan, Côte D'Ivoire - 7th-9th September 2012
Côte D'Ivoire has been a small family project for many years. My grandfather worked here in the 1970s and my mother visited him several times. She hadn't been back since 1979 and 2012 was to be the year that she took me along to revisit memory lane – finding the old house, the dam my grandfather worked on, and various bits and pieces that she remembered seeing back in the day. Our first port of call was Abidjan, a huge sprawling city set around some lagoons poking inland from the Atlantic. The “Paris of West Africa” back in its day, Abidjan is a little more dog-eared than it probably was but is still the nerve centre of the country, despite not having been the capital since the 1980s. It's also home to the international airport, which is where we landed after a 16 hour trip with a short layover in Istanbul.
As we were planning to come back to Abidjan at the end of the little tour, the one full day here was more a question of finding our feet than seeing anything in particular. We were planning to head up to Bouaké the next day and spent the morning exploring our transport options – loosely translated, we went to the train station to see what day the train left and would take the bus if it didn't suit us. The station is in Treichville, the next district along from Zone 4 where we were staying, and so we set off by foot along the Boulevard de Marseille (which was possibly named after the city in question because it's dusty and dirty). The timing of the trip left us landing at the end of the rainy season and we were reminded of this after a short time when the heavens suddenly opened and we were forced into a roadside shack for shelter. We had to persuade the owners that we would buy a drink from them as they told us they were quite happy for us just to take shelter until the rain subsided.
Taking shelter
As I reflected on the paradoxes of Africa (you are hassled to buy things when you don't want to, but in cases like this you are politely told that it really isn't necessary to buy anything), we watched the potholes fill with rainwater and the dust “pavement” turn to mud. My mother then asked what was to be her favourite question during this trip - “is this rain going to last long ?”. We then got the same answer we were given every time this question was asked. “Probably not...”. The worst of it passed and my flip flops did battle with the new swampy conditions as we headed on our way. The train to the north left on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday mornings. It was now Saturday morning. The decision was made, and we made plans to take the bus.
"Pissing forbidden - 5000f fine"
An afternoon wander around the Plateau district was similarly punctuated by rain although this didn't seem to bother the tens of thousands of orange-clad Ivorians gathering in huge crowds slowly moving towards barricades manned by soldiers. This could only mean one thing. There was a football game of sorts on. As it turned out, Côte D'Ivoire were playing Senegal that night. The Plateau district is where move of Abidjan's high-rises are and the huge building-top advertising hoardings greeting those coming across the bridge from Zone 4 masked an entire district of these buildings – some of them were tasteless 70s buildings and some, such as “La Pyramide” were symbolic of a slightly more daring style of architecture. Le Plateau might not win any modern design awards but it's impressive in its own way and a pleasant place to wander around. It's also Abidjan's business district though, and as it closed down during the early evening we headed back to Zone 4 – just in time to see Côte D'Ivoire destroy Senegal 4:2 at “Le Rallye”, the bar-resto attached to the hotel.
"La Pyramide" - original building, unoriginal name
Singing in the rain
More Plateau
An early morning departure to Yopougon bus station was on the cards for the next day but we weren't worried – there was plenty more of Abidjan to see and a few more days towards the end in which to do so...
Foot hygiene - a high priority
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