14th -16th September – Bouaké, Côte D'Ivoire
Korhogo-Bouaké minibus station. You could just tell that this would be a speedy one
The return trip to Bouaké was for two nights and a day. The minibus going back down was quite a bit quicker than on the way up and we also shared the back seat with a guy who was travelling with a small box with noises emanating from it. At the beginning I thought he had some chicks or something in there. I asked him anyway what was in the box, and he smiled and whipped out a mongoose. He'd had it for a year and a half, he said, and took it everywhere he went. I'd never seen anyone with a pet mongoose before and this guy seemed very attached to his furry friend, stroking it and playing with it for the entire trip.
Mongoose man and Mongoose
Bouaké's TV tower, an essential landmark for those who don't really know where they are
Our stay in Bouaké also consisted of more trip-down-memory-lane stuff, even if a lot of things had changed. The Provençal restaurant was no longer a classy restaurant run by a guy from the south of France, but was now a faded-charming place with very little in the way of furniture and nothing in the way of running water which served sandwiches and beer having just been taken up by an elderly, permanently smiling Ivorian gentleman. It had been emptied and had stayed empty during the war, he told me, and they were just trying to get it up and running again although clients were few and far between. The Harmattan, formerly the swankiest hotel in town, had been completely gutted and stripped of everything during the war, leaving only a concrete shell. Some of the bottom floor and the restaurant had been converted into a maquis but nothing more was left of it. The RAN Hotel, by contrast, had not changed at all – down to the cushions on the chairs in the lobby which were the same ones as graced the chairs in 1978.
Le Provençal still looks good on the outside. And serves tasty sandwiches.
The RAN hotel still looks good from the outside. And serves cold beer
But it mostly consisted of aimless wandering and allowed us to pick up the luggage we'd left here for the trip up to Korhogo, as well as getting a bit of a rest. Next destination: Yamoussoukro.
Mobile phone torch and flip flop - essential weapons in the fight against mosquitos
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