Cote d'Ivoire

Bonjour!

Once again, knowing that I hold no skills with the French language, I decided to travel to a francophone country. This time, The Ivory Coast. I will refer to The Ivory Coast from here on as CI, for Cote d’Ivoire—the French and more common pronunciation. So CI has a pretty intense history, which I will attempt to effectively summarize here, for your better understanding of my experience there.

(FYI: much of this summary is being plagiarized from the book: An Introduction to African Politics by Alex Thomson…don’t go thinking I have become an expert on neo-colonialism and conflicts in African States…I’m trying though.) So, CI was colonized in 1893 by France, and gained its independence in 1960—when most, if not all French colonies in Africa were granted liberty from their colonizers. CI was an immediate success story—second only to South Africa in per-capita income, its main products of export being coffee and cocoa. From independence CI had only one ruler, Felix Houphouet-Boigny. (There are some accents and things omitted from the name…sorry) FHB was the leader of the Democratic Party of The Ivory Coast—PDCI, which soon became the only political party of the nation, ruling with an iron fist, and absorbing any oppositional parties. FHB kept close ties with France, and in this way was able to insure economic success…for awhile. Toward the end of FHB’s life, prices of both coffee and cocoa began to fall, and more and more Ivorians began to demand a more balanced political representation. In 1985, the Ivorian people got what they wanted, and FHB was forced to run in a multi-party election, where he won by a landslide. FHB died as the first and thus-far only president of CI in 1993. Upon his death the problems facing CI became more and more apparent. His successor, Henri Konan Bedie ruled through intimidation and faced ceaseless labor strikes, student protests and ethnic tension. In 1999, he was removed by a military coup which was followed by more and more political unrest and violence. Full-scale rebellion exploded in 2002, which was eventually quelled by the international community. While a peace treaty was signed in 2004, in that same year, the UN advised against entering only two countries in the world: Somalia and Cote d’Ivoire. Today, it is still only safe to visit the largest city, and capital in all but name, Abidjan, rebel troops still control the north.

So, knowing this…as I did, more or less before leaving, it may not have been the brightest idea to go…seeing as I DO NOT SPEAK FRENCH. Hmmm…we went anyway, and no worries, everything was fine.

We only visited two cities: Abidjan and Grand Bossam—the former colonial capital. Abidjan was beautiful. This place, which was once, only 10-or-so years ago a booming industrial city was full of skyscrapers, and was landscaped to look like any big city I’ve ever visited in the States. Despite how breathtakingly different Abidjan was from Accra, it was completely bizarre. Every building, hotel, restaurant bore the signs of a complete halt in development about 10 to 15 years ago. The colors used, the style of furniture, the menus, everything just seemed dated. And, in some parts of town, there were crumbling cement walls, and other various signs that a war had been fought there. The best word to describe any of it was surreal.

I visited CI with my friends Becky and Luci—we left on Monday, at 4:30am and got into Abidjan around 6pm Monday evening. (Crossing borders takes FOREVER.) Then, Elena, who had a group project she couldn’t miss, met up with us on Tuesday. Upon our arrival on Monday we found a taxi and spit enough badly-pronounced French at him to get to a hotel. Hotels in Abidjan are so, so, so expensive. We got to one in a section of Abidjan called Treachville—which seemed a little lower income than the skyscraper-filled Le Plateau and after finding two hotels which we could not afford to save our lives, we found Hotel Terminus, which we were able to bargain down from around $30 (each!!) a night to about $18. (Note: The most I have EVER paid for a hotel in Ghana is $16…and I had a huge room all to myself, and it was a complete miss-communication. $18/night/per person to be sharing rooms was astronomical.) We found cheap food from a street vendor, and fell asleep, exhausted from 14 hours of riding buses and being harassed by immigration officers.

Tuesday we set out to find, in this order: An ATM, coffee, croissants and a phone chip which would work in CI with which to call Elena and tell her when and where we would meet her. The ATM, coffee and croissants were all easily accessible and wonderful, respectively. The phone chip was not too hard to find—although all in all for the chip and credit to put on it we spent $24!! However, getting the new chip to work was ridiculous. The way phone sim-cards work in West Africa, when you have a new chip, to activate it, you must have another phone call it before you can make any calls from it. The women who sold us the chip tried to explain this to us—through sign language, and also to call us from their own phones, but there was no service in the particular store we were in. Of course.

We finally figure out how to overcome this most recent obstacle by going to a random phone kiosk outside the place we are breakfast and begging her in a ridiculous hodge-podge of “vous!” (you, in French) and “Appelle!” (call, in French) followed by complete abandonment of even trying, resulting in: “No…no…it needs to be activated!! No! YOU call THIS phone!” and finally… “Yes!! Merci! Merci!! Thank you!!” It was quite a spectacle, but I’m sure we gave that poor kiosk girl the laugh of her day…or week…or life.

We eventually met up with Elena, and went out to dinner, and then returned to the hotel to watch Liverpool play Chelsea (UK football/soccer teams—Drogba, one of Chelsea’s best players is Ivorian) sadly, it was a pretty lame game…ending in a completely undeserved tie of 1-1. Liverpool should have won, sorry Drogba. (Note: since then, Chelsea played Liverpool the next week, where Drogba scored TWICE! Also, Ghana's darling, Michael Essien, who also plays for Chelsea also scored...however for unknown reasons, the goal did not count. No matter, Chelsea won, and GO West Africa!)

The next day we explored this HUGE hotel called Hotel Ivoire which back in the boom days was the place to go. This hotel, despite being obviously run-down in some ways, is pretty incredible. We were allowed to go to the top floor to take pictures of the amazing view of Abidjan, then we got coffee in this adorable French-inspired café, tried to see a movie in the IN-HOUSE MOVIE THEATER (!!) but they were all in French, then walked around the private grocery store, the (empty) moat, and explored the BOWLING ALLEY, but sadly did not play. The insanely rich are so terrifying and fascinating to me.

We then met up with Becky’s friend and fellow Bahai, Patrick, an Ivorian man in his late 20s (I think…) he took us to this really cool market where I bought some more gifts and a really cute pair of leather sandals—which I really needed as the pair I brought with me are facing their final days. He then drove us back to Le Plateau where we bought snacks for that night’s football match (Barcelona—for whom Cameroon’s Samuel Eto’o plays—vs. Manchester United—Beckham’s old team and current team of the little bitch known at Ronaldo.) Once again, it was another bad game—ending in a 0-0 tie. Sigh. (The next week, Manchester United beat Barcelona, so they will face Chelsea in the finals on May 21st--watch if you can! Go Chelsea!!)

Thursday, we ventured to Grande Bossam the former colonial capital, about 40 minutes east of Abidjan. There we visited the building that used to house the French governor, which is now the home of a very cool museum of Ivorian clothing through the last 200 years or so. It also had miniature re-creations of different housing compounds in different regions of the country. Our tour guide, Antonio, did not speak great English, but he tried so hard and was so nice, it was really fun.

Then, we headed down to the beach where we browsed around at some outdoor shops, and then got lunch. We ate a traditional Ivorian dish called akyidia (I think...) which is a cassava cous cous served with a spicy, almost jalapeno-tasting sauce, an onion-olive oil sauce and this tomato paste. It’s eaten with the hands and was SO good! My only regret is that they don’t serve it in Ghana.

On Friday, we left our hotel and attempted to get back to the border not by big, safe, expensive bus—like we had taken to Abidjan, but by regular tro. This proved not so bad, because we found a few good Samaritans to speak a little English with us, who helped us find the right bus, and then translated for us when we were being somewhat-scarily interrogated by one of the Ivorian soldiers at maybe the 8^th of 36 checkpoints between Abidjan and Elubo (the Ghanaian border town).

It is my life’s goal to travel in Francophone Africa without being dependent on the kindness of strangers. Someday…

I love you.