One of my favorite things to do in Abengourou is shopping at the food market (no, this town doesn't have a very broad range of entertainment options, so what). And I like to try stuff that I've never eaten before, or ask the women what dishes they make with a certain vegetable. So, naturally, when I spotted some gigantic green beans the other day I was inmediately drawn to them (see picture of one of them next to my hand to see what I mean). The fact they were selling them individually (at 50 FCFA each) should have given me a hint of their evil potency, but I was so excited about my discovery that I bought the whole selection this amused lady had on display. Which meant becoming the proud owner of the 6 or 7 biggest green beans I had seen in my life.
Although the market lady had suggested me to crush the beans into a liquid sauce with onions and mini-eggplants, in my mind they were like any other beans. So one evening I peeled them out of the pods, boilt them and then mixed them with some tomato sauce and rice. At first their taste threw me off, or the lack thereof. They were surprisingly really bland, kind of like eating spoonfuls of dirt, but they had a potent, thick aftertaste that wasn't so bland after all. After drinking a few liters of water to get rid of that unpleasant texture, I went to bed. And an hour or two later my stomach started feeling like a huge rock had been dropped into it, while some green bean nightmares possessed my sweaty body. They were almost like hallucinations in which I desperately ran in fields of oversized, angry potatoes to escape the evil beans under the disapproving gaze of ginormous angry pumpkins. I also had to make frequent visits accross the hall to my beloved toilet, who witnessed the greenest poo ever.
After a horrible sleepless night for work I had to go on a field visit to a village located an hour away from Abengourou, and only Coke saved me from puking beans all over my couterparts' sandals. The thick, sickly taste stayed in my mouth the whole day, in spite of the endless Cokes I ingested like an addict. It was only at 10pm that, not having eaten anything since the night before, I accepted a friend's invitation to have some chicken. And, thank God, the mighty chicken beat the evil beans and I started coming back to life.
Moral of the story: don't trust oversized, evil-looking vegetables (mini-tomatoes and mini-eggplans are delicious, by the way). And don't cook anything you're not familiar with. Unless you want to have nightmares or become acquainted with all the toilets in town.
By now everybody knows the impressive aerial photography by Yann Arthus-Bertrand, who apparently got his passion for landscape photography while living in the Maasai Mara national park in Kenya for 3 years during the 1970s. Well, browsing his website today I stumbled upon his pictures taken Côte d'Ivoire, including one from Abengourou. And interestingly, it's not of a landscape, but of a bunch of people looking up. Although I looked really closely for really long, unfortunately I didn't recognize anybody:
There are other photos in the album that I liked, such as this one of a pile of cotton bales taken in the Korhogo area:
Or this other one of people doing laundry in the Adjamé market in Abidjan:
Check out the whole Côte d'Ivoire album here.
I haven't been online much lately mainly due to the rolling blackouts that the CIE (the national electric company) started last weekend. But I keep wanting to post some photos of the famous Yam Festival I attended last Friday at the king's palace (Nanan Boa Kouassi III, pictured on the left) in Abengourou.
According to the king's website, the Yam festival (or fête des Ignames in French), the origin of this festival is that during the hard times of the founding of the Indénié Kingdom a certain type of yams helped them fight hunger and survive, and establish themselves in this region. So honoring yams is a way of honoring the founding fathers of the kingdom, the ancestors and welcome a new and prosperous season. In fact, the Yam Festival marks the start of a new year for the Indénié Kingdom, and everything needs to be renewed, such as the embers in the fires and the water in the containers. And the mortars and other objects of daily usage need to be cleansed.
The celebration, which lasted several hours, included lots of dancing, drums and pantomime. But hte most important part of it was the ritual to honor ancestors, in which a line of royal stools from previous Indénié kings (it's interesting to note that in Europe crowns represent royal power whereas here it's a stool to sit on) were offered various gifts. Including gin, purifying herbs, yam powder and the blood of a freshly sacrificed ram.
Although I didn't enjoy watching the poor ram being killed and bled out, the offering ceremony was the most interesting bit of the day and the whole procedure was interesting to watch. Once that was done, bowls of pounded yam were offered to the attendees, since it was then ok to consume the sacred tubers. All the while some lively music and comic dancers entertained the audience.
And for some reason one goofy dancer (pictured on the right of the picture above) became infatuated with me and so I became the butt of a few jokes and loud laughs. Fortunately one of the distinguised guests (the mayor or some minister) helped me out with a 1000 FCFA note so I could get rid of my insisting admirer after he tried to kiss me several times.
Another anecdote I enjoyed more was being painted with kaolin, a sort of white clay that women use to paint their bodies as a sign of joy and purification (like the one pictured on the right). Once the women realized the while clay wasn't as visible as in their bodies (obviously), they were very amused and while laughing they suggested that maybe white people should use charcoal instead of white clay for that purpose.
In spite of the blazing sun and the trying length of the event I felt fortunate to have witnessed it, and having been part of it, somehow part of the Abengourou community for a little fration of time. My only frustration was not to hear the king speak, since he never speaks in public but through a speaker. He just sits and oversees everything.
> You can check the whole photo album of the famous Yam Festival of the Indénié Kingdom here.
> For more information on the Inénié Kingdom, you can visit their official website [in French].
Do you remember Baloji, the hard-to-label Congolese musician fascinated by witchcraft? His brilliant Tout ceci ne vous rendra pas le Congo that I mentioned around here a while back, is still one of my favorite songs. Well, it turns out he's back: his second album is coming out next week - on January 27th. It's titled Kinshasa Succursale and watching the first video from it (or short film, as Baloji calls it), I'm already really looking forward to it.
The album includes some titles with popular Congolese bands Konono N°1 , Kasaï All Star, Zaico Langa Langa, as well as several local artists gathered during one week of recordings in Kinshasa. This 2010 the DRC is celebrating the 50th anniversary of its independence from Belgium, so Kinshasa's boulevard 30 juin (the date of independence) is naturally featured prominently on the video of this first single. Other popular sights of Congo's capital make an appearance (a bit like Youssoupha's The butterfly effect), so only for that it's worth watching.
The title of the song is Karibu Ya Bintou ("Welcome to Life in Limbo"), and in it Konono N°1 play the likembé (finger piano) which offers an interesting contrast with Baloji's hip-hop beats.
It's Friday night (almost Saturday morning) and it's been a while since I've shared some of the music I'm listening to. Just a band is not really a discovery, as I've been a fan for some time now, since I discovered the cool music videos of their debut album. This song, Usinibore, is the first single of their new album "82" released last October. Daft Punk anyone?
On Sunday I was invited to eat fish and attieké, ground cassava, (see a photo of the meal in this post) by a lovely friend of a friend named Raïsa. She was wearing a tailor-made dress that my expat friend and I admired, and since I have a few fabrics in need of inspiration to take to the tailor, I asked Raïsa to take a picture of her outfit. She happily obliged, and she enjoyed being in front of the camera so much that she decided to model some of her other tailor-made dresses for us. Such as this one:
Or this one:
Or this other one:
As you can see, Raïsa is a natural with the camera. I think she could have spent hours trying poses and changing dresses. In the end, she gave us a little Ivorian dance lesson while wearing a Rihanna outfit (her words):
She hopelessly tried to show us how to shake our asses properly while showing us a few Ivorian dance moves, which made for a few good laugs. In my case, though, I'm afraid this is a lost cause as I'm extremely intimidated to dance here. In between giggles she made us promise to go dancing with her and her friends next weekend. I hope I'll survive.
Abengourou, a royal city
After two weeks freezing my ass off in deep Northern California, it’s been a few days that I’m back in my temporary home in Abengourou. As usual, the excitement and longing of arriving in Côte d’Ivoire for the first time was replaced by anxiety and impatience to be already there. The more I travel, the more I dread the moving party of traveling - I wish teletransportation was already invented.
Before my arrival in Abengourou I spent a night in Abidjan, staying with random strangers found at the airport (but working for the same organization as me), and half a day spent fighting with bureaucratic inefficiency. At least I got to see a couple of friends and eat a 4 cheese pizza before heading to cheeseless Abengourou.
I’m very happy to be back in Côte d’Ivoire, although I’ve replaced cold and fog with dust and ashes in the air, from all the brush and trash burning on every street corner. When I stepped inside the house, my feet left white marks on the floor which was covered with a thick layer of red dust. And every door that I had left open seemed to have grown endless spiderwebs with invisible spiders that it took me forever to get rid of. Only after over two hours of intense moping and killing spiders, was I able to crash on my unbelievable dusty bed. My cold shower felt like heaven.
Typical trash-burning on my street
Surprisingly, my watchmen were still sitting in front of my house although I hadn’t told them when I was coming back. They even seemed genuinely happy to see me again, if only because that meant disrupting their boredom. They immediately requested a new broom to sweep the dust and debris in the terrace.
Besides buying myself a fancy new broom, the next day I also bought considerable food supplies to fill up my fridge again, including abundant chili peppers as is required here. The lady where I usually buy my vegetables also seemed happy to see me and wished me a happy new year. Instead of giving me some free lemons as usual, she gave me free mangoes. Mangoes! I keep saying the season is here but then I’m told it isn’t, so could it be finally it?
And asked a friend of a friend from Benin who cooks wonderfully well to teach me some of her specialties that I tried one day. I have been eating way too many mangoes and pineapples since I got back, instead of proper meals. Except on Sunday when I ate some attiéké and fried fish at a new friend’s house, whom I also asked to teach me how to cook some local dishes. I’m afraid I’m much more of an eater than a cook. She seemed more interested in meeting up for some dancing than for cooking. Seeing the way she can shake her ass, I’m terrified to go dancing with her.
Fried fish, chili sauce and attiéké, ground cassava that resembles couscous
Since I got back I've been quite tired, so I’ve been sleeping with earplugs to try to overcome my jetlag as fast as possible. I don’t know if it’s my imagination, but the morning roosters seem to be louder than ever. Also, since I brought a soft Ikea pillow in my suitcase to replace the hard foam one that seems to be the only available type in Abengourou, now after wearing earplugs my ears don’t hurt.
Life is quiet in Abengourou, but occasionally things get exciting like last Friday when Côte d’Ivoire beat neighboring Ghana at the African Cup of Nations. The whole town was celebrating the victory, no exceptions.
I’m also happy to report that since I’ve been back I managed to finally pass my driver’s license test to be able to drive here, which has all of a sudden made my life a lot easier. Although undoubtedly I’ll still be walking a lot and taking plenty of taxis, and not only because they’re red. But I can’t help being amused at the fact that after some 14 years of having a driver’s license in my possession, the last five days were probably the most I’ve driven in my entire life.
The always awesome Strange Maps blog had this great map sequence that gives a different perspective on the pre-historic earth puzzle which "reverses the drift that continues to widen the Atlantic Ocean, and returns to the age of the dinosaurs in another way". Here you have what the author calls the Afro-Latinosaurus Rex, in which the narrow southern strip of South America shared by Chile and Argentina is the beast’s lower jaw, Africa’s southern part its upper jaw. And "the big, blunt bulk of West Africa is the animal’s neck. Lake Victoria, the greatest of African lakes, doubles as the menacing eye of the Afro-Latinosaurus…"
I can't even remember the number of times I've seen the blog Journey without Maps recommended or linked to by people I like, or the amount of times I had a good laugh reading it. So of course I was pleased to see Côte d'Ivoire finally make an appearance there, even though in passing. The author, based in Liberia, describes his 35 hour bus journey from Abidjan to Bamako as "The most miserable bus in the world". Here's an excerpt to give you a taste:
We stopped in Yamoussoukro, the capital, but not really the capital since all the government buildings are in Abidjan, and Yamoussoukro only happens to be the birthplace of the first post independence president/despot. Check it out – he used his ‘personal money’ to build four lane highways, a four star hotel with an observation restaurant, and the world’s largest basilica. No one lives there.
While the bus was stopped and bus attendants reloaded luggage, I caught a glimpse of my bag and relaxed. After Yamoussoukro the bus stopped anywhere and everywhere for no apparent reason. People would buy fruit from the window and the bus driver would hop out and walk around. At no one point was the bus mobile for more than thirty minutes straight. It was miserable.
The trip was scheduled to take 24 hours, but at around midnight we consulted a map and performed accurate measurements with our fingers to work out that we were pretty close to Abidjan and not so close to Bamako. My legs cramped up, so I took advantage of every stop to stumble outside in a daze and stretch. At one point I realized how tired I was. This thought was immediately followed by the realization that after 18 hours on the bus, we had the same bus driver… Who was probably very tired as well.
Then it started raining and we noticed that the bus was actually speeding up, taking corners like an F-1 race car on a chicane. Was the driver trying to kill us? Instead of building a giant basilica, couldn’t the president have invested a little money in high school physics classes? Or a driver education program? I peered over the driver’s shoulder and discovered why he was going so fast: he had no windshield wipers. Now, we are in rainy season West Africa, it is literally a wall of water outside, and the driver is driving faster so that our speed forces the rain off of his windshield. I leaned over to Gunna and said over the noise of the pelting rain, “I don’t want to alarm you, but there are no windshield wipers.” Gunna was alarmed.
I'm planning to go to Bamako from Abidjan and, although Texas in Africa disputes the claim of being the most miserable bus in the world (on the grounds that the author had a seat and, apparently, no digestive disorders), I'm not sure I'm ready for such a journey. Read the rest of the post here.
Christmas was a while back, but cleaning up the pictures in my computer before starting the trip back to Cote d'Ivoire after the holidays, I found some that I had forgotten to post. Here are some of the gifts from Abengourou that I bought for various relatives, which I thought might be interesting for those lacking ideas for future gifts:
This is a traditional Akan claypot used to serve dishes with sauces (such as chicken kedjenou). The lid is, of course, to keep annoying flies or other bugs away, and is my favorite part. In this particular case it represents the royal seat that is the symbol of the Indénié Kingdom (and I think also of other Ivorian kingdoms as I've seen it often representing more than just this region). This type of pottery work, with the dark colour and all, is very typical in Abengourou and is commonly used in daily life. Even the simplest plates or kitchen containers are made with this style.
Now, this was my favorite gift but nobody in the family has yet dared to drink it. Supposedly, it's a type of whisky with coffee flavor, but what really made me buy it was the description underneath its name, 'Black power': it provides strength, energy and aphrodisiac vitaly. Is this supposed to be the first thing that comes to mind when you see the Obama picture? Ahem.
Oh yeah, the coffee packages in the background come from a coffee plant right outside of Abengourou. When I went to buy them they were just finishing roasting the beans and they ground them in front of me, and although I'm not a coffee expert (I'm more the tea-drinking type) I hear it's really good.
Although not pictured here, I also brought some delicious Mambo Ivorian chocolate and some local fabrics that are always a winner.
