There's a street in Abengourou that I really like as it has the seat of the Indénie King, but also a couple of buildings with very cool murals. Such as the one below, titled "Pour mieux vivre" (For better living). It says:

-Ne rien dire (not saying anything)

-Ne rien entendre (not hearing anything)

-Ne rien voir (not seeing anything)

Surely a great and timeless piece of advice.

It's been a while since the last Friday Evening music session, and I've missed it. So here's a great discovery: Youssoupha. He's French but of a Senegalese mother and a Congolese father - Tabu Ley Rochereau. The song is titled "L'effet papillon" (The butterfly effect) and it makes Kinshasa look like you've never seen it before. Enjoy!

[h/t Africa is a country]

A few weeks ago, while strolling down Adjame market in Abidjan, I came accross a very nice lady selling hand-made soaps. Having greatly enjoyed Yasmeen's soaps from Ghana that my half orange brought me, I immediately felt the urge to try them. Her stall was full of strange concoctions in basins, pastes in plastic bags, stacks of colourful bricks and some fancier-looking soaps.

There were blue ones, green, white, yellow, orange. I thought about simply buying the white one, since the other ones had very artificial looking colors, but the soap lady and two other girls quickly told me that was not a good choice for my "complexion". Naturally I asked which one would best suit me, then. They searched and searched, apparently not pleased with any of their products for such a pale lady as me. In the end they recommended the "Savon de la Marriée", for brides. I have no idea why, because I'm not a bride and didn't look like one that day, and here's what the label said:

Savon de la Mariée aux trois carottes

Carotte rend votre peau belle, douce et raffinée. Enrichie de oil, l'huile de carotte, oeuf et vitamine E. Savon de la Mariée aux trois carotttes élimine les tâches et rend votre peau plus claire.

Translation:

Three Carrots Bride Soap

Carrots make your skin beautiful, soft and delicate. Enriched with oil, carrot oils, eggs and vitamin E. Three Carrots Bride Soap gets rid of splotches and makes your skin lighter.

Ahem. I've been using the soap for a couple of weeks now and my skin obviously hasn't become lighter. The soap is nice, though, and while not as fancy as Yasmeen's soaps, it's quite a bargain at $1 for a huge bar that's double the usual size. Still, it had to mention the skin lightning to appeal to the clientele, as here there's a huge market for that. In Abidjan there are billboards everywhere advertising skin whitening creams, even in the provinces, and in every supermarket or street market you'll find some kind of product for that. On TV, not only almost every beauty product has a lightening component, but also all the models for any kind of commercial always have lighter skin tones.

I have an Ivoirian friend in Abengourou, of my same age, who is very beautiful but who has burns all over her arms and face. Fearing to ask her about them in case they were caused by domestic violence or worst, I held off. But then one day she told me they were due to skin bleaching creams, "I wanted to be like you" she said. Seeing the horrified look on my face she said "don't worry, I stopped now".

While I'm enjoying my carrot bridal soap, I can't help but thinking of women like her every time I use it and how they are brainwashed to be something they can't be. If only they could see how beautiful they actually are as it is.

I'm fascinated by African markets. So the other day I went to the main market in Abengourou with my camera and took tons of photos of the many products sold there: the meat, the dried fish, the live crabs, the chili peppers, the mashed peanuts, the dried okras and the kola nuts. But amongst that bounty of wonders, I noticed these lady's braids as she was handing out some fish. Aren't they fabulous?

I'm starting my third week in Abengourou and I'm still enjoying it. It's quite a small town, and very quiet, but everything is still new and fascinating to me so I'm still taking photos of everything right and left. On weekends and after work I like to take long walks with my camera, greeting every person I encounter and lingering on every little thing I find interesting. There are only a couple of white people in Abengourou, so other people find me really fascinating too. And, unlike in Congo, they love photos. So we all have fun snapping away.

Last Sunday, for example, I saw a bunch of kids splashing and playing by the rice fields under the heat of the afternoon. I tried to take some pictures of them, but as soon as they saw the camera they came running for some poses. And they proudly showed me some toys they had made themselves, with a few tins and pieces of scrap metal and cardboard. Smart kids.

This is the sign for a bookshop in a busy street of Abengourou which caught my attention because in Côte d'Ivoire is very rare to see signs written in local languages - they're usually written in French. Also, I'm quite intrigued by the reading turtle. Does it mean that with reading you have to take your time? I'm very curious about what does the sentence actually says. Maybe some Agni or generally Akan speakers out there could shed some light on it?

West Africa always wins is my favorite expat blog on Côte d'Ivoire, maybe because its author is not some clueless volunteer on a 6 month or 1 year assignment but a journalist who has spent a few years in the country. If you're interested in Côte d'Ivoire, I highly recommend it. I particularly liked one of her latest posts on the UN peacekeeping mission in Côte d'Ivoire (ONUCI), with which I wholeheartedly agree as it doesn't give the usual simplistic assessment. Yes, the UN is an extremely inefficient organization with a lot of failings, but it's just too easy to put all the blame on it. Land of Shrimp, one of the commenters in the post, puts it the best:

Part of what the U.N. labors under is that, in its very concept, we want it to somehow be better than we know ourselves to be. To achieve something, a standard that we don't even hold ourselves to.

An example of how hard it is to hold the UN accountable, is given by an anonymous friend of the author working at ONUCI:

Here’s my theory: it’s a representation of the world. You have all these people from all these different places trying to work together and get along, but in the end, we don’t. It’s easy to clash in a multicultural environment. For example, I once stepped into the office of a West African colleague to get something from his cabinet. I saw he was busy, so I didn’t bother him and walked straight to the cabinet. He said: ‘You know, where I come from, we say hello when we enter a room.’ I said: ‘Yes, you are right, but in my culture, we don’t want to bother someone who is busy for something trivial.’ That explains just a little bit why sometimes you have misunderstandings. Worse, we are in a situation where you can pretty much do what you want. There is total impunity. If you get caught having sex with underage girls in your own country, the authorities will probably send you to prison. Here, the worst that can happen is that they repatriate you. Or maybe, just maybe, lose your job. The problem I just described also applies to foreign NGO’s where staff members are paid much more than the local population. I mean, if I want to find a girlfriend, all I have to do is buy her a gift.

Read the whole post here.