The fascination with Barack Obama all over Africa is well-known, and Côte d'Ivoire is no exception. Only in Abengourou I've seen at least a dozen businesses called Obama. They are typically bars or maquis (the Ivorian take on a cheap restaurant, usually outdoors and with loud local music), but I've also seen a phone cabin, a stand selling knick-knacks and an electronics store. In the bar/restaurant department, for some reason a notably high amount of them are called Espace Obama (Obama Space). I guess since Obama is such an important person, they find espace to be a fancier or cooler way of saying that it's a restaurant, a bar and a generally entertaining place. Like this one on the side of the road by the checkpoint on the north entrance to Abidjan.
Remember the Yam Festival of the Indénié King, the most important event of the year in the Abengourou region? And do you remember the body paint women traditionally wear on such occasions mostly on their faces and their arms, such as the one pictured on the right? As I explained then, during important celebrations and traditional rituals, women paint their bodies with a type of special white clay called kaolin. They do it as a sign of joy, celebration and purification, and to go with it they typically also wear white and blue outfits as you can see on the picture.
As it turns out, a formidable lady I met once in one of the high schools (she's the president of the parents association) offered me and my friend H to get some kaolin painting done so that we could have a better immersion into the festival's traditions. When we enthusiastically accepted, as it looked very nice on the other women, she took us to a neighbor's house and proceeded to an improvised application of kaolin. Since the ceremony was about to start, there wasn't enough time to create a proper design on us, so she just used her hands and fingers to create some improvised patterns as you can see in this picture of me and her below.
During the few minutes that the painting work took, several neighbors came out to watch the procedure with great curiosity and amusement. When the kaolin artist lady finished, she took a good look at us that should have been of satisfaction but in fact wasn't very pleased: the paint was almost invisible in our all-too-pale bodies. So she tried again to apply some more kaolin clay, but with the same results. Then one of the neighbors suggested to re-paint us with some charcoal, now that would be visible. The ever-growing audience in the yard burst out in laughter. She laughed too, but in the end she took the suggestion and did indeed use some charcoal mixed with the kaolin, and in the end the result wasn't too bad.
A few days ago this sign appeared on one of Abengourou's main street, announcing the pre-selection for Miss Côte d'Ivoire. I have no idea when the competition will actually take place, or how the selection process works, but I'll keep an eye out for the Abengourou representative. And I think it's a nice touch the sign is right next to the main mosque, creating an interesting juxtaposition.
I've talked before about how fascinated I am by the popularity of traditional healers who seem to be able to cure everything from a soul theft to a sore throat, malaria or an evil curse. All with just a few herbs and liquids of uninspiring colors. So of course, you can find them in the market too, selling their magic remedies that will cure anything you could think of. This one, for example, is often sitting outside the main market, just in front of the most popular supermarket in town awesomely-named 'King Cash'.
To enlarge, click on the image.
Judging by the flag on the hand-drawn sign, this 'tradipraticien' as he calls himself, is from Burkina Faso and like everybody else around here has two cell phones. You should click on the image for more detail, since the pictures for all the stuff he can cure or help with are quite funny: apparently he has herbs for snake or bug bites, as well as common ailments such as headache, fever or ear-ache. But also remedies for such diverse things as "male potency" (check out the drawing for that one), swollen breasts, women's periods, poo or even love.
I haven't been writing much lately for various reasons, mostly lame ones such as the heat and the mighty délestages (rolling blackouts in English) that the national electric company (CIE) imposed at the beginning of this month and at least for the next four months. Apparently one of the generators at the main power plant near Abidjan broke down or something, so while they fix it the country will be left with a big power deficit. This is particularly unnerving as it appears Côte d'Ivoire sells a bit of power to its neighbors, notably Burkina Faso and Mali, with whom it has long-term contracts that cannot be cancelled now. Four months to repair a generator, no matter how big this generator is, seems like an awful long time. So for a while we entertained the hope that the repairs would be done earlier and so the power cuts would be lifted before the end of May. But in subsequent updates we learnt that, although the broken generator will be in fact fixed in just another week or two, then another one needs to be taken off for maintenance. The issue is clearly bad management. I know, I'm as shocked as you are.
As fascinating as electric infrastructures are, nobody wants to read endless expat whinings about the inconveniences of living without electricity (or without water as it is distributed via an electric pump). At least, I don't. So why write about it?
What I did find interesting about this whole electricity business is to observe how much it has affected daily life. In other countries (such as Congo, for example) power and water cuts are so common and random that people have been forced to adjust to them and so they don't make a big fuss about them. Everything functions moreless normally regardless of power cuts (which doesn't mean that it functions well, on the contrary), and don't even talk much about. In Côte d'Ivoire, on the other hand, people are spoilt. I always hear Ivorians telling me that their country used to be the best in Africa (some of them still say this in the present tense), with the highest standard of living, and that during the 1980s they didn't even need a visa to go to France but hardly anyone moved there because they had it too good in Cote d'Ivoire.
During my first three months here I almost felt like being on permanent holidays. No power or water cuts ever happened and everything seemed to work just great. Life was good. Now people constantly talk about how little sleep they got the night before because of the lack of power and thus the lack of fan or a/c. The first days after the rolling blackouts were announced, the markets were packed with all sorts of (overprized) plastic containers and jerrycans to hold water, as well as generators of all sizes (most of my colleagues went to Ghana to buy them, where they are apparently cheaper). And social life and language started to adapt to the power cuts, too.
As if electric power instability wasn't enough, now we also have political power instability too. Last Friday President Laurent Gbagbo made an announcement on TV dissolving the current unity government and the Independent Electoral Commission. I happened to be in Abidjan that weekend and had lots of social plans for that evening with a bunch of friends, but everything got cancelled because people were afraid of a coup. Everybody stayed home. The whole weekend turned out to be extremely calm and uneventful. The following Monday I came back to an unusual Abengourou: heaps of trash and tyres were burning in the main streets of the town in protest for Gbagbo's decision. There were just a few supporters of the youth branches of the opposition parties (although international media were eager to add a few hundred people to the total, as well as some colorful details), but it was quite a shock for most since Abengourou is known as 'the city of peace'.
The next day, the regional préfet (a sort of governor) called an emergency press conference with all the local authorities - administrative, military and police -, as well as religious leaders, political party representatives, and othe local notables. The main items in his agenda were, obviously, the security situation and the latest political developments. He spent over an hour discussing them. But then, at the end, he invited the regional director of the CIE to give a little update about the power cut situation, mostly to give some security tips to people. During the following two hours the audience was allowed to ask questions, but hardly any of them were directed at the préfet or commented on his words: what interested people most were the times of the power cuts, and details about the restoration of regular power. The préfet was not pleased.
The préfet speaking during the press conference.
Several people complained about the increase in crime during the night and many others proposed ideas to minimize the length of the cuts; others gave a detailed assessment of how the lack of electricity and power is bad for people's the physical and pscychological health; others insisted on how the workers productivity is affected by the lack of power and the lack of sleep. One of the best comments was by a cocoa planter who complained about how, although cocoa is the main source of revenue for Cote d'Ivoire, he had spent two weeks with almost no water and no electricity, has to pay taxes to the government to export his beans as well as regular shakedowns to the police at various checkpoints on the road, and on top of all of this it he cannot sleep at night because of the heat and be productive. Now, f the wants a generator he'll have to pay again more taxes on the fuel to the government. People were truly angry, but not at the President dissolving the most important institutions in the country, but about being without a fan and a proper shower.
Which made me realize that with only words one cannot start a revolution. People care about what affects them first-hand, daily and with inmediate effect. As shown by the small size of the opposition demonstrations after such a big event happened a week ago, and the lack of serious action after all these days of uncertainty. I'm holding my breath to see what will happen on Monday, as this wait is already becoming too long - like a power cut on a particularly muggy night.
In case you haven't heard about it yet, a new magazine about Africa in Spanish was just launched: Africaneando. It's published (on the Maneno platform btw) by he Barcelona-based and awesomely named association Oozebap devoted to the promotion of African culture, research and better knowledge. And it has a photo essay of life in Abengourou by yours truly. Oh, and they're accepting submissions, preferably in Spanish but also in English and French.
Here's an awesome visualization of the decline of the four main maritime empires of the XIX and XX centuries, which of course has a lot to do with the Scramble for Africa. By Pedro M. Cruz.
As spotted by A Bombastic Element, Gawker managed to lay their hands on a picture of Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue--son of the Equatorial Guinean dictator Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo--rocking an S-curl and his million dollar watch. They conclude with "We are living in a Frederick Forsyth novel". Indeed.
Last Saturday was International Day Against Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), so a it seems only appropriate to post the trailer of the documentary film Africa Rising, about the grassroots movement to end FGM.
KenyaBuzz has created a matatu map of Nairobi! I wonder if somebody could do the same with the gbakas in Abidjan...
And speaking of matatus, Sarah Elliott has a hilarious photo series of matatus decorated with pictures of all sorts of political leaders, such as the one below:
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 type of white clay or porcelain that women use to paint their bodies as a sign of joy and purification (like the one pictured on the right). You can read more about the experience here, but basically once the women realized the white clay wasn't as visible as in their bodies (obviously), they were extremely amused and I'm sure they talked about it for days.
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 fraction of time. My only frustration was not to hear the king's voice, since he never speaks in public but through a spokesperson. He just sits royally wisely observing 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].
