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.