Plus ça change…

So what’s changed in Abidjan since I left in 2013?

Landscape

One of the first things I noticed upon my arrival in Abidjan was how much cleaner it was. Shortly after my departure in 2013, the government forbade the use of plastic bags. As I mentioned in this post on Ghana, similarly in Abidjan everything went into (sometimes two!) black plastic bags, whether you were buying bananas, fried chicken, or groceries. Though not all plastic bags were deemed unauthorized, and though not every city is in compliance with the law, the results in Abidjan seem to be pretty clear to me: the grass on the side of the road is less littered with garbage and the open sewers swell less with black plastic.

Last rainy season, several neighborhoods experienced severe flooding, but in particular shantytowns in Cocody were especially hit: 39 died in the shantytown known as “Gobelet.” Those who have been to Abidjan before 2014 have seen this shantytown if they have ever made the trip between Riviera and II plateau as you probably crossed through Gobelet on your way to rue des jardins. It certainly is a precarious zone to build a neighborhood as it is crisscrossed by a creek and the valley does not look stable enough to hold homes. So, in July 2014, these folks were evicted (offered around $300 to skedaddle) and the shantytown completely demolished. It now looks like this:

http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/view-of-the-goblet-district-of-the-cocody-area-in-abidjan-news-photo/464034912

 Infrastructure

3eme pont, 3eme pont ! Alright, I was super excited to see and drive across the third bridge, named affectionately for former President Henri Konan Bédié (see photo below: perhaps to appease him so he would not run against current President Ouattara in October?), and whose construction made traffic a nightmare on both sides of the lagoon when I was here last. It lives up to expectation, I’d say: a futuristic traffic interchange precedes it in Marcory, then you have a long stretch of highway with signs that look as if they are lifted directly from the French autoroute. The bridge itself is long and straight, several lanes but rarely crowded because of the 500 FCFA ($1) toll one must pay when crossing both ways. The toll stations are the same as one would find in Europe, and they even have exact change! The bridge pops out on the other side near the infamous Golf Hotel (this is where Ouattara camped out during the election crisis; and where I saw Stromae last weekend in concert). It makes a more direct route between the airport and my neighborhood, as well as direct access to several embassies.

The other infrastructural feat to occur since my departure is the Riviera 2 rond-point. This is connected to the bridge, and during my stay in Abidjan, the traffic caused by the construction was particularly horrendous. Well, they have finished the work and made quite a nice traffic circle; the problem is that it did nothing to improve traffic conditions… it perhaps made it even worse as cars can no longer speed through this area now regulated by traffic lights (and the occasional police officer – yesterday I saw a lady cop giving a Gbaka driver a piece of her mind for running the light!)

These changes may be seen as positive for the president as he attempts to build up political support for the elections in October (well, maybe not evicting the shantytown dwellers). However, not everyone is impressed with Ouattara's "concrete" achievements: LIDER, an opposition political party, posted this on their facebook page (rough translation below):

"In saying that Ivorians want something "concrete," Ouattara must have been thinking about the English word, "concrete," which would explain why he has exclusively focused his presidency on constructing things out of concrete. What's concrete for Ivorians is the high price of electricity, power cuts, the state of disrepair in the hospitals and clinics, the piling up of heavy arms by the rebels, pharmacies lacking medicines, a bridge that charges too much and is not profitable, high taxes, partial justice, increases in the cost of living, corruption and a partisan electoral commission...We are Ivorian and the only thing we expect concretely from Mr. Ouattara is that he puts into place democratic conditions and transparent and credible elections."

These are just my initial thoughts as I close out the first week of my return to Abidjan. More insights to come!

Back to Abidjan!

Here we go again! I'll be in Côte d'Ivoire from May 20, 2015 until July 27, 2015. This time I'll be carrying out a research project on election preparation and voter education programs in the run-up to the October presidential elections. These elections will be the first since the 2011 post-election crisis, when the country fell into months of violent conflict after both incumbent and opposition candidates declared themselves winners, leaving over 3,000 dead.

I'll be based in Abidjan, but hoping to travel with the Civil Society Coalition for Peace and Democratic Development in Côte d’Ivoire (COSOPCI) as they put on voter education campaigns and register voters throughout the country.  We'll be developing and conducting a survey in Abidjan about the elections and on citizens' perceptions of democracy promotion. This research is supported by grants from the West Africa Research Association and the Human Rights Center at UC Berkeley.

I am excited to return in a different capacity (as a researcher and as a PhD student) and to see how much has changed (or not!) in Abidjan. 

Au revoir, Abidjan....

 I will soon be leaving Abidjan.... time really flew! 

Here are some things I will definitely miss....

-          Alloco: these fried delicacies will greatly be missed. However, I bet my heart/arteries will be grateful.
-          Coconuts on the street: Manna from heaven, and they will cut it open for you to drink right there. 100 centimes. Life doesn’t get any better.

 -          Coffee ladies: three wonderful Baoulé ladies serve coffee and sandwiches on my floor at work. Every morning, they laugh at my accent and bring me coffee with a little milk. Sometimes I get an avocado sandwich from them for lunch.
-          Ivorian mannerisms while speaking: “Yako,” “mmhmm”, “on est là,” “ce qui est sûr…” and various hand gestures that go with them.
-          Jacqueville: Paradise. Though a bit of a pain to get to, it was my favorite spot in Cote d’Ivoire due to its beauty and quiet.

-          Maquis: poisson braisé, poulet picqué, alloco, attieke, and good music to boot. In particular, Chez Helene, Chez Ambroise, and BBQ Inn.

-          My colleagues and our missions: I enjoyed traveling to schools in other cities, and my colleagues were great partners for the trips.

-     The Chargeurs: the guys who get us the car in the morning for work. Some of them confessed their love, while others just preferred to practice their English.

     -    Shocking taxi drivers with my accent.

-          Pagne: Bright colors on men and women alike, in interesting styles. Oumar, our tailor, could make anything we drew for him, as long as we gave him a lot of time (sometimes sitting with him for hours while he finished stuff)

-          The hair salon ladies: $7 for a mani/pedi. They are right across the street so I definitely used their services. They loved to ask us to bring them back a “friend” from the USA.
-           The Hash: Both the classic and the Abidjan Hash, this was the once a week chance to leave the city and walk around with good company. I laid the Classic Hash twice, which merited me a very inappropriate Hash name. Fun times.

Classic Hash, Abidjan Zoo, 16 June

Abidjan Hash, November 10

-          Wearing sandals every day

-          New surprises/challenges every day: walk out the door. You do not know what the day holds… it could consist of making a taxi driver giggle with your sad attempts at Nouchi or arguing with fruit sellers about the price of a mango. It could end with the road being blocked from a land slide during the rainy season or a 2 hour traffic jam caused by incompetent military trying to regulate the patterns. You might learn the merits of polygamy from a colleague during a conference or have to explain to other colleagues how to put page numbers into a document. You could eat bush meat in a sticky okra stew or French fries and Lebanese salad. You just never know, and that’s what’s the best about it.

Won’t be missed

-          Apprentis: the kids that yell at you when you are crossing the street: They want you to go on their Gbaka. But I just want to cross the street.
-          Embouteillage: Sitting in hour-long traffic in the heat with pollution coming in the windows…. No thank you.

-          Internet and power outages: With the rainy season came lots of power outages. And our internet was always up and down.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/22/delestron-cartoon-superhero-blackout-ivory-coast

-          Negotiating: Every price is negotiable. Though this has positive benefits for the pocket, it can get exhausting, especially if the vendor is giving you a hard time because of where you come from.

-          NesCafe: I can’t wait to have some real coffee. The good kind.
-          Nobody having change: See this post.
-          Open sewers and men using them to relieve themselves: Nuff said.
-          Work drama: bureaucracy and politics, lack of funds, and the like… I sometimes found myself in the middle of “palabres” between colleagues. 

Pomp and circumstance

In Ivoirian culture, and what I am seeing in the office culture specifically, is the importance of greeting people. Every morning, I go around the 5^th and 6^th floors to greet the Director of the DPFC and his various Deputy Directors. I then also greet my colleagues working on EDHC. What’s most interesting about the greeting process is that it’s in fact not at all rude to interrupt a meeting (unless it’s a very important one) to greet someone. This took me aback at first, when people would just come into my office during a meeting to just say hello.

Every visit we make to a school involves a formal meet and greet with the director of the school. We sit in their overly air conditioned office, and the director, after offering us some water, asks for the news (les nouvelles). Depending on whether the director is a man or a woman, they will ask for the youngest person of the same sex to give the news. They will then ask one of their colleagues to summarize the news to them. In other words, everyone has a mouthpiece that speaks for them. Once the news is summarized, the director of the school welcomes everyone and we can proceed with the purpose of our visit.

Every meeting and conference has an opening ceremony, where some high-up person will give a little speech thanking everyone (and then they sometimes leave right after, not actually participating in the conference). Then a MC is selected that runs the meeting and who is charged with taking down names during the question-answer section. Then there is a closing ceremony where the high-up person returns or sends a representative to give a closing speech. Titles, as I can gather, are very important. And making sure you thank all the right people in your speech is equally so.

More often than not the time allocated to the people of importance and their long speeches exceeds the purpose of the actual ceremony: case in point, I went to the MENET’s day of Excellence awards ceremony where the five speakers took over two hours to do their speeches, whereas the award giving process (to the best school, best teacher, best administrator, best student, etc) took about an hour.

This past month saw two fun ceremonies: the MENET’s Excellence awards and the MENET’s National Women’s Day celebration. Both had comedians, singers, actors that broke up the long speeches. They honored various personnel within the ministry as well as students and teachers. The Excellence awards took place in the fancy Hotel Ivoire and the Women’s day was in the grand Palais de la Culture.  Here are some pictures to enjoy.

Hotel Ivoire

Madame le ministre giving her welcoming speech

Some of the awardees

Hotel Ivoire

Prime Minister Daniel Kablan Duncan

Women's day

Palais de la culture

Madame le Ministre and the Prime Minister's wife releasing doves

Palais de la culture