Four Christmas' & the christening of Adjoba

I spent a few days in Abidjan with my friend who has a business there, I needed time to come to terms with what had happened on the trip down, although I was dying to get to the orphanage to see the kids.

Spent a Sunday afternoon at his company's staff Christmas party, very funny with one of the guys saying prayers - which consisted of a plea for increased sales and a better profit margin whilst his business partner was quietly puffing on a cigar. It was like something out of a comedy sketch!! We had a great meal of goat, egg salads + rice etc

Unfortunately the next day I fell sick. I got serious stomach cramps every 30mins or so. My friend had given me the keys to his house in Abidjan to stay there whilst he went to see family in Europe. With the cramps getting stronger I decided to get a few taxis to Bassam to stay with my US/Ivorian friends where he tried to insist I see the doctor - but living on vimto, water and pots of charcoal pills I made a good recovery!

Being back in Bassam was great, saw the kids who were in the middle of lunch when I turned up, they do have table manners and arent allowed to leave the table till they've all finished but by sticking my head around the corner of a wall to see them eating I caused mayhem to their lunch as they all scrabbled to get out of their places and knocked me over for a hug!!

I went to their Christmas party two days later and finally managed to speak to the Colonel of the 4eme parachute regiment from France to arrange transport of stuff to Cote d'Ivoire. However he didn't promise anything but at least I know how to go about it now and have his support!

It was strange, so many people saw me in the street and came up to me and said hello and welcome back to Bassam. Even some Rasta guy who came out of a shop to try to get me to buy his tour on the lagoon finally caught up with me, saw my face and apologised saying 'welcome back' instead. One morning I was on the side of the road when a taxi came past with the passenger yelling 'Abidjan' at me - normal occurence but having signalled 'no' to them, it stopped 100m from me. Out of the drivers seat popped Eme a driver I use from the beach (50km further on), came running over to greet me and ask how the trip from Burkina was whilst his passengers were all waiting to continue onto Abidjan!!! Yet again people are so open and welcoming!

I left Bassam for the beach. Found some idiot taxi driver who refused to take me the last 3km, so I asked around for someone else but they were all asking ridiculous prices so I sat on the side of the road with my phone and rang Eme who was 2hrs away on another Abidjan trip. Somehow word spread and a little white C15 van pulled up in front of me with a young guy that I sort of recognised. It was Adama who had been sent to get me, driving back into the village past little Ama's mothers stall I got a big shout of 'welcome back'.

Arsene and his brother Mark are Burkinabe that Ive known for a few years, Adama is their cousin. Ive been sending them clients for their two hotels and when I turned up Arsene told me that I had a room for free and wasnt staying in 'my' beach shack this time - I spent Christmas day with them all. Arsene and a friend of his who has businesses in Abidjan sat me down at the table at 9am on Christmas morning and I asked for a coffee - I got a Jack Daniels!!! After lots of complaining I got my morning coffee and then helped them finish a few bottles of red wine prior to 1pm! I spent the day between the maquis and beach then decided to have a bit of a rest when I heard lots of screaming ...

It turned out a girl had been on the back of the only jet ski on the beach and came off, she was wearing a life jacket luckily. She had been bobbing about near the jet ski whilst the guy riding it was trying to get it re-started; suddenly the rip tide got her and dragged her out to sea - the speed at which she apparently went out was alarming. Being Ivorian she couldnt swim like many there, but she somehow got herself back to shore and out of the rip - she was very very lucky!!!

I left the beach on 26th to go to Ayame and meet a baby who was born at the end of April and named after me! She wasn't there!! However the Mayor of Ayame had called me Christmas night and I'd promised to return. I took a new friend with me for the day, she had flown in from Abuja with her husband and friend on their first visit to Cote d'Ivoire. Unfortunately I'd not thought to remind her about her passport so we had problems with the gendarmes on the way up there who were after money, a wife and a cigarette in that order. I gave them a cigarette and then called the Mayor of Ayame for help!!!


On arrival I got a massive welcome and returned to Lucas' motel. The Mayor told me to be at his house at 5pm; he had organised a Christmas reception for me, cocktails; meal and then back to the village for more partying with all the crowd I had met last year. The Mayor of Ayame re-named me 'Adjoba' , my Agni (Akan, southern CI language) name which everyone there used, took a while to get used to it!!! It means I was born on a Wednesday having googled it, I was born on a Thursday!!


I was stunned by his generosity and worked on a plan with him and the elders to eradicate Ayame of plastic bags which drive me mad. Ive got a few people working on figures to find out the cost of material and thread, to make their own cotton bags and create a little cottage industry here that will be self-funding. The Mayor will make Ayame a 'sachette free-zone' so that everyone will have to use the cotton bags and the plan is to spread this throughout the Sud-Comoe region via him

Hypocrite

I finally got to Abidjan, I turned up at 1am in a bedraggled taxi from Adjame with Brice who'd travelled with me since Ouaga; an Ivorian studying environmental engineering in Ouagadougou.

I had almost 48hrs in Ouaga, enough time to get my visa put into my passport for a fraction of the cost of an Ivorian visa in Europe, have a lovely lunch with old Burkinabe friends and their 4 kids.

The bus left Ouaga at 11pm, as usual it was perfectly on time with 4 gendarmes on board armed with kalashnikovs in case of bandits on the road; we were the lead bus of 4 TCV vehicles.

Burkinabe transport still amazes me - it is so well organised compared to the rest of W.Africa, large, clean, air conditioned, comfortable new TCV bus headed out on the road to Bobo Dialausso to arrive at 4am where I would have a wait of 3hrs before catching the connecting bus to Bouake, CI. What ensued was unimaginable ...

I fell asleep, at 12.10 in the morning the brakes were jammed on, what had been a great ride and a lovely sleep was broken. A few of the guys got off with the gendarmes and came back to say there was an accident. We all started getting off for a leg stretch when things became clearer and there was a bus 2 vehicles in front of us that had gone head first into a truck; possibly due to the age of the bus and the pot hole a few meters beforehand. Whilst on the side of the road a tall Burkinabe guy came up to me and asked me to help; turns out he is one of the heads of the gendarmerie from Bobo called Francis - passenger on the bus behind mine. I explained I wasnt medically qualified but I'd go and do what I could.

Arriving on the scene we found most of the passengers sitting on the side of the road in shock but no injuries to speak of apart from one or two scratches. The truck driver had died and the bus driver was being freed by a few guys from my bus along with a girl sitting behind him. Someone had called the ambulance which was on its way from Ouaga along with the firemen to cut the wreckage. The bus driver had a fractured leg and I said it needed a splint and straightening, it was an open fracture and even in the early hours it was warm but I couldnt do anything for him. The girl had a broken foot I think and dirty cuts to the base of her foot, I offered to go and get my bandages and disinfectant etc and try to clean her up; she was about 14. The traffic was going through the field to one side of the road as the accident had completely blocked the road.

I walked back to my bus with Francis and asked around for my bus driver so that I could access my pack and medical stuff, couldnt find him, just the other driver of the bus behind us who had bought me a coffee just prior to leaving Ouaga. Suddenly the gendarmes starting screaming at us all to get back on the buses, at the same time someone said 'they're firing' and I ran down the slope into the bush in the pitch dark with Francis not far behind me. The noise did sound as if bullets were being fired but then it changed and got louder and nearer but I couldn't see anything until this 10 wheeled truck pulled up narrowly missing the front of our bus.

What transpired was that the truck, Togolais, with 3 guys clandestine goods (TVs and DVDs) on board had driven at full speed right through the accident, so the noise was of the metal being hit by the truck. Someone ran up screaming at us saying 'theyve all been killed' - they had driven over all the passengers from the first accident. I'm not going to go into details, but you can imagine what had happened. It turned out later via Francis the gendarme who has been in constant touch, that 7 died, there were a few walking wounded, a few stretchered and one or two very lucky ones who miraculously survived two accidents in one night without a scratch!

We left the scene via an alternative route to Bobo having buried the dead with the gendarmes + pompiers helping out once they had freed the 2 men found in the back of the original truck - I have to say they were very professional in their job and thanked the gendarmes several times - we had all been through a lot and they were excellent and caring!


It's part of the reason I've not been able to write this blog for so long, it's taken a long time to get this out of my head. Dealing with the situation afterwards was far harder than being there on the scene, something I never want to go through again or wish others to experience.

So we continued on, changing buses at Bobo for Bouake there were about 10 of us who had come from Ouaga; we stuck together as a strong group, they really looked after me. We had arrived in Bobo 2.5hrs late which is unusual for Burkinabe transport but they had held our bus back.



We got to the Ivorian border around 1pm and the rebels were there, very much in charge and I had fun and games again. Firstly they wanted 200CFA from each passenger, I went back into 'dont speak French mode' and they gave up with me, took my passport off and I went over to the medical formalities for Yellow Fever, one of the rebels came and got me and told me to go to another hut to get my passport. This guy stamped my passport and demanded 1000CFA, I said in English; no - I paid for the visa yesterday you arent getting any more out of me, he held my passport back and purposely put it out of my reach - I demanded it back and got my phone out saying I was going to ring the Embassy (likely chance getting the number for the nearest one in Abuja, Nigeria whilst in the bush near Ouangolodougou - remembering a text when an Irish friend had arrived there after his stint in Bouake's prison as a spy!!!)


So he gave me my passport and I said; 'ok I go now', he yelled at me '1000CFA now', I couldnt go, I then noticed the hand he had been using to stamp passports now had a gun in it, handgun that looked a little old but 'useful' to frighten some blanche tourist. I told him that he still wasnt going to get the 1000CFA and he could put the gun away again which annoyed him that he hadn't frightened me. Finally 2 Burkinabe diplomats turned up heading to Abidjan and tried to help me with my non-existant French and got me off the hook. 200m away from the hut I spoke to them in French and they doubled up laughing at me that I'd managed to fool the rebels and get away with it!!!

We got to Bouake around 5.30pm and Brice and I got the same minibus to Abidjan, 'Operation Christmas' was in full swing there, checkpoints all over. Money wanted and harrassment by the customs guys to the point of which one in Yamoussoukro told me CI was still at war - I had a real go at him saying that he's killing any chance of tourism for the country.


We finally pulled into Abidjan around 12.30am after losing my temper with the military at a roadblock outside Youpougon who had decided the curfew had started at 11.45pm. The driver came back to the minibus and said it was fruitless trying to get through without giving over something, we'd have to wait till 6am After the journey Brice & I had had, I wasn't standing for it and possibly the horror of seeing a filthy dirty blanche lose her temper the barrage was opened without any money changing hands. Worse still a kilometre up the road I saw a baboon chained to a street lamp, not sure which had me more angry!

The driver dropped us all in Adjame, the worst district of Abidjan. Brice was a saint and told me that he'd find a taxi and make sure I got to my friend's place in one piece. Not having visited my friend's new place, I had our taxi going around in circles, around prostitutes and my phone battery was getting weaker whilst trying to find the address. Finally we arrived at 1am and my friend dragged me out to Alpha Blondy's 'Cafe de Versailles' bar till 3am trying to calm my nerves after a 25hr trip from hell

So, moral of the story is that I will continue to say, dont travel at night and I will respect my own rules - life is precious and I was very lucky!! I admit to being a complete hypocrite!

First leg ...

I got into Ouagadoudou at 3am in the morning; after a whirlwind few days in Tripoli!

My Libyan host gave me an excellent driver who spoke very little English but did remarkably well and taught me bits of arabic - mainly involved swearing at drivers and had me laughing a lot about the antics of crazy Libyan drivers - you'd have to know Tripoli to understand!!!

Libya was incredible; mainly due to a very good friend of mine - who introduced me to another friend who is Libyan. He totally looked after me, saying a million 'shukrans' wasnt quite enough.
Tripoli was great, although I was constantly worried about not being 'dressed' covered up as much as possible but must remember to buy blouses that can touch my knees!!! The town is so different to what I expected but I dont know exactly what I expected, but did enjoy it. The place is booming, construction going on all over, top western brands moving into flash showrooms, new cars and fast food joints selling 'fried viagra' !!! Its aiming to be the Dubai of the med!

So I got into Ouaga; the airport is a disaster ... so little infrastructure. Got a bit of a shock last night when arriving at the check-in counter, they had bumped me off as it was full and the flight was going to Bamako before Ouaga ... but managed to get myself back on it at the last minute & raced through immigration to be last at the gate.

We landed an hour late at 3am which wasnt bad. I found a friendly honest taxi driver, fought off a few phonecard touts + bounced down the dimly lit city streets into the 'village' of Ouaga or thats how it felt; weirdly enough I was missing Tripoli and wanting to be back there! I think I woke most of the auberge that Danika, Maddy and I stayed in 2years ago whilst trying to wake the guardien to let me in and see if they had a room, did the usual trick of no booking prior to arriving but it all worked out fine. Sadly the auberge has gone downhill a little, chairs broken, plaster peeling off but still has the same charm and very quiet in the centre of town with a few French staying there.

My first morning in Ouaga I was up and at 'Service des Passeports' on the Bobo road out of Ouaga for the Burkina Immigration authorities having a VTE visa (5 countries) so that I could enter Cote d'Ivoire on it. I immediately got another taxi across town to purchase a bus ticket (breaking all my own rules) for 11pm the following night to Bouake in CI arriving around 4pm day after, so an overnight journey which is usually a no-no for me but needs must + the ticket selling lady let me choose a place, crossing my fingers we wouldn't meet with an elephant at Boromo in the middle of the night!

So, for the second day running I was waiting to get my passport back; I'd applied two days previously for my Burkina visa in Tripoli and got it back 4pm the day of departing Tripoli after a bit of a battle with embassy staff.