Civil War approaching?

It’s hard to believe that I’m in a country that’s almost at a civil war stage, everything here is so normal.  Music plays 24/7, people are happy & still very welcoming but the discussion around me is always about politics.  It seems that many people in CI will accept Ouattara as President for the good of the economy & to have the country working again.  It's hard seeing so many people affected by this conflict.  However the hard core ‘patriots’ have other ideas and will keep going till the end to ensure Gbagbo is in power, they’re predominantly in Abidjan & the south of CI.  I try to work most days on the computer looking for work, chasing contracts and go to bed to then wake in horror when an avocado falls on the tin roof fearing the worst!

We are now 4 adults & 6 kids under one roof in two rooms ... my hosts refuse to let me move, I have their room with the only air-con in the house, I’m completely spoilt! A few days ago a friend of theirs arrived with her baby boy on her back.  She’d come from Port Bouet, the district of Abidjan next to the port and airport.  She’d seen mercenaries killing people, two young men in particular that she saw dead in the street.  She has calmed down a lot since arriving when she was very tense but constantly calls her husband in the morning to ensure he’s still alive.  It seems that there are a lot of refugees that have headed this way to be with friends & family.

Things in Abidjan aren’t good; E who will be the future centre manager, returned from here after 6 days of hard work on the computer with both of us typing up documents for the mayor & other officials here.  He got a direct bus that took 5hrs instead of a usual maximum of 3hrs but at least it was only 2,200CFA, they’d loaded up with bags of charcoal which is a VERY rare commodity now in Abidjan.  Each bag here costs 1,000CFA, 3 weeks ago I heard a bag in Abidjan cost 16,000CFA – god knows what the price is now.  They were stopped on their way into Abidjan demanding 1,000CFA per bag by customs, I’m not sure how many they had but there was a big argument and the bags were left at Adjouffou on the edge of Abidjan whilst the driver probably went off to find money to pay for it.  

E is in Abobo, one of the worst areas for the mercenary led killings, nothing moves there apparently, no taxis ... nothing, it’s become a ghost town.  People are scared to go out , doors are locked & the only means of communication is by mobile phone.  The fear of genocide is increasing on both sides, there’s a mass grave in Abidjan apparently, heavily guarded by Gbagbo military ... whether they’ll take photos & say it was the other side that was killed or their own men, who knows .. But most of the other districts in Abidjan functional perfectly normally .. the fear is not so desperate, possibly because both Abobo & Adjame were the areas where the ‘death squads’ killed many early on in the last crisis.

Prior to coming into CI, I was in touch with Amnesty International, I'm now sending them reports of what I hear locally from people, talking to them face to face & getting the facts.  I don't care who's responsible for the killings, I'm not politically minded, but to kill civilians is a crime in my book.

It’s the end of December & the mayor still hasn’t returned I realise he’s been caught up in the political situation & ‘Three Wise Men’ from Benin, Cap Verde & Sierra Leone that came to mediate with Gbagbo.  I desperately need to see him to get confirmation of the project ... I’m determined more than ever that we get this project set up & running.  There’s a crisis happening here right now & if it's not resolved it could get worse .. people are suffering and they’ll be more kids on the streets than before.  Personally I see CI going the same way as Zimbabwe; why the UN don’t do more I don’t know. 

We’ve had three consecutive days of storms, that all started around 4pm the second day was the worst, rain pelted down half the night, makes the road between here & Aboisso very difficult, in some parts the road has gone & got a lot worse since last year.  In it’s place are massive puddles with lots of mud, which wasn’t great yesterday as it came into the footwell of my 7 seater & I arrived in Aboisso with very muddy feet.  At least I managed to hold my balance in Aboisso when I almost went over in a muddy patch!   I’d headed down to Aboisso again, this time alone.  Absolutely no problems at all, except for taxi guys desperately trying to sell me a seat in the taxis that head to Noe & the border.  

I was there to meet a Canadian friend's friend who’s been helping us both with the project.  He’s from the north & found that the situation in Abidjan was too much to handle.  As far as I know he escaped Bouake during the height of the last crisis.  Anyway, I met up with him in Aboisso & introduced him my friends there who found him a hotel for the night before he was due to leave CI for 'quieter' climes.  I rang Accra & had a bed organised for him there before he heads to Lome, Togo where he has a promise of work from a friend.  I heard from him when he reached Ghana he got stuck at the border trying to get transport to Accra .. apparently he’s the only Ivorian heading that way which is good news as there are reports of around 17,000 refugees from the west already in Liberia & another 200 in Guinea.

I haven’t really done much; I went with my hosts & friends to his club the other side of town, had a bit of a problem with the town gendarmes who’d returned from a ‘mission’ and wanted to enter in uniform with their kalashnikovs .. eventually they realised that it wasn’t such a good idea and left but caused a bit of a chaos trying to get them to exit the place before everyone calmed down again.  Strange really when in ‘normal’ times they wouldn’t even consider entering armed but in the situation we’re in they feel they have the right to dance ‘armed’!!  

 I’ve made few trips to Aboisso; each time I forget to go to the pharmacy there as the one here doesn’t have my malaria tablets, got 2 weeks worth left, not completely desperate yet.  My swimming idea went very wrong when I heard that there are now crocs around, so I am hoping that the Mayor will be with us tonight for New Years Eve as promised so that I can get down to the beach & swim in the ocean.  

In the meantime, I keep receiving messages on Facebook from people who are genuinely concerned by my situation but unaware of my surroundings.  I'm finding it the most stressful thing to deal with at the moment ... Positive wishes are welcomed but being told that I might need rescuing by EU troops is a bit of an overstatement ... spectators should remain just that unless they want to help with the project!

HAPPY NEW YEAR ALL!!!

Christmas week

Due to the drama of last week, there isn’t any fuel between here & Abidjan.  The last reserves of diesel are being put into tanks outside the maquis I’m typing this from. People are concerned, no fuel means no supplies, the word around town is ‘famine’ but I hope it won’t come to that. We shall see ...

All well here as before.  It was busy over Christmas, chickens being chased for meals with family arriving from Abidjan and beyond.  For me it was a bit hectic.  The guy in charge of child protection & trafficking at the Conseil Regionale was in Abidjan last week & didn’t get back to Aboisso, the nearest town till Friday.  So finally a meeting was set up for 10am Friday.   E who will be the centre manager & I got a 7 seater down to Aboisso (20km away) to meet our contact and had an productive hour with him, he then took us to see a center built by the govt. a few years ago in Aboisso.

I could have cried, it had never been used; E & I were gutted, the centre was near ‘perfect’ as it was an ideal size although needed some serious renovation due to vandalism but the brick structure & rooves were still intact.  Two villas of 4 bedrooms each with a communal area between them with the ability to house 32 children.  However the negatives were really building up, the area it was in was not ideal, hotbed of Aboisso’s political activity, on a hill in the middle of a growing shantytown and it only had a small plot of land, not even a hectare – someone had started building on the lower part of the land too, none of it was fenced.  If only we could have picked it up & transported it to our future land.  We left our contact & his colleague at an internet cafe to get our document for the mayor printed & bound then drowned our sorrows for half an hour in a maquis.

I went shopping for Christmas presents for my hosts & family; they’ve been so good to me .. supermarket shopping on Christmas Eve in Aboisso is not to be recommended.   The ‘supermarket’ was similar to the one in Bassam, small, crammed full of goods & customers.  I bought my things and asked to have them wrapped, another seriously bad idea, she took well over an hour to wrap 5 presents, I wasn’t allowed to help, I left E in charge of it all to go outside & calm down (where I realised that the air-con in the shop was working despite it feeling horribly hot)

The mayor was due back for Christmas, but didn't return which left me stranded.  I neeed to see him to give him the document & get a confirmation of land donation (& photo’s of the land), it’s annoying as I’d love to head down to the beach to see everyone there & have a swim.  I’m thinking of going off & finding somewhere to swim nearby. I’ve seen photo’s of it but  not sure exactly where along it is & how much snake infested bush I’ll need to go through to get to it – I’ll see how ‘desperate’ I get ... seen a fair few snakes this week!!

Christmas eve evening we stayed in a friend's maquis in town, compared to the previous night when we were in his nightclub the other side of town as there was electricity there whilst town had been plunged into the dark due to a failure somewhere.  I rang a friend who is/was Gbagbo’s transport representative to wish a Happy Christmas.  I was a little worried having talked and read the news on the internet that Goodluck Jonathan (Nigerian Pres) has offered Gbagbo a refuge. She was leaving CI at 6am in the morning on a flight for Abuja & demanded to know where I was; to keep anonimity (despite the friendship) I said 'Aboisso' and the answer was ‘you’ll be fine’.  11 years ago on Christmas Eve there was a coup d’etat here, my brain was in overdrive wondering if something was going to happen again, history almost repeating itself?

We await tomorrow and what the week will bring, but everyone here is generally of the opinion that Gbagbo needs to leave to allow the country to pick up where it left off economically.  If he does go the ‘patriots’ will protest, burn tyres etc for a few days but I very much doubt it will develop any further.  Ghana has threatened to attack CI if any of it’s UN soldiers with UNOCI are ‘harmed’ and most of W.Africa is ready to send forces in to remove Gbagbo.   

The town is still united in it’s anti-war stance as it was during the previous crisis, there have been a few ‘arguments’ over the last few days; gendarmerie refusing to pay tax leaving town this morning loaded up with charcoal, two women fighting over the same man & one of them bit the other and the third one was a minor heated discussion between the taxi drivers!  One thing that makes me laugh, neighbours asking each other in the morning 'How is your President?' ... such a mad & sad situation!

My main worry at the moment are the mozzies who have had a good Christmas from me .. yes, I am taking my Lariam equivalent!!!  But obviously my health insurance is totally invalid, so I cannot afford any accidents!

E left this morning for Abidjan, hope he returned safely & I’m just back from a reception, a lady here went off on a pilgrimage to Fatima (Portugal), Santiago de Compostela & Lourdes ... A deluge of photos on a big screen at her home, over 70 of us there, including the European doctor and endless religious music played full blast; the food wasn’t bad & I had my first glass of wine in a few weeks.  The bottle said it was ‘European’ but it was worth drinking (won’t touch Val Pierre – ‘Ivorian wine’ – actually the dregs from France bottled here!),  I’m glad to be back under my cocoa tree without any religion nearby typing this up!!!

Getting back to normal life ...

Waking up at 4.30am wasn’t ideal, I was woken by what I thought was shooting, loud bangs of metal ... I couldn't hear my hosts moving, nor the children; I lay in bed wondering what was going on outside then I finally dozed off again.  Getting up I realised to my stupidity, the 'shooting' was the avocadoes falling on the roof of the house!!!

I met my ‘little brother’ who has cerebral palsy, he came with me for breakfast then I took him to the barbers as his hair was getting too long & told the barber to do whatever he felt was right.  Attito turned up 30minutes later with a shaved head looking very proud of himself whilst we all told him he was the most handsome man in the town!

E who will head up C.R.E.E.R arrived at midday finally, another big welcoming hug.  My host was a saint, he had ridden his motorbike 12km to the nearest town to pick E up, who’d spent 2 days trying to get out of Abidjan.  It was his first time to come to this town where he will be living in the future, he was amazed to discover that he had a friend here from his university days.  We sat and talked for a while then showed him around town, to find he had another university friend living here, so he was in good company and really likes the environment here.  I was concerned about bringing him here, he’s Baoule by ethnicity, whilst the region is Agni; Baoule’s are accepted by the Agni, there are a few here already but even so during such a difficult period I didn’t want to cause a problem.  However he made a new Agni friend immediately who then offered to give him a bed for his stay here.

We talked at length about how to re-approach the mayor, then brought in my host who works at the Mairie & is very diplomatic.  He had to go up to the Mayor’s house and rang him in advance to ask if E & I could go up too.  We spent an hour or so discussing the situation and telling a girl who ‘hates the whites’ how the situation had got to this stage and that it wasn’t the fault of the whites; more that laws had been created in the past and not been adhered to during the election process.  As a lawyer he’s well versed in it and was impressive in the way he explained it all.   

During this conversation we then got word from Abidjan that Bedie (the 3rd candidate during the 1st round of elections) was going to make an announcement that this time, unlike the previous two elections when he accepted defeat he kept quiet.  But this time he was going to speak to the nation to resolve the situation.  Ouattara is President and that Gbagbo must accept defeat.  We are all now awaiting what will happen next, will the rest of the country accept this?  Certainly in this neck of the woods which is strongly pro-Bedie, they will I feel.

We left his house to be invited to dinner by his elder brother, gorgeous meal, lots of conversation & serious ‘heat’ to the point that we all finished quickly to get outside & feel a little breeze prior to retiring for the night; it was stifling hot!

First normal day ...

I woke up with a little bit of a sore head.  I could hear the rest of the family moving around in the house.  Got up to go & find breakfast, my normal sugared milk coffee and omelette.  Sat in my friend’s maquis whilst more people came past to welcome me back.  I showed them all the recyclable products I’d bought in Ghana with the intention of creating the same here as a partnership.  They were stunned at what was going on in the neighbouring country and the general concensus was that the same could be carried out here.  

I rang my friend to find out her husband had now said that due to my invitation to her to come with me, I had destabilized the family and that if I returned he’d kill me and it would be his wife’s fault & my blood would be on her hands.  As a 'patriot' if Cote d'Ivoire blows up then his family would go with it he told my friend who called in the hope of talking sense.  A bit of an overreaction I felt.

Lunch at the mayors was wonderful, I arrived with presents, the single malt whiskey went down very well. Talk was around the political situation, I then found messages on Facebook, which bizarrely can be accessed for free from the MTN network;  from friends telling me to get out of the country immediately.  With the situation as calm as it was, I wasn’t too worried, the Mayor said I’d be fine, that Gbagbo had given orders not to touch the hair of any French persons head (did that extend to the non-French too?!).  However the Nigerian Embassy were in the process of telling their nationals to evacuate, which had me wondering if I had lost the plot!

I also had an escape route organised via a village a few kilometres away a few friends promised to drive me to, from there apparently there are trucks that go over the border, although there aren’t any actual immigration formalities.  It would mean asking the gendarme here to stamp me out of the country & finding police in Ghana to accept me entering the country illegally.

We returned to the centre of town to talk further under the cocoa tree, a few ‘patriots’ turned up and got into a heated discussion which I kept well out of but they kept saying to me that I wasn’t to worry, I was still safe here.  However the main worry was the French army whether they would come here as they did during the crisis; I hoped not, it would cause a situation I really don’t want to become involved in.  I rang a journalist friend in Abidjan to alarmingly hear that his family had had death threats, they were in the process of moving ...

On the move

Waking up having heard shooting from the maquis I was in the night before, I decided that it wasnt worth hanging around.  At 8.45 I got a  call from a friend further east who asked what I was up to; I said I was heading that way later on in the day.  My friend and I went to a maquis at 11.40am, as the previous night it was all too calm in town, walking 500m we passed very few people in the street, heard no music but continued on.  By 12pm her husband called asking where we had gone, unhappy we’d not stayed in the house.  It wasn’t till later we found out 2 had been killed in town, her husband was annoyed we’d left and gone out but we didn’t realise the situation, naive maybe!

I rang another friend, a muslim, from the maquis to tell him I was back, he wanted to come over but was surrounded by military in his compound.  A little later he turned up telling us people had thrown stones at the mosque.  We discussed a few things and I decided my idea from earlier on was the best decision to make.  I asked my friend if she wanted to come with me, white and female, we were both in the same boat.  I also offered to take her step-daughter to relative safety but we were concerned if we’d be able to get through the military blockades with a child without papers.

I left, my friend following me.  Her husband wasn’t happy as we left demanding to know how we’d get transport.  We were on the side of the international road leading out of Cote d’Ivoire flagging any traffic that passed that was rare, probably 3 vehicles per minute probably 10% of the normal traffic.  After a few minutes my friend said she had to return to get a swimsuit ... 10 minutes later their maid arrived asking to return with her bag, they’d been arguments at home, she was staying.  Her husband accused her of abandoning the family & that I was a part of this abandonment.  I was also made aware that I was alone and I couldn’t return to the house.  I’d been put out on the street, I’m afraid it’s something I’ll never forgive in this situation as he knew the situation he was putting me & his wife in.

For over an hour I was flagging down vehicles with a young boy from the house who shortly went inside when he saw the military coming past towing large guns behind their wagons.  No one would stop, maybe they thought I was heading for the border, maybe they thought it was too much of a risk to take a white woman.  I really don’t know.  However I ended up calling a friend who has a taxi to come and get me as an hour and a half in the blazing sun was too much to take.  My friend had returned to my spot prior to the taxi arriving as her husband had stormed out, we discussed things and promised to keep in touch despite her problems at home.

Finally I was inside a car, we crossed the bridge without the problems of the previous day and after a kilometre or so found a taxi going further east.  I swapped taxis and continued my journey for an hour or so calling a friend in the town I was heading for who promised to meet me at my destination of Aboisso.  I got there and went straight to the maquis and got a big welcome from old acquaintances amazed I was back and told to sit & join them for a drink.  It felt good to be with more friends who were stunned by what had just happened to me, unhappy at an Ivoirian's behaviour.  Almost an hour later my friend pulled in and then I found he was with another friend I’d met 2 years previously, big welcomes, hugs & kisses all round.  I was glad to be back with people I had confidence in, I felt safe again, I knew where I stood.

They continued drinking for a while and finally we got into the car, only to move 200m to a nightclub at 5pm!!  More beer was served and I was told it had to be finished.  Around 7pm we rolled into town, stopped to order some grilled chicken to eat later and as we got into town there was a welcome party waiting for me. 

The Mayor, his wife, various friends and children all wanted to say hello to me.  I sat with the mayor for an hour or so whilst more & more people came up to greet me, I was near tears with the greeting I recieved from them all with the situation the country’s in, it was incredible that I had such a reception.  The Mayor invited me for lunch the following day (Sunday).    I was told that I was part of town now, that this is my home in CI ...

The difference in atmosphere between here and where I’d come from was amazing, people wandered around the streets, music was playing, it was all very normal.  I went out with my friend having said hello to his wife & children, saw my room we then reclaimed our chicken and partied the night away until the curfew at midnight when the sole gendarme of the town drove us home.

Entering Cote d'Ivoire ...

Left Takoradi at 11am today, got a tro-tro directly to the border, my stomach had a mind of it’s own and had been doing somersaults since early morning.  For once I spent less time arguing with tro-tro drivers over luggage money having thrown an early fit over the extra stuff I was taking which was for Ivoirians, some guy got a mouthful from me & backed down immediately.  Stomach giving me a lot of grief having to visit Takoradi tro-tro station's public conveniences just due to nerves; in my head I was determined I was going to return to Cote d’Ivoire.

We finally got to the border around 1.20pm, I asked the tro-tro driver not to drop me at the tro-tro station but up near the immigration post for Ghana, he was obliging & saved me having to lug my luggage through Elubo’s chaos to get to immigration.  Exited Ghana without a problem, got to the road to get a taxi the 800m or so up to Noe (CI) border.  After a bit of a fuss, got one for 1GhC then he said I could sit & wait for the other 4/5 passengers he needed to fill it.  Offered him another 0.20GhC to get going immediately, we started off up the hill & a white pick-up went tearing past us.  I immediately realised it was my Czech friend Tomas’ business pick-up,yelled at my driver to catch it up & we overtook it with me calling to Achille, in fact it was Marcel.  He indicated to my driver to pull over, he jumped out & I got a great hug from him.  He hauled  my luggage into the back of it & we finished the last 400m together as Achille, Tomas’ business partner whizzed past in the Tata which I’d seen parked at the Ghanaian immigration post but not paid it much attention, not believing they would be at the border.  More hugs & kisses all round as I saw the final vehicle of their convoy, a truck full of their goods arrived, which got put straight into the customs shed.

I got to the vaccination centre to show my yellow fever certificate, I’d thought all was well but they noticed my meningitus was out of date.  Wanted me to be vaccinated there & then, I refused due to the fact my own syringes & needles were  now in the back of Achille’s car about to clear customs with him whilst I was on foot with just a small bag, didn't want to draw attention to the medicines I was bringing in.  I was only a month or so out of date so it really wasn’t that desperate, after a bit of pleading in English only, I was allowed to leave.  Immigration were fine, friendly & had a laugh with me and I wandered out into the street without so much as a glace from customs at my daypack.

Achille drove as fast as he could westwards.   We went through about 6 military blockades, all friendly nothing too sinister, the most thorough being at N’Kizro just before Samo.  Then we got to the edge of the lagoon at Bassam, I expected to see a roadblock there between the two bridges as there had been in the past.  There was a roadblock but governed by about 30 men aged around 20, turned out to be Ouattara supporters, one was sat on the a bench he’d placed in the only position you could pass as the rest of the width of the road had tyres & others bits on it.  Kept making eating motions whilst about 3 descended on the car demanding money saying the guy on the bench was a Betie (pro-Gbagbo normally), Achille asked them why he needed to negotiate and after a 30 second or so negotiation we were allowed to pass.  At the other end of the second bridge there was a little gang of 50 or so all ranting at the occupants of a minibus.  We passed without further problems & Achille dropped me at my friends.

I’ve been here only a few hours.  So much isn’t going on, but the undercurrent is there, no taxis, prices hiked up due to no deliveries, Red Cross passing us at a bar where we were initially the only ones.  I heard shots but took no notice; we have come back to the house early than normal.  The TV is turned on, it’s national TV, RTI – Gbagbo controlled & very interesting what was coming across, to my mind some of it was true, some of it might be considered half truths but a very firm messageis coming across, Sarkozy,the UN, African Union etc cannot control what happens in this country and he’s here to stay.  Rumours are abound, Ouattara is at Licorne, the French army HQ, 21 died yesterday  ‘Abbatoir Thursday’.  Diplomats refused their immunity & shoulder held rockets were shown on TV apparently the UNOCI were responsible for getting weapons to the ‘Forces Nouvelles’ aka  ‘old rebels’ who are pro-Ouattara; amongst messages from the armed forces & justice ministers, my mind is swirling amazed at the propaganda.  

I'm in my room as the obvious brainwashing is just too much to take and to see my friends lapping up every word worries me, there are two sides to every story.  I don’t know what to think, I have my own theory on the future here if this situation continues, I’m not going to write it here but I just hope this ends peacefully without anymore bloodshed.  The economy can’t take this much longer they’ll loose what has been built up over the last few years.

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