Confused ...

It's not just me; it's 'friends' on twitter too ...

Friends don't understand the French involvement in W.Africa, in the past during independance and the current situation.  Living here & travelling regulary gives me an insight into how the politics & economics of the region works.  I was personally shocked by a pre-independance map I had the privilege to see, no countries were marked, just a great expanse of French territory with Nigeria & Ghana outlined in pink.

So, France seems to be very much involved in current economic affairs in Cote d'Ivoire as well as being dual spear-heads on the assault against Ghaddafi.  Russia & China vetoed out of both UN sanctions ... Russia had already signed via Gazprom (?national energy company) with Gbagbo; did they also come to an agreement with Libya?  My head is spinning!


That's the first part of my confusion ...


The second involves a young boy aged 15 now; he's at school, 'college' in Cote d'Ivoire who came online to talk to me after knowing me for 5yrs+.  When I quizzed him about being in a cyber cafe rather than at college, he told me that his teacher died yesterday.

Later I chatted to the director of the children's centre he lives in to find that the FRCI had killed his teacher.  I am confused.  I thought Cote d'Ivoire was calm now without any problems and certainly not government forces killing people.  Maybe I don't have the whole story, but it's worrying ..

France is now firmly re-implanted in Cote d'Ivoire.  I'm sure Sarkozy would like to be elsewhere in Africa particularly W.Africa.  The French left as the English did but the difference being that they left taking a lot of infrastructure & blue prints with them upon independence.  It's left W.Africa needy for French assistance.  This might explain why there is an influx of W.African French in France as a tweeter reminded me.  The fact that the infrastructure was torn out didn't leave much for those who wanted to re-build the country.

I hope that the same will not be said in the near future in Cote d'Ivoire if it all goes wrong; however the First Lady is French ... time will tell.  Having spoken to French special forces posted there during the crisis, I do wonder!

Yako mes amis

Nearing normality ...?

Unfortunately there still seems to be a lot of chaos in Cote d'Ivoire.

Children returned to school yesterday, many still confused, lost & upset by the situation. Banks are due to open today; which might give many adults the impetus to re-start their lives. Fuel is slowly being distributed around Abidjan; hopefully deliveries will go further afield soon.

However, 'IB' the head of the 'Invisible Commandos' was killed in the Abobo district of Abidjan today. 'IB' - Ibrahim Coulibaly was the head of the small guerilla group that assisted Ouattara's forces to oust Gbagbo's patriots. However it seems that IB was on his own mission, continuing to fight with his militia. He was given the chance to turn in weapons to Ouattara's government or have them taken by force; along with 6 of his men and 2 FRCI soldiers, he was killed in battle yesterday.

A fellow Tweeter @senambeheton explains IB's political background & recent politics: http://senambeheton.posterous.com/in-new-ivory-coast-old-rivalries-threaten-ret

However, seeing AlJazeera shots of disturbed schoolchildren yesterday in a relatively 'quiet' area of Abidjan. I can't imagine what the children of Abobo are thinking. The trauma that they have gone through during this conflict is beyond anyone's imagination having been living through this nightmare in one of the hardest hit districts.

Yet, somewhere out there are the children that have really suffered; the children that have been living on the streets. What must have they seen? witnessed? succumbed to? How many were coerced into carrying weapons?

Time will tell if this latest drama of the crisis is finally the end of a long five months ...

Melting Pot

I've mentioned before I condemn any violence.  I have friends in Cote d'Ivoire who are strong Gbagbo supporters, others who are behind Ouattara and many who were with Bedie but have gone towards Ouattara.  Never mind their political allegiances, many of them are in danger, without money & unable to escape the violence in Abidjan ... Their blood is cheap, not even the media wants to expose the situation to assist.

So I find it difficult when I'm chatting online or by phone to Cote d'Ivoire trying to assist them, when the question of politics comes up.  I had one such encounter this afternoon.  A friend was telling me that the press reviews were depressing & I agreed.  'So much of it is anti-Gbagbo and people don't know the real truth when it's Ouattara's mercenaries doing the killing' - I thought for a moment and was surprised by this comment from someone who usually sticks in the middle & wants peace for Cote d'Ivoire.


I shot back; 'well never mind the press, the videos must be true surely?'  It all went very quiet ...

My friend knew that I was referring to the horrific video with a Pro-Gbagbo military vehicle in it, where people were being thrown onto a bonfire, still alive.  I've heard of many accounts of pro-Gbagbo attacks, I am also aware that Ouattara's 'Forces Nouvelles' - renamed this week as the 'Republican Army' aren't choirboys either.  But it has to be said that the photographic & video evidence shows much more pro-Gbagbo violence.  I was shocked to hear a Gbagbo aide talk on AlJazeera about a week ago in a debate saying that the 7 women killed & video of it was a fake.  He has the full video which apparently shows these women getting up afterwards & walking away.  Well if that's true why isn't it all over the internet or on YouTube???

Show the world the truth on both sides ... but stop the violence!

This conflict is creating many problems between people, friends & even family.  Those who are 'with' one of the Presidents and those who aren't but supporting the other one.  I'm loyal to my friends & treat them all with the same respect no matter their creed, colour, religion or political views but fear that I will lose friends who cannot see both sides of the situation.  Rumours are abound, another friend told me that Ouattara had made a bad choice of bringing in 2,000 Burkinabe UN troops.  I asked around about this and it seems to be completely unfounded ...

It's gone past the 'election debate' which votes should be counted, which were fraudulent; dependant on the camp you belong to.  The problem is now the violence, escaping Abidjan and towns in the west and sheer survival.  The 'Ivoriete' problem seems to have returned with a vengence; but look at any country in the world, we're all a cosmopolitan melting pot!

Ta voiture est allemande.
Ta vodka est russe.
Ta pizza est italienne.
Ton kebab est turc.
Ta démocratie est grecque.

Ton cacao est Ivoirien. 

......Ton café est brésilien.
Tes films sont américains.
Ton thé est tamoul.
Ta chemise est indienne.
Ton essence vient Libye.
Tes appareils électroniques sont Chinois.
Tes chiffres arabes, tes lettres latines...
Et tu te plains que ton prochain est un immigrant?

 Yako mes amis!

A Week from Hell

The situation in Cote d'ivoire at the end of this week is dire.

Deteriorating conditions with Abidjan slowly becoming a ghost town in the midst of heavy artillery firing, automatic weapon gunfire and shelling with people fleeing for their lives.

The 'official' figures of this increasing terror according to Ouattara's RHDP:
Dead (832)
Injured (1808)
Disappeared (100)
Arrested (876) but I believe these figures are lower than the reality.  52 people have died in just over a week, 7 of those being women and 5 children.

What does it take to get the international community to take action to end this conflict? 
Where are ECOWAS, AU, UN, EU & other western nations?
Where is Cote d'Ivoire's No Fly Zone?

For anyone interested, the UN mission UNOCI figures:  http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/missions/unoci/facts.shtml

Refugees are fleeing east, many trying to find shelter in towns and villages in the Sud-Comoe & N'zi-Comoe regions, those that have cash continue onto Ghana, Togo & Benin.  Towns & villages are brimming with refugees, some lacking shelter to house the thousands leaving the economic capital of Abidjan.  Others are heading north to Bouake and further afield.  At the moment it seems that the UN agencies such as WFP and UNHCR have 'forgotten' this exodus, concentrating on the 100,000+ that have fled westwards to Liberia.  Where I stayed in December & January have refugees coming in taxiloads and on foot, daily ... yesterday the count was at 750+ in a town of 18,000; they told me that they need assistance ... certainly camps will need to be built & health should be high on the priority list.  I'm ready to return but need international aid to get supplies there.

The scenes from Aboisso's 'gare routier' one I know extremely well, are incredible, always the crossroads to Ghana or towns in the region it now has thousands passing through or looking for somewhere to stay, others sleeping in the open  having paid well over the usual odds to just get that far.

http://observers.france24.com/fr/content/20110324-cote-divoire-deplaces-est-pays-violences-postelectorales-gbagbo-ouattara


A friend in Kinshasa asked me about the genocide posting, how could it be genocide? 

Immigrants who once supported this economy from neighbouring countries such as Burkina Faso, Nigeria and Guinea have been targeted.  Victims of horrific violence, from being beaten with bricks to 'necklacing' having a tyre placed over them and then being set alight.  Certain districts of Abidjan and towns in the west are being targeted for the 'terrorists' as the immigrants are now being labelled.  Many of those areas have Ivoirians from the north.  However this is not a religious war, I know many Ouattara supporters, who are Christian as well as Muslim, I also know of Muslims who are pro-Gbagbo ... a reader of an article 'Joelle' makes the same comment: http://www.twitlonger.com/show/9d5djm.  BBC's Mark Doyle who reported from Rwanda during the early days of the genocide there was shocked by the scenes & what he saw, tweeting that this reminded him of Rwanda ... #doylebytes on twitter

Monday saw the recruitment of youngsters by Ble Goude, Gbagbo's 'Youth Minister' with the promise of cash in their pockets, they filed into a stadium to chant “We will kill them now” and “The rebels will die”, with a reply of “Do you want a Kalashnikov?”- These youngsters are being offered the chance of an early death, it seems to be a mass suicide is going to take place with little training or knowledge of what they are undertaking.

It seems that international support for Gbagbo is waining, Angola's Dos Santos has seemingly refused to give more cash to keep the coffers full, to pay his military, civil servants and other supporters.  I heard that the youngsters who were joining his forces on Monday were being asked for 25,000CFA to enrol, more funds to try to meet his end of month payments to keep the support growing.


I remember in September/October buying 'Jeune Afrique' a French African magazine similar to the 'Economist' .. the cover was a photo of Gbagbo with the headlines 'J'y suis, J'y reste'.  I was on skype to my journalist friend 'ourmaninafrica' who was on a story in Korhogo in the north of Cote d'Ivoire at the time.  I asked him if he had seen this edition, I had read the several pages it extended to and felt that if Gbagbo didn't win (having not held elections for 5 years) then the future would be difficult and possibly return to further violence.  At that stage I was hoping he would win, but fairly & squarely and not going to this level of violence to make his point.

In my car I have a CD I bought in Aboisso just prior to leaving in January 'Y'a Rien en Face' a pro-Gbagbo mix of zouglou.  It often brings me near to tears, hearing the lyrics and remembering the fervent love of some of the tracks by many Ivoirians.  The lyrics themselves spell it all out, even before the elections took place that this would be the future if Gbagbo wasn't in power. 


At the end of this week there's NO:

Radio RFI BBC,
TV France24 & TV5
SMS/Text messages
The Press are being attacked
Electricity in the north of the country



Yako mes amis ...

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!

Continuer en paix!

The first round of the Ivorian elections are now over.  After a few long nights watching & waiting for CEI to give out the results, the closely fought contest was finally over.  Read a lot of interesting comments from some talented Ivorian twitters.  Toussine, accepting me as 'an Ivorienne in reverse' my usual response to my nationality in regards to our flags!

No clear winner, it's going to a second round, but in retrospect it's no bad thing.  Having a clear winner after over a decade without an election might cause distrust and anger.

The incumbent Laurent Gbagbo leads with a margin of about 6% over AlassaneOuattara (ADO) who is predominant in the north of the country. 

However, percentages, power sharing, gaining ground etc is of no interest to me.  What was so thrilling was that the country remained calm, showed true Ivorian reserve & brotherhood, which was all too apparent on Twitter too!

I got a phone call on Wednesday morning from friends in Abengourou; their 9 year old daughter was eager to talk to me, first question 'Tatie, have you voted?' (in French!) she made me laugh.  The downside was, she asked me to bring her a computer for Christmas; I will have to teach her the value of money when I catch up with them next!!!

Even the youngsters have realised how important this is.  Possibly because at home she would be watching TV.  I was thrilled to see some positive marketing by the government, just prior to the RTI 6pm news which I got online.  A variety of 'adverts' came on.  Normal, everyday Ivorians, Didier Drogba, Yaya Toure and others were telling the nation to vote & accept the decision in a peaceful manner. 

Long may it continue .. Cote d'Ivoire will be back in a position to proudly move forward economically.  En Liberte ...

Unlike in France today where Sarko was kow-towing to the Chinese leader!