African Diaries XVI

Abidjan: where your Airbnb accommodation comes with a chick

Abidjan and Accra are 500 KM apart from each other. Dakar is another 2,500 KM from either, yet flights from Abidjan to Dakar are half the price of those from Accra, and that’s primarily why I ended up at Côte d’Ivoire at all. But the difference between the two cities does not stop there.

I was slightly trepidated by leaving the relative comfort zone of countries whose primary foreign language was English, but equally excited to make my second (and final) overland border crossing in Africa on my way out of Ghana into Côte d’Ivoire.

The initial plan for the day was to make the 2 hour-long early journey from Busua to Nzulenzu with the Dutch crowd, but P. and L-A. had already bailed out and when our driver Marcos refused to honour our previously agreed taxi fare for the whole day, including the short journey to take me to the border, I decided to bail, too, to the frustration of S. and M. Even though this meant an additional 20-minute walk to the edge of the village to jump on a shared taxi due west on the main road under the scorching sun, I was determined to get underway.

After pre-arranged transport in Ethiopia, scheduled (not necessarily punctual) bus trips in Uganda, motorbikes in Rwanda, and taxis and Ubers so far in Ghana, this was finally the time to take as many as four to five different transport modes to cover a 300 KM distance – which, of course, with the border crossing, would take the best part of the day.

However long and complicated that may sound, such a journey could probably not have been any more efficient and hassle-free, even including the completely cramped “tro tro” journey from the Ivorian border town Noe, all the way to Abidjan. First, a super helpful taxi driver took me from Busua to the main road, west of Takoradi, honking at a shared taxi driver to ensure he pulled to the side of the road, gave him some directions and the money he said I would need to pay him and loaded my bags in the front 3-seater of the 7-seater car.

The second driver did pretty much the same thing once he reached the end of his route, helping get on board another shared taxi, the front seat of which I was lucky enough to have for my own that would take me all the way to the Ghanaian border town of Elubo.

Disembarking in Elubo was a small fanfare in its own right: when my taxi pulled into the small town’s oversized central parking lot, there were dozens of taxis and taxi drivers whose sole purpose was to take passengers across the border to Côte d’Ivoire, normally a 3-minute journey altogether in the car, but with the added assistance of accompanying the passenger through passport and customs control and ensuring they get on the right vehicle on the other side – and all of that for a mere CFA1,000, the equivalent of about £1.25.

For such a time-consuming (all in all an hour-long ordeal) activity with impossibly small financial returns, seeing this level of competition has taught me a good lesson in market competition and opportunity costs. In the end, I went with the guy who was the least aggressive, who, instead of trying to grab my backpack to help me, shepherded me through the crowd of other taxi drivers and kindly into his car.

After a relatively easy and quick visa control and a couple of new stamps on my passport, I had set afoot in Côte d’Ivoire, and voila! from now on, I would be at the behest of the few French words I could muster from a poor bastardisation of my ever-fading Spanish language skills.

As one might expect, there isn’t much to tell one side of the border which is defined by the Tano River, from the other, except that these two countries happened to have been colonised by two opposing powers whose separate languages are represented on immigration and public health related signs on either side that are pasted on exactly the same type of banners with the same font type and colour.

In three hours, over many bumps speedily driven on a road lined up with about a dozen military checkpoints and posters of homeboy, Chelsea and Galatasaray legend Didier Drogba, I was in Abidjan, and just about managing to communicate with the driver of a taxi I picked up at Treichville, I arrived at my Airbnb in Cocody-Riviera III.

“I’m looking for house D6", I said. “It’s Mickael’s house but I believe he’s not here and I can’t call Ge. whom he said I should reach out to.”

“Oh, you must be the new Airbnb guest. Here, I’ll let you in. My name is G.”, said the blonde, curly-haired and clearly very French girl, who I reckoned must be in her mid-20s and was probably M.’s girlfriend.

What happened next was, in the slightest sense of the word, unexpected. While I was feeling a huge sense of relief for not being locked out at what was the end of a long day’s journey, I was also admiring the flat that had a beautiful inner courtyard decorated with iron-wrought gates and furniture complemented by flowers of bright orange, yellow and pink.

But while we were expecting to find Ge. in the living room, in his stead was a red cock on the piano which was laid against the westerly wall of the living room.

Looking at each other in bemusement, trying to suppress our laughters while I was thinking “what an Airbnb find, it even comes with a farm animal!”, G.’s amusement was slowly turning first into shock, followed by a mild scare. That is when the little rascal started flying, running, hitting the furniture to then take off again, circle around in the living room, trying to find its way to the garden but crushing out on the ceiling of the kitchen, getting confused by all the appliances it probably wasn’t accustomed to see, shortly before we heard an increasingly louder and closer yelling approaching us from an older lady, who we hoped was the rightful owner or the patron of the cock.

Our clumsy, half-hearted attempts came to nothing before this neighbour lady took a big, aggressive stride towards the animal and grasped it by its throat, throwing us a quick, shy smile, before quickly making her way back to the neighbouring house in the apprehension that the animal might run away from her hands.

This entire episode was most certainly more exciting than the day’s journey I had made from Busua to Abidjan. We were at once fascinated and frightened by this lady’s athleticism, nonchalance and quick fit. In the beginning, she looked like she was struggling, but once she brushed off her embarrassment in intruding a stranger’s house, she made everything look so effortless that we thought we saw before us standing an Olympic cock-catcher.

With that, G. showed the way to my room; I helped her operate the air conditioning in her room as we agreed to grab dinner after I got settled, showered and changed.

“I’ve only arrived a few weeks ago. I’m probably going to stay in this house for another month and then will look to find a more permanent place for the rest of my 6-month stay, because this isn’t the cheapest room out there – in fact, that’s why you have the bigger room, and I have the smaller one”, explained G. who was in Abidjan for an internship with a French energy company, installing renewable energy infrastructure (solar panels, to be precise), across the country… and who also happened to be a lot younger than I imagined she was.

“Don’t worry, you don’t have to justify yourself” I said to her warmly and half-jokingly as she was getting increasingly nervous about the fact that we had circled the same block twice and were desperately failing to find the restaurant, “Z3", she wanted to take us to.

“From what I can see from the map, a lot of these urban blocks are closed-loop systems; and besides, trust me, I’m very good with wayfinding, usually to the annoyance of my friends” I comforted her. If only I got a penny for each time I said that to the people I had just met.

In any event, we resorted to grabbing a taxi for a very short ride, to make sure we reached our highly-anticipated destination.

We were kindly sat by a waitress and were going through the beer list, finally in eager anticipation to feed ourselves… except to realise… that we were at the wrong restaurant!

“This is way fancier than the one we are supposed to go to”, said G. before quickly realising that our joint was just across the road. A true local’s dive bar looking shop, dimly illuminated with blue and purple light bulbs, all sorts of meat and fish stoked on a coal grill fire, washed down by the local beer of choice “Flag”. Of course, by this point of the journey, with some minimal caution, I was devouring anything that was put on my plate. This was to be a very satisfying meal, in the company of someone who was to literally give me a lifeline in the first few days of this final, French-speaking part of the trip. We walked back home along the diagonal street that runs behind the back of the local school.

After a week along the calm beaches of southwestern Ghana, I was back in the urban world, and Abidjan’s first few hours delivered good fun.