West Africa Part II: Ivory Coast – America's Finest Ambassador

Grand-Bassam

: Just after having crossed the border from Ghana, I witnessed two men pissing next to an INTERDIT D’URINER ICI (forbidden to urinate here) sign. Welcome to Ivory Coast!

: At some point in the trip, everyone had diarrhea and/or was throwing up at least once and it usually only lasted about a week or so. I thankfully only got sick towards the very end of the trip while we were in Sierra Leone. This dude here named Andrew, however, was so sick that he could barely function and he just wasn’t getting any better. He’d be puking out the window of the truck and blasting diarrhea all over the place pretty much every time we stopped. A couple days before this photo was taken, while we were still in Ghana, he went to the hospital sometime in the afternoon and they gave him an IV to treat his dehydration and switched out whatever meds he was on and gave him new ones that he was very hopeful would cure him of his ailments. As such, he was feeling good and his spirits were high when he was released from the hospital sometime that evening after darkness had fallen. I guess there weren’t any taxis available at the hospital at the time of his release and since he didn’t wanna wait for one, he hopped on the back of some dude’s motorcycle and told the guy to take him to the Ko-Sa Beach Resort where the group’d been staying that night. Of course, in transit from the hospital to the resort, their motorcycle was run off the road by some shitty driver and Andrew banged his head up pretty good and ended up with road rash on the side of his arm and leg. Unfortunately, the vomiting and diarrhea also continued and he only lasted a few more days after this photo was taken before making the (wise) decision to go home. He was the second to leave – the first guy, who’d been having a hard time adapting to the extreme heat and humidity of West Africa, left back when we were in Kumasi.

: This is the Koral Beach Hotel in Grand-Bassam, our first stop in Ivory Coast. Much to my surprise, the owner of this hotel grew up in the same neighborhood of Chicago as me but then lived in New York and was a photographer and then married an African guy and ended up here in Grand-Bassam. She was about my parents’ age and even knew some of the same people that I knew – she was childhood friends with my uncle-in-law’s sister (my dad’s sister’s husband’s sister). She hadn’t been back to the area in a long time – since her mother had passed away – she said, as we spent a couple hours chatting. She wanted to know if this building was there or that one, and even shared a story about the time some stranger had pulled up in a car and flashed his penis at her as she’d been walking home from school one day. Her name was Cheryl. It was truly strange meeting her there, such a small world. She said she felt burdened by running this beach resort that kept falling apart faster than she could put it back together, but that at this point she didn’t really know exactly what else to do with her life. Wonder how much longer she’ll stay there.

: When traveling with Overlanding West Africa, when we’re stopped in towns and staying at hotels, rooms are to be shared with another member from the group. This wasn’t a big problem in Ghana because many of the rooms had twin beds. In Ivory Coast, however, all the rooms had either full or queen size beds. Sharing a bed with any of the guys from my group was just a little bit too gay for me, so I often just set up a tent on the floor and slept in there. This setup had the bonus advantage of keeping me safe from getting bitten at night by any potentially malaria-carrying mosquitoes.

: During the late 1800s, Grand-Bassam was the French colonial capital of Ivory Coast. Around town, there’re a bunch of old buildings left over from that era, many of which had been overgrown by local vegetation.

: One of the walls on the inside of the building shown in the previous photo

: I was very confused when I saw this statue of the angel Gabriel while walking around. I tried to do some research as to why it was there and what SVO might mean and couldn’t find much except one TripAdvisor review in which some Francophonic guy referred to this thing as “Monument Gros Lot” and proceeds to write about the style in which it was built.

: Woman showing off her dress at the Royal Palace of the N’Zima people in Grand-Bassam. I’m not sure what authority the N’Zima king has or how his position works in conjunction with the modern-day Ivoirian government, but he definitely exists. He just wasn’t in town when we were visiting. Perhaps this woman we were casually taking photos of had been the queen. I’m not sure. It’s really hard to find solid information on the topic online. All the searches I’ve done just keep giving me results about Michael Jackson (and then later Reverend Jesse Jackson who took over when Michael died) being crowned prince of the Sanwi kingdom of Ivory Coast back in 1992.

: A frowny face of sweat. When I was a kid and I’d go to watch my dad play sports, the way the sweat used to form on his shirt was usually in the shape of Mickey Mouse’s head

: Another overgrown colonial building I went to explore

: These roots around this doorway kinda reminded me of how some of the temples looked at Angkor Wat in Cambodia, the ones that’d been taken over by strangler figs

: Local guys raking up garbage in the sand along Koral Beach Hotel at sunset. Apparently there used to be a restaurant here that was part of the Koral Beach Resort until one day a huge wave came in and swept it out to sea. Although you can still see the foundation in the sand where the restaurant had been, the owner said it isn’t worth rebuilding. I guess business isn’t nearly as good as it’d once been since the one-two punch of, first, the 2016 Al-Qaeda terrorist attack on the beach there in Grand-Bassam that killed 19 followed by the 2020 onset of the covid pandemic.

: Jason the tour leader holding up an African rhinoceros beetle for me to take a photo of during our last night in Grand-Bassam

Abidjan

: A lot of the cell phone towers around Abidjan had been disguised as trees

: I don’t know what my man was fishin for on the side of the road here, but that’s one of the biggest rods I’ve ever seen…that’s what she said

: I can’t remember the name of this hotel or guesthouse or whatever that we stayed at here in Abidjan, but I remember my room being one of the moldiest I’d ever slept in. That said, I loved the random décor in the lobby of the place. Above a door leading to a hallway here is a portrait of R&B legend Barry White holding up a Soul Train Music Award.

: Although it’s not nearly as impressive as the church we’d be seeing in Yamoussoukro in a few days’ time, me ‘n’ a few others went out of our way to pay a visit to St. Paul’s Cathedral in Abidjan

: I’m trying to understand exactly what this sign means. It’s abundantly clear that urinating is not allowed outside St. Paul’s Cathedral. That I get. But what do the bottom two images mean? Are they saying that if they catch you pissing here, they’ll take CCTV footage of you urinating and then post it on YouTube as punishment? I don’t get it.

: Creepy stained glass faces at the cathedral. Looks like an action shot of that one guy about to bitch-slap Jesus

: A building from the early 1970s called La Pyramide where important locals and fancy expats used to reside. I guess it’s been abandoned now for over thirty years

: The Africa Cup of Nations is a football (soccer) tournament that is held every two years. AFCON was held in and won by Ivory Coast in 2023

: Not the best name I’ve ever seen for a product, but…

: …it’s a bit better than this company’s name.

Yamoussoukro

: 75% of the four people that I polled said that this is the gayest advertisement they’d ever seen. What’s your opinion?

: I ran into this woman on March 17th, so although she’s reppin her country’s colors and not those of the Irish, I took a photo and sent it back home saying that, “Even people in Ivory Coast celebrate St. Patrick’s Day!”

: Félix Houphouët-Boigny, who served as president of Ivory Coast since its independence from France in 1960 until his death is 1993, made the decision to move the capital from Abidjan (a bustling metropolis which remains the country’s chief economic hub) to his hometown of Yamoussoukro. When they did that, they took what was basically a village in the middle of nowhere and they paved these super wide avenues throughout it that the majority of people don’t even have cars to drive on ‘em with. As of the 2021 census, Abidjan has a population around 6.3 million while Yamoussoukro is up to around 420,000 residents. Oh yeah, and in Yamoussoukro he also built…

: …the Basilica of Our Lady of the Peace which, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, is the largest church in the world. It covers approximately 320,000 square feet, is 518 feet tall and is said to have cost around $300 million USD to make back in the 1980s.

: The shirt our guide was wearing at the basilica. I asked him how many people died in the construction of this monstrosity. He didn’t have any exact figures for me, but said that a lot of people died.

: The basilica was built to hold 18,000 worshippers. The marble was imported from Italy and the stained glass was imported from France. In one of the stained glass panels where Jesus is surrounded by a group of disciples who all have whitish faces, a black guy can be seen praying right next to Him. That is of course none other than the aforementioned former president Houphouët-Boigny.

: I snuck away from the group and tested a few doors until I found an unlocked one that led up into the interior of the basilica’s dome. I would’ve liked to have climbed up to the very top, but only had enough time to go up a few of those steep-ass staircases before I turned back to go catch up with the group.

: Here you have the Hotel President where a few others and I went out to eat one evening. The restaurant is in the flying saucer thing that sits on top of the rest of the hotel.

: The food at Hotel President was pricy and definitely cost more than it was worth given the tiny portions, but to maintain your sanity while overlanding and always eating crap meals made by other passengers on the truck, sometimes you just gotta spoil yourself by going to a nice place.

Korhogo and Some Places In Between

: Due to French influence, the bread they make and sell in Ivory Coast was a thousand times better than any of the bread we tried in Ghana

: First time I’d ever seen a 1.8L bottle of water. Why not go 1.5L or 2L like everyone else?

: A couple texts from tour leader Annabel in the Whatsapp group. The truck we traveled in doesn’t have air conditioning and everyone was always sweaty and dehydrated and it wasn’t uncommon for the majority of the passengers to doze off during these 5 or 6-hour rides from one destination to another. Obviously, the photo of Jason passing out at the wheel was just a joke – most of the time the guy had to be laser-focused to not crash into any crazy drivers or run anyone over on tight roads in crowded-ass towns.

: Selfie Bar in the town of Korhogo. Sweet name, but not quite as cool as the Fans of Facebook Club cocktail bar I’d once seen in Yerevan, Armenia.

: We took a day trip from Korhogo over to a village called Waraniéné to watch this here “Boloye” performance, Boloye meaning “Dance of the Panther”

: Guy showing us one of the musical instruments that the performers behind the dancer in the previous photo had been using

: Political shirt

: I think it’s the same here on the back that it is on the front, but you can see it better here. Like France, Ivory Coast has both a president AND a prime minister, and the guy in the suit there is a former prime minister that’d passed away in July of 2020 while still in office.

: An ad for the services offered at Docteur Oumar’s clinic on the streets (literally on the streets, there was no building, the doctor was just sitting there on a chair on the sidewalk alongside a busy street) of Korhogo

: He can make your ass fatter, he can make your dick bigger, he can cure toothaches – there’s literally nothing that Docteur Oumar can’t do

: Jason surrounded by a bunch of kids that kept asking everybody for money during the hour we were parked at this gas station in the town of…not sure what it was called…Odienne?

: Items from a “fetish market” somewhere in rural Ivory Coast. When I first heard Jason the group leader mention something about a “fetish market,” I said to him, “I’m surprised they have a fetish shop out here at this market in the middle of nowhere. Whatta they sell, dildos?” And that’s when he set me straight on the subject – it has nothing to do with sexuality. It has more to do with witchcraft and voodoo sorta stuff like the skulls and bones and dried-out skins of dead animals and stuff like that.

: Not too far from the fetish items had been a place where they were selling skin whitening cream and…

: …another place where they’d been selling shorts. Which do you like better, these with 2pac on em or…

: …this pair that are half Chicago Bulls, half Orlando Magic?

: Somewhere out in the bush where were decided to camp for the night

: While we were out camping at the location shown in the previous photo, this was the first time that I noticed the spare tires had been locked down like this. I later asked Jason about it and he said that anything that is not locked down on the truck can, has been and will be stolen. He said that’s part of why he sleeps in a tent on top of the truck – a setup he refers to as the “monkey mansion” – unless the truck is parked in a secure place with 24-hour security watching over it.

: A “variegated grasshopper.” Apparently these things are actually pretty big pests that cause damage to all sorts of crops, but some people like to eat ‘em

: I know this is a shitty photo, but I wanted to try and capture the marijuana hat sticking out of that guy’s back pocket. The guy boarded our vehicle at some kind of police roadblock near the town of Man and started walking through asking everyone if they had any drugs. His eyes were flaming red and he looked high as a kite and the aforementioned weed hat was just icing on the cake. He looked way more like he was looking for drugs for personal consumption than for any legal reason.

Near Man and Danané

: I love you too, Man

: Our accommodation in Man had the big typa roaches

: Che at the market in Man

: Our cook group was up next, so here we are buying some fruits and veggies at the market in Man

: Woman selling palm oil, which many people will argue is an evil product because its cultivation leads to heavy deforestation and threatens the extinction of certain animals such as orangutans. It’s also not great for your health because it’s high in saturated fat. That said, it’s easy to produce and is cheaper for locals to buy than healthier alternatives such as olive and canola oil.

: Here’s the truck heading out of Man and driving into a small village of which I can’t remember the name where we’ll be spending the night

: Everyone began to gather around the truck after we’d parked but before we disembarked

: Most of the children flocked behind these two blonde girls – one American and one German – and wouldn’t leave them alone while they were trying to set up their tent

: Thankfully none of those kids wanted anything to do with me. The only living things that came near my tent in this village was this herd of cows

: Wandering around the village

: That baby was giving me the stink eye

: Oink oink

: I kinda felt bored and anxious in the village and was looking for something to do, so I ended up offering to pump water for the women who were constantly coming and going, carrying those big containers on their heads. They tolerated my presence for a little bit but eventually told me to get lost.

: Our main purpose for visiting this village had been to witness this here stilt dance. Communication between our group and the locals was quite poor. No one explained to any of us what the origin of this dance is or what it means or why they do it. They didn’t even give us a time as to when they’d be putting on the performance. Then, when we were in the middle of eating dinner, we could hear drums coming from another part of the village and were told to hurry up and get over there if we didn’t want to miss the show. The performance is better watched and heard than explained and read, so if you wanted to check it out, you can see it from 27:30 until 35:15 in the YouTube video posted at the bottom of the page.

: The grand finale of the show was this guy coming around and asking everyone for money

: These two Bulgarian guys were on cook-group duty the day we were driving out to some village near Danané and the road was bumpy as fuck. They made some kind of soup for lunch that the one dude there had to pin down for like four hours during our morning transit so it wouldn’t spill everywhere. After all that hassle, when it came time for lunch, it turns out the soup spoiled in the hot steamy hundred-degree heat that enveloped us and we couldn’t even eat it.

: Apparently this vine bridge has to be rebuilt every year. They do it for traditional reasons even though, as you can see on the left side of the photo, they’ve built a modern concrete bridge over the river that makes the transportation of people and goods much easier.

: A few days after this, after we’d crossed the border into the forestière region of Guinea, we visited a vine bridge that doesn’t conveniently have a concrete bridge right next to it and remains the main way for locals to get from one side of the river to the other. That was definitely more interesting to experience (photos from that bridge can be seen in Part III of this West Africa series of photos). Nonetheless, this one was kinda fun to walk across – no shoes allowed!

: Some kinda lizard just chillin at the guesthouse in Danané during our last night in Ivory Coast