Yakro

Yamoussoukro, Cote D’Ivoire

Wow time is really getting away from me! I cannot believe I am leaving in a week. As much as I ALWAYS want to spend Christmas with my family, I do wish that I could have a little more time here, both for work and play. 

A lot has happened in this past month, but I want to back up a little bit and talk about the trip I took last month through the interior of Cote d’Ivoire. And although we made three stops in route, the most interesting stop was Yamoussoukro. 

Although Yamoussoukro is technically the administrative and political capital of the country, the government still operates out the colonial capital, Abidjan. (Which makes sense because it is the economic capital, the most populous city, has an international airport, and a working port…) However, the first President of Cote d’Ivoire, Felix Houphouet-Boigny, decided in the 1980’s that he wanted to move the capital to his birthplace (Yamoussoukro!) Let the ridiculous construction begin!

I would very much like to see a picture of Yamoussoukro back before it was the capital, but after President Boigny made his decision, the entire city got a makeover. Large, multi-lane paved streets completely lit with streetlights, beautiful bridges over the moat-like river that surrounds the city—fun fact time—President Boigny, in order to.. I dunno, demonstrate power? Or deal with a pesky stray cat problem?..decided to add crocodiles to the moat that surrounds the city. But, the crocodiles bred (as animals tend to do) and became over-populated, and started attacking people, so they eventually had to build fence to protect people from the crocodiles. So much for that brilliant idea. 

But back to the city—it’s a really nice place, as far as cities go, but it’s just a little weird, because no one lives there! Ok, I don’t mean no one, but in comparison to the number of inhabitants the city was intended for, it feels like a ghost town. Part of the reason for that is the fact that the government still has not moved, mostly because the major highway connecting Abidjan to Yamoussoukro is still not finished.

It’s actually a very bizarre experience travelling from Abidjan, because you are on this narrow, ill-lit ill-paved road for about four hours, and then the entire thing opens up into a six lane highway with streetlights every ten feet. It’s like a mirage, or entering Oz or something…

Anyway, another fun fact about Yamoussoukro, is that it is home to the largest Christian place of worship on Earth: The Basilica of Our Lady of Peace of Yamoussoukro, consecrated by Pope John Paul II on 10 September 1990. This whopping $300 million dollar church surpassed the previous record holder, St. Peter’s Basilica, in square footage, but I do believe that St. Peter’s can hold more worshipers. 

Outside view.

As a non-religious outsider with a very clear bias, I would think $300 million dollars could be put to much better use, but I will say that the church really is gorgeous. Beautiful stained glass all around, including a stunning piece inside the actual dome, and during the day everything is lit up nicely by that strong African sun. 

Stained glass in the dome

My colleague and I on the second level.

View of center pulpit from second level.

I love how the light shines on the pews!

The only goofy thing I will note, is that the President commissioned a stained glass of himself and the architect worshipping at the feet of Christ with the other disciplines, to further ensure his legacy, and prove his devoutness, no doubt.  Now, I’m not saying Christ was white, or anything else, but it’s certainly not common to see a black disciple in depictions. Unfortunately I was not allowed to take a picture, but I’m sure your imagination will suffice. 

Looking forward to seeing everyone over the holidays! Much love!

Tour d'Abidjan

Abidjan, Cote D’Ivoire

As I mentioned in a previous post, Abidjan is not a walker-friendly city, due to lack of sidewalks, abundance of traffic, and general sprawl, so it has been a little slow going for me to get my bearings. However, a lovely coworker of mine took me for a driving tour a few weekends ago, and introduced me to parts of the city that I had not previously seen. He also proved to be a knowledgeable tour guide, AND also speaks great English, since he went to University in New York. Win win win. 

So, although Abidjan is no longer the official capital of Cote D’Ivoire, it’s still the capital for every practical purpose, mainly because the “real” capital, Yamoussoukro, is still a bit disconnected due to delays in highway construction. (The whole Yamoussoukro story is interesting, but I’ll save that for later.)

There’s actually a funny story to how Abidjan supposedly got its name. Which, full disclosure, I read on Wikipedia, so who knows how true it is. 

“Legend states that an old man carrying branches to repair the roof of his house met a European explorer who asked him the name of the nearest village. The old man did not speak the language of the explorer, and thought that he was being asked to justify his presence in that place. Terrified by this unexpected meeting, he fled shouting "min-chan m'bidjan", which means in the Ébrié language: "I just cut the leaves." The explorer, thinking that his question had been answered, recorded the name of the locale as Abidjan.”

As far as African capitals go, all-in-all, Abidjan is probably the most “modern” looking one that I have lived in. There are parts of Accra that are very new, but I think on the whole, Abidjan is a few steps ahead. But of course, that could just be the wide availability of croissants and pain au chocolat speaking for me. Ghanaians have something against bread, which I never quite understood…

Anyway, according to my coworker/guide, Abidjan had a lot of momentum in the 70’s, and since then, things have been slugging. Mainly because of years of unrest and civil conflict, but what can ya do? Now, however, things seem to be calm and quiet, and hopefully it will stay that way. 

The city itself is laid out in a North/South division, separated by the Ébrié Lagoon. There are currently two bridges that connect the North and South, with a third currently under construction. I live in Cocody, which is sort of on the North-East side of the city, which is also where the Heartland office is. I actually haven’t even seen the ocean yet, but I’ve heard it's overcrowded with luxury beach resorts.

Here are some shots I took during my tour…

 

View driving across the lagoon, into the main downtown area of the city, called Plateau.

View of Plateau from the North-east-ish side of the city, called Cocody, which is where I live. 

The pool at the famous Hotel Ivoire. 

Downtown Plateau.

 

View of one bridge, from the other bridge.

 Can't believe how fast my time here is going! One month down, one more to go! And everything with work is going well. I just got back to Abidjan from a 10 day trek through the interior of the country, visiting current and potential local partner organizations. Stay tuned for the update!

Eight Months Later

Well, I clearly failed at keeping this updated. 

Eight months, and many, many plane rides later, I have started a new position with the same organization (Heartland Alliance International, for anyone who forgot). Our project in Ghana came to a close in August, as our contract with USAID expired. And unfortunately, because of US “competitive bid” processes, we have to re-apply for funding. Which really only makes partial sense to me. Sure, you don’t want to play favorites and keep awarding funding to the same organization. But if you have a fully established project that is achieving your strategic objectives, why would you stop funding it, causing gaps in funding, loss of staff, loss of property, loss of momentum, duplicative startup costs and other undesirable things? Some overpaid economist should do an analysis on how much money is lost between grant cycles… 

Anyway, I am now a Field Program Advisor, which in theory is a cool transition, but we’ll see how it pans out. I’m taking this attitude not because I’m not excited to bounce around to various programs, but because the funding for my position is conditional on funding from the program offices. So it could be a very short lived experiment :)

But here I am, at my first of hopefully many short-term assignments in Abidjan, Cote D’Ivoire! Just a hop, skip, and a jump away from lovely little Ghana.

Boing.

 

However, upon arrival, I immediately noticed one significant improvement from Accra…NO MORE OPEN SEWERS! (and the crowd goes wild…yaaaay). Yes, thank you Abidjan for having the good sense not to expose all sorts of filth to everyone’s nostrils. However, it is impossible to walk around this city. No sidewalks, crazy traffic, really, really sprawl-y. So, there you go Accra, point you. Its 1-1. Unfortunately both cities are tied in the “horrible traffic” category, so I’ll have to get back to you to see who’s gonna win this horse race.

As for the actual job, I’m really excited to be here. Heartland has its own office, which if you remember we did NOT have in Ghana. And I had met two of the Cote D’Ivoire staff before, one in Chicago and one in Tanzania, so I already knew I was coming into a great team. The project here is very similar to the one we were working on in Ghana, but on a much, much larger scale. We had one local partner in Ghana...there are 15 in CI! And that number is going to increase to 20 in the next month. The other main difference is that while we only had the mandate to do HIV prevention in Ghana, in CI we do HIV prevention, testing, care, and treatment. It’s a busy office. 

Anyway, my role here is pretty varied. And it’s all in French. Ah! The country director and my HQ supervisor have created quite the workplan for me. If you can stand to sift through some NGO mumbo-jumbo, my tasks include a comparative analysis of the three different implementation models for partner organizations, documentation of success stories for external communications, program development, review of the M&E system based on recommendations from a CDC consultant, local partner capacity building and tool development, ensure correct targeting of populations...blah blah blah, I can feel your eyes loosing focus, so I’ll skip the rest. 

But I do have a rather strange story from my first weekend here. I met this Ivoirian woman at a café, who has hence decided to adopt me (which strangely happens to me a lot. I’ve been told more than once that I have an “approachable face.” Maybe I should work on that...) Anyway, we got to talking and she told me about her travels and her work (she owns a farm, fyi), and she told me that her sister owns a restaurant in Abidjan, and her brother-in-law would drive us there.

Sidebar: we had a really awkward moment because the word for brother-in-law in French is beau-frere, which can sound a lot like boyfriend. So at different points in the conversation, she referred to this man as what I though was “boyfriend” as well as husband of my sister. Needless to say I was confused. But I figured it out eventually. 

So I met her brother-in-law, who SHE told me is from Jewish, and would not change her mind no matter how many times I told her Jewish is not a country, but as it turns out he is from France. And yes, he is Jewish. 

We all got in his car, made a stop at my new friend’s mother’s house, to be introduced to who is apparently now my grandmother, and then we went to her sister’s restaurant. The restaurant itself is pretty cool. It has a nice beachy feel to it, despite having no view of the ocean. It also houses several interesting animals as “pets,” which brings me to the weird part about this story. I arrived just in time for a monkey surgery. Whether or not this was a scheduled endeavor and my new friend failed to inform me, I don’t know. But it happened nonetheless. 

Let me explain. Apparently this restaurant plays host to two monkeys, I’m not sure what species. Maybe my environmentally inclined sister can tell me from the pictures. One monkey is still kind of a baby, and his name sounds like Peking, which I find very funny, so I will continue to call him that. But sadly, Peking was attacked by the larger monkey, leaving his poor little hand pretty ripped apart.  

The family who owns the bar did not have (or would not use) the money on the monkey, but one of their frequent patrons, another French guy, is a handy carpenter and apparently now an amateur surgeon. He went to the drug store and bought an assortment of drugs and bandages and a NEEDLE to fix poor little Peking’s hand. 

So when I got to the bar, they were in the process of organizing said-surgery. And my new friend volunteered to hold the monkey down! They gave the monkey some anesthesia (yes, you CAN get that over the counter. Doesn’t that frighten you?), and then the carpenter proceeded to sew Peking’s skin back onto his hand. Not something I was planning on seeing that day, or really any day in my life. 

Surgery slide show:

 

You can kind of see his wound on this right hand

Monkey surgery commences!

  

Got a nice little boxing glove.

Monkey treat for being a good boy!

Oh yea, and to finish off the monkey story, they brought back the big monkey that had hurt poor little Peking. AND they gave her a lollipop. How is that for justice?

 

I also made friends with a mongoose, named Pilou. He licked my ankle. We’re bff. 

TELL ME THAT’S NOT THE CUTEST RODENT YOU’VE EVER SEEN!

Also I'm clearly not in Ghana anymore, but I cannot change the web address of this blog. That would be silly. So I guess I'll start new posts (if there ever are...) with the location. Sound good?