Abidjan.

The Journey
Waking up on the first day is the most difficult thing. You are nervous about what lies ahead. It’s not really the thoughts of what could go wrong that troubles you, it is the discomfort of leaving this bed that you know so well. But this is what also makes these trips exciting, the very idea of putting yourself on edge of the mountain.

My body won’t let me move out of the bed, the alarm dismissed a third time, I just lay there thinking about why this trip was even important. Was it even worth it wasting all this money; I had other projects here that could use the money, why go and waste it? As I laid there, I had several thoughts about cancelling the trip, the $32 for the room could be reclaimed;I would probably just lose only $6 upon cancellation; But then I just woke up.

That morning’s shower was cold. Upon waking up and checking my watch it was 3:45am — It was the right time to wake up , we were supposed to be at the bus terminal by 5:30am and prepare for take off at 6am.
By 5:00am our bags were packed and we were headed out in a hurry to catch any trotro we could find on the street to help us to get to the terminal. There were many delays but we got to the station by 5:45am.

Planning

“A traveler must be a planner. It is important to anticipate and make provision for the journey.” I have heard this countless of times. But this is not the kind of person I am. I don’t like to plan. Maybe I just don’t know how.
I tend to think of myself as someone who thrives in chaos. (Chaos is a ladder, hehehe) For example, my room, I like to arrange things only for aesthetics purposes. But it is a great ordeal for me to make sure that it is kept arranged constantly. I mean when you really think about it, it is not that difficult. It is really doing small things: make sure there is a place for everything and everything is in its place. That’s the fundamental rule right? And then clean (sweep, dust, mop) to keep things tidy. I know this but I find it difficult to follow. The discipline for this particular activity is not there. I say this particular activity because when I wake up in the morning. I remember to meditate, exercise, plan my day and read the news. Maybe it’s the incentives, the motivations…
So I am completely diverting here. But I wanted you to have a peek into the kind of person I am. And my travel partner is worse than I am. (I recognize that’s a mean thing to say …. but hey that’s what I think, he gets to tell his own version of the story) — well when he saw this, he told me, I am a joker, he was way more organized. However, we are both averagely intelligent people. He is a computer programmer … he has to plan a lot. But his space and his life is not that well planned.Well, I can’t actually say that. It is planned in certain facets. He conscientious, studies hard and works hard, he takes his life quite seriously. Now writing about this, I am starting to see how we are not disciplined in some aspects but not all aspects of our life.

So … we are both not disciplined when it comes to this aspect of life, which deals with planning for something like a trip. We didn’t plan many things, we didn't plan the money aspect of the trip. How much were we going to spend daily? I brought it up, I even looked up some information online about the cost of food and living in Ivory Coast but we didn’t do a follow up on this.
We kept saying we were going to use the ATM at the terminal but we didn’t. The bus took off, with a list of “I/we should have-s” in our mind. We certainly paid for this.
We didn’t have enough money to change at the border where the best exchange rates were available(we would learn). And we paid relatively ridiculous rates and charges at the ATM machines in Abidjan.

The Bus taking off

When we were finally on board the thought of doing such a long journey by bus to a place where we don’t know and cannot speak the language came up. But this was the thrill, the fact that we would be almost incapable of doing anything, even finding our way to the Airbnb home we had booked. I locked in my seat belt when the engines started, and with a big smile on my face, I said “ Abidjan here we come”

The expired passport

Salm had an expired passport, which meant he wasn’t supposed to be doing this trip at all. This is pure bravery. And to make matters worse he didn’t have a yellow card. Now the yellow card is very important, it is the flag of a great immune system. You hoist this flag high and it tells the customs officer you are hard enough for this country.
If you are not waving the yellow card, you are basically saying, you are not hard enough and the customs health officer then must stick a needle in your vein. But you don’t really want a “border needle” in your vein because you can’t really trust the dusty old border. This plainly requires negotiation skills. Because the only real options are either you are needled or you go back to where you came from.
Salm’s negotiation skills sufficed :-) and maybe he deserves to tell this story himself. So I leave that here.

Spatial Navigation & Friendship

Language barrier:
There was one thing that we knew from the start of our trip was going to be a huge hindrance. We couldn’t speak any French and our host couldn’t speak any English.
The first instance we experienced the problem was when we needed to get to our Airbnb residence. We have entered Abidjan and according to Google maps, we were only 8mins drive away from the STC yard. Here we were, we didn’t exactly know where our address was in relation to the STC yard. We reached out to someone on the bus who spoke broken English. How do we get here? Monsieur. “This address is incomplete, Cocody is a really big place, where exactly are going to in Cocody.” After several attempts to use the translator to try to get her to understand me. She concluded that I pick a taxi from the station and tell them I am going to Cocody. And call the host and pass the host to the taxi driver to figure out where we were going. Well that is really helpful, now the taxi driver is going to sink his teeth into our wallet. Luckily for referring to some of the emails of the host we actually got a better address. She had also said she could get a car to pick us up for a certain price but it was a little complicated getting in touch with her when we arrived. The best plan for us was to get a taxi and make sure the taxi charged us way less than the price Madame Claudia was offering. We got that.

A dictionary :
Dictionaries and translators are translucent. They are allow you to see into the other world but only blurry. Words are always colored by cultural exchanges, so when you can’t speak an international language, like French a dictionary is not enough, because really a conversation on the street is a cultural transaction.
People always know because intrinsically being experts, arbiters and purveyors of their own culture; they are constantly weighing each other, through words, handshakes, body movements and they know where to put you. So the dictionary and translators helped but it exposed us, completely.

A warm smile:
Walking through the streets of Abidjan trying to navigate the various cultural contexts, a warm smile always went a long way. We visited Abidjan at a quite interesting time, a week to the new year. People were more easy going at this time we were told.

There is a lot more left to say, but I will let out in the next write up with some photos.