Welcome To Ottawa – Population 300
Gu�dyo was the village where Rocheline was born. It’s also known as Ottawa – the explanation being (as far as I could understand it) that the village was founded by two separate groups of families (one from Soubr� district, the other from Gagnoa), hence marriages are allowed between theses two groups who then become brothers-in-law, which in B�t� is ‘Ottowi’, and so they changed this to Ottawa so that it would have the same name as the Canadian town. The Canadian ambassador had supposedly visited the village, filmed it, etc.
Amenities in the village are pretty basic. There is no running water – all the water is obtained from six pumps located at various places in the village. This is used for drinking, washing, cooking, etc. Electric street-lighting has recently been installed, and supposedly a telephone installation is arriving soon. People will have the possibility to have electricity and telephones in their houses, although only a couple of the more well off people in the village will be able to afford it. In fact, a couple of people already have electricity in their houses – generated from petrol-powered turbines. One of them is the village nurse, who has a fridge, TV, and electric lighting in his house. He lets kids come into his house to watch the TV in the evening. The other person who has electricity, installs his TV outside in the evening, and anytime you pass by you can see ten or so adults sitting in chairs watching it, and a few kids crouched down on the ground.
At night, most people use paraffin lamps and torches to see by (and to eat by). People spend most of their time outside, only really going into their houses to sleep at night. The houses are generally made from a bamboo structure (lashed together with vines), covered with mud which dries and hardens, and a roof of tarpaulin covered with branches (although some people have corrugated metal roofs). There are two or three more well off people who have houses made with bricks or concrete.
To take a piss, you just go beside a tree. For a crap you have to go to the ‘toilets’ which are basically just a wooden (or mud) cabin with a hole in the ground (a bit smelly and disgusting really, with flies buzzing around, cockroaches, etc.). For a wash there are other wooden cabins, typically joined on to the toilets – you take in a bucket of warm water, and a smaller bowl for dousing yourself with. It’s a bit basic, but I soon got used to it.
I did have one rather unpleasant bathroom experience, though – one day the toilet was particularly smelly, and so Rocheline’s stepmother Genvi�ve went and sprayed some disinfectant into it. I went soon after for a crap, then a shower. I was doing my business when I saw things moving in the hole down below – one of them crawled out – they were huge 3 inch long cockroaches! I hastily finished up, but by this time there were two or three cockroaches crawling around. I attempted to kill them by hitting them with a bit of wood – this is quite difficult, since the things appeared virtually indestructible. I ended up having to grind them to a pulp or decapitate them before they stopped crawling around.
I then made my way into the bathroom section – which was directly next to the toilet. In fact, two people standing up in each one could see each other, since the wall only goes up to about shoulder high (this is to allow light and fresh air in). I undressed and starting getting washed, but I noticed three or four of these huge cockroaches crawling over the wall towards me. Needless to say I had to try and kill these too, but it turns out that these things could actually fly too (they also had large pincers which looked as though they could give you a nasty pinch) – so there I am naked, trying to kill these beasts flying and crawling around all over the place, and then the lizards outside start crawling up the walls and through the doorway to try and eat the cockroaches – aaaaaaarrrrgh!
The village lizards (margouillat) are quite big (up to two feet long) but are actually harmless, and people just basically ignore them. They’re actually a good way of keeping down the insect population. When you’re in bed you can hear them scrambling about on the roof. The females are greenish in colour and slightly smaller than the males which are black with orange tails. The males sometimes bob their heads up and down, as if they are doing press-ups (I assume some sexual ritual to attract the females). In Abidjan, and larger towns, you don’t see these insectivores, maybe they are scared off by the noise, pollution, etc. and I suppose also because they prefer a more natural habitat of trees, dirt and mud which only the smaller towns and villages provide. It’s a pity they don’t exist in Abidjan, etc. because they might keep down the amount of insects. (“The flies, Oh God, the flies” – having a meal on the terrace of some restaurant or maqui could be a bit of a nightmare because it was often impossible to keep the flies off your food).
The village to me (and to Rocheline) was infinitely preferable to the towns, particularly Abidjan, due to the friendliness of the people. You also felt safe there – everyone knows everyone else – they all wanted to say hello to us, shake our hands, find out our news, and basically give us a warm welcome (including bringing us chickens and prepared dishes). The day after we arrived, a couple of Rocheline’s uncles took me up into the fields to show (and let me taste) some of the local produce. They also showed me some guy cutting down a palm tree, using a pole with a blade on the end to cut through the roots. The palm tree grains, and coconuts are removed from their trees using longer poles with a curved blade on the end. One cousin of Rocheline’s, Jaquelin, was very friendly, showing me round different things including the Sud de Palmes (the village or factory where they extract palm oil from the palm tree grains), and taking us to some local football matches.
Rocheline’s father, Mathieu, was welcoming and civil, although we didn’t really converse much. He has three wives (including Rocheline’s mother who left him a year ago, but she came to Gu�dyo from her natal village after a few days). Rocheline’s mother and Genvi�ve didn’t speak to the other wife, although they did get along with and speak to each other. Mathieu also wasn’t on speaking terms with his own mother (who lived in the house just behind his). I got the impression that he was a rather hard, dour and unforgiving man – he was proud to have me (a white guy, one of the few who had ever come and stayed in the village!) sleep in his house, but was jealous if I went to sit beside and speak to his mother. Anyway I didn’t get mixed up in any of the family squabbles.
Martine (one of Rocheline’s cousins) went to fetch Rocheline’s mother, Agnes, who arrived a couple of days after we did. She arrived one night in the pouring rain (in fact the only time it rained while we were there). She hugged Rocheline and me, and was so happy to see us that she literally danced with joy. I was able to say only a few phrases in B�t�, and she could hardly speak any French, but we did communicate a little (with Rocheline translating) and I believe we did build up a rapport.
We stayed in Gu�dyo for about 10 days or so, which meant that I got to know some of the real characters of the place. Andr� and Fran�ois were two of Mathieu’s brothers, but had more of a warm, laid back temperament, and sense of humour. They came across as real salt of the earth country bumpkin types. With their ripped t-shirts and ancient baseball caps that were all bent, frayed and dusty. The day after we arrived, we gave a bottle of whisky to Mathieu – he opened it almost immediately and shared it out with Andr�, Fran�ois, the village chief, and few of his other cronies (all these guys are in their fifties and sixties). I’ve never seen a bottle of whisky disappear so fast. The same for the second bottle we’d brought – we were going to give it to Rocheline’s grandmother, but Mathieu advised us she’d only get drunk and start saying and doing stupid things (I suspect this was only half true, and that it was also about jealousy and about keeping it for him and his cronies). Supposedly there was also the tradition that I should offer a case of beer to my father-in-law, which I did one evening, a couple of days after we arrived. I was a bit surprised getting up at about 8 a.m. the next day to find that they’d drunk it all that morning (12 one litre bottles)!
Another day about 11 a.m. I was just sitting around in the courtyard in front of Mathieu’s house, when Andr� and Fran�ois came along and asked me to come with them for a drink somewhere else. So off we went down the road a bit to one of the places that sold beer. I suppose you could call these places maquis, but really they were just someone’s house with a few crates of beer inside and a table and chairs outside in the shade of trees or of a terrace-type roof. The guy who owned this particular place was from Burkina Faso and had tribal scars decorating his face (about half the village were from Mali or Burkina Faso). Andr�, with typical exuberance, has this way of opening a beer so that the top flies off making a sound like the cork popping off a bottle of champagne. He also likes a head on his beer (“Il faut que �a mousse“), so pours the beer like some Arab pouring tea. We shared about five beers between the three of us, and also some coutoucou. Needless to say I was fairly half-cut before 12 noon.
These older guys all had fields to work in, but they seemed to spend a lot of the time just sitting around chatting, listening to the radio, or playing Awali – a game played with pebbles and a piece of wood with 8 holes in it, where the object is to capture as many of the opponents pebbles as possible. It was quite amusing to watch Andr� play this – they play at an amazing speed, throwing the pebbles into the holes (the final two pebbles being thrown into two holes at the same time), and when he won he would pick up the board and slam it down upside down (as a kind of victorious outburst of joy). Could you imagine chess champions doing this – check-mate, then wham with the board!
Most of the work tends to get done by women (in the fields, cleaning, preparing and cooking food, etc.) and the younger men (in the fields, trapping animals, building houses, etc.). Children also work clearing the ‘brousse’ to allow crops to be planted and grow unrestrained, washing clothes, running messages. If you want to buy something it’s quite common to send a kid to get it. Only about 50% of children go to school in Ivory Coast. From what I saw they mostly go to school at an early age but many of them drop out due to lack of money to buy books and uniforms, because their parents want them to work in the fields and also the system of classement.
The classement is a system whereby pupils have to obtain a mark for the year of at least 50%, to be allowed to move up to the next class. These marks are calculated from exams throughout the year for various subjects, and also from an end of year exam (and an average is computed for each child to decide whether he/she may progress or if he/she will have to repeat the year). This procedure starts from primary school – i.e. aged five upwards, and since typically only half of each year gets the required average mark, this leads to children not advancing quickly enough, and dropping out early or only being educated to a certain level.
There is also a practise of changing birth certificates, since I believe there are cut-off ages at various stages e.g. to be allowed to attend the equivalent of primary 5 you would have to be aged between 8 and 11, and so a 12 year-old who had doubled a few times would have to change his or her birth-certificate so that he or she would ‘legally’ be 10 years old. This method of changing birth certificates is illegal, but is such a common practise that even the school teachers actively encourage it, and talk about it openly. For example a guy I knew in the village was 23 years old, but his papers showed him to be 18 (he had done this to be able to complete his secondary school education).
I was able to attend the end of year classement ceremony, which took place one morning in the courtyard in front of the school. The 8 or so classes lined up in rows of about 20 or so to a class, each child putting their hands on the shoulders of the child in front. It was fairly obvious to see the children that had repeated a few times, just by looking at the size differences of children in the same class. The head teacher first gave a speech about how children had to try harder, parents had to encourage and support their children and take more of an interest in their schooling, the results were overall pretty poor, with only about 50% of pupils advancing, etc. He also mentioned that the Burkina Faso parents had made a poor job of building a school kitchen, and that if it hadn’t been built correctly by the time the school was about to start up again in September, then none of the Burkina Faso children would be allowed to attend classes.
He then started reading out the children who had done well enough to progress into the next class, starting with primary one and announcing the names in order of merit (best mark first). When a child heard his name, he came and took his mark-book from the head-teacher, and then went and stood to one side. After each class had been read out, the teacher paused so that the kids could go “Woooh, woooh, woooh, …” at all the others in the class who hadn’t made it (especially humiliating for bigger kids, I suppose, to be jeered at by younger, brighter ones).
A few of the children were wearing school uniforms – white and pink checked dresses for the girls, and khaki shorts and shirts for the boys, but (since uniform wasn’t compulsory for the ceremony) most of them were dressed in the clothes they wore about the village – some in clean, well fitting shorts and t-shirts, others in over-sized t-shirts, ripped and dirty shirts, a few wearing what I suppose you could only describe as rags. It was quite funny to see each child running proudly forward to pick up his mark-book, then sometimes jumping into arms of a smiling parent nearby to be congratulated and kissed, before going to wait with the other successful kids.
Football matches were quite a big event in Gu�dyo and also in the neighbouring villages when one of the teams played away. There were three teams (as far as I know) in Gu�dyo – a young boys’ team (under 18), a men’s team, and a women’s. Unfortunately I didn’t get to see the women’s team play. I was able to see the other two teams playing in one match each.
The young boys’ match was in Gu�dyo, on a pitch to the north west of the village, behind the school and the hospital. The pitch was basically a flattish area of dry grass, with make-shift goal posts at either end – the cross bar hung between two Y shaped posts and it went flying off during the match one time, when someone hit it with the ball. The match was okay – Gu�dyo won 4-3.There were sidelines marked (by indents with no grass), but as the game progressed the supporters had the habit of moving gradually inwards to see the action better, only moving back when the ball came close to the line, or when the linesman tried to whip people back into place with a stick. It cost 100 FCFA to watch the match, and you could buy things like peanuts, or home-made toffee and cakes from kids (not to mention the omnipresent sachets of water and juice). One little girl wrapped up the peanuts in pages ripped out from an old school jotter.
The men’s match was in a village about 10 km away against a team from ‘Sud de Palmes’ (the palm oil factory). To get there the team piled into the (open air) back of a lorry. The supporters went in specially arranged vans – and they were basically packed with people – 10 in the back, 6 on the roof, and the usual 2 in the front beside the driver (Rocheline and I were privileged to get the front seats). There was a good atmosphere on the way, with girls singing and clapping (the same on the way back despite not winning). Gu�dyo lost 2-1, although the other team really only won because of their excellent goal-keeper who stopped practically everything (including a penalty-kick). Aside from the match itself, it was kind of a party atmosphere – young girls nicely dressed, coiffed and made-up flirting away with the men (who’d had a few drinks – the supporters, that is).
In both these matches I was treated like a bit of a celebrity – Jaquelin got me a chair to sit on (most people were standing), young kids came in groups to look at me – plus people, including the team, got us to take their photographs. In Ivory Coast, people (especially kids) like getting their photograph taken, even though they will probably never see the photograph. In Yamoussoukro, a group of kids came up to us and asked us to take their photograph; Rocheline explained to them that they wouldn’t be able to see the photo (since it wasn’t a polaroid, plus we weren’t going to send it to them later), so they settled for a few hundred francs instead.
One day we decided to head off to Sud de Palmes to visit the factory where they extract the oil from the grains which are cut from palm trees. We (Rocheline and I, accompanied by Jaquelin, one of Rocheline’s uncles, and a little girl – Anjou – who’d decided to adopt us for the day) took the baca for about 15 km to arrive there. The security guards of the factory went to get the person in charge, who then took us on a tour of the place. Anjou had to wait at the gate with the guards until we came back.
It was fairly interesting to look around, although one curious thing was that most people weren’t actually doing any work because the factory wasn’t functioning at that moment. In fact, there are peak times where there are loads of grains to process, and off peak times where there are no grains, the machines are all shut down, and the workers are obliged to come in anyway and do jobs like cleaning and maintenance. We also took a look at a reservoir from which they pump water for use everywhere in the factory (for various parts of the processing, and also for washing or drinking) – it was actually quite a beautiful sight, a bit incongruous beside a hulking, greasy factory. Then we visited the laboratory, where they do various tests and research to improve the factory processes. There were no Europeans on site, but the company (SIPEFCI) is in fact owned by Belgian guys who have their offices (and nice villas) in San Pedro, and who come now and again just to check that everything is running smoothly.
Beside the factory there is also a fair sized village with a large market, which we had a wander around. We bought some more mineral water, biscuits, vegetables; etc. and stopped off in a maqui to have some cool beers and cokes.
Supposedly there’s a bit of money to be made in growing palm trees. Some people in the village tried to talk me into planting palm trees (or rather, paying people to plant and tend them, and coming back every so often to check them out). They take about two years to grow big enough to start producing the grains, and then you can rake in the cash. Field workers are paid only about 30,000 FCFA (about �30!) a month. If this sounds very little, then consider the poor domestics who are paid a mere 8000 FCFA (for cleaning, looking after children, etc. in white or well off black people’s homes).
It seems like a dated, far-fetched, colonising kind of fantasy, but there are Europeans doing just that, living in splendid villas in nice areas of Abidjan or San Pedro, and driving around in big 4×4 luxury jeeps.
You could say that these people are plantation owning, slave-driving, exploiters, closing their eyes to the basic standards of living of their workers and neighbours. But most of us are guilty of this same exploitation but from further away – in our comfortable Western homes, drinking coffee, eating pineapples or bananas, and putting our money in banks. Anyway I decided not to become a palm-tree plantation owner (and to return to a comfortable, if stressful and un-contented existence in Europe).
In many ways, people in Gu�dyo (or other Ivorian villages) are much the same as you or me, but as John Travolta says in “Pulp Fiction” – “It’s those little differences …”. For example, one day an uncle of Rocheline’s caught a small blue bird with a red beak in one of his traps, so he broke its wings and gave it to his children to play with; to Europeans, with our societies for the protection of animals, this seems barbaric and cruel; to an Ivorian it’s an act of kindness, like giving a toy to his kids (let’s face it, he couldn’t afford to buy them shoes, let alone toys – any toys you see, apart from the odd football, are home-made e.g. wooden cars made from bamboo, draughts games made from a sheet of paper for the board and some pieces of wood for the pieces).
They believe in witches and witchcraft. I talked to a guy who was in the village for a day or so, and our conversation as we sat under the trees in Mathieu’s courtyard went something like this:
“Are you on vacation?”
“Yes, I’m married to Rocheline, the daughter of Mathieu. We’ll be here for another few days then we’re going to visit San Pedro, then Yamoussoukro. And you, do you live here?”
“No, I’m here to pick up one of my cousins, then we’re going to the funeral of his sister.”
“Hmm, sorry to hear that. So where do you live?”
“In Abidjan. I’m a Spanish teacher.”
“Ever been to Spain or Europe?”
“I’ve only visited it via books. I travel by reading books.”
“Do you know San Pedro?”
“Yes, I lived there for a while…” (and here he gave me some advise on places to stay, visit, etc.)
And then he started to talk about witchcraft saying, “You know there’s a girl in this village, who’s very sick, dying.”
“Did she take pills?” I asked this because a girl had fallen ill a few days earlier and had to be taken to the hospital (she had taken sleeping tablets, but she recovered).
“No. It’s because of witchcraft. There’s a list, that was drawn up by the witches and the leaders in this village – that’s how they got their electric lighting here…. If your name’s on that list it means you’re going to die. The only way to be saved is to have your name replaced by someone else.”
“Hmm, so where’s this list?”
“Hhuh! Who knows? It’s all black magic. You know Africa is deep and mysterious. Ah yes, darkest Africa!”
“People in Europe don’t believe in all that stuff.”
“Hmm. Yes, there nobody believes in it, however it’s true.”
Another guy came and joined the discussion, and they talked about witchcraft and other problems in Ivory Coast.
Cuadjo was the village idiot, or the guy in the village who was a bit simple (to use more politically correct and diplomatic language). He used to come round and offer various things like bananas, coconuts, little sachets containing 30 ml of gin or brandy. We bought these and other things from him (although rejected some offers like catapults). We also arranged with him to go and collect things in the brousse for a small price like 10 sweet coconuts for 500 FCFA, or a few bunches of bananas for 200 FCFA.
He would sometimes get a bit grouchy if we complained that the coconuts weren’t sweet enough, or if we didn’t have any change and offered him a cup of coffee and some bread instead. Then he would come out with crazy things like “I’m going to call the Commandos!” He would always call me ‘Monsieur’ and was quite a persistent salesman. People would tease him and laugh at him all the time. I was a bit wary of him at first – a crazy guy with a machete in his hand half the time – but everyone else seemed to think he was harmless, and so did I once I got used to him (even looking forward to when he would pass by).
All in all we had a good time in the village, although towards the end I got a bit bored (we were there for 10 days after all, and I spent a lot of time just loafing around, chatting or reading a book). People there were, in general, contented with their lives, despite all the hard manual work and lack of money for clothes, etc. They were very solidaire and it seemed no-one would ever go starving (not even Cuadjo). You could basically go and say hi to anyone in the village, and they would welcome you into their courtyard and give you a seat to sit down on, and a piece of corn on the cob, or any other food that they happened to be eating. Most people had rice for breakfast, rice for lunch, and rice for dinner (with various sauces). The couple of times that we had pasta especially for me, some people didn’t want to try it (one guy suggested that it was more likely to make me sick than the rice). Rice is what they are used to and it’s what they like to eat.
Some young men asked me to get them a female correspondent in France when I returned, so some of them do dream of foreign lands (and lasses). I would recommend anyone to go and spend a week or so in an African village, just to experience life there – to rid yourself of the stereotypes presented by television and films, and to see what it’s really like.
