Abidjan - Le Paris de Afrique l'ouest

I was very queasy aboard the 11 hour flight to Abidjan - the fear of flying coupled with the sheer lack of knowledge about the Dark Continent is enough to get to anyone I'd say.

We were four of us on the flight - bright exponents of the concept of "Brain Drain" armed with apparently coveted educational degrees (a sham if you ask me for my personal opinion)- having each conducted cartloads of research on Cote d'Ivoire on Google. We spent quite some time comparing notes. The fact that we could find only three common points amongst the four of us increased manifold the uncertainity that had set up abode in our minds, apart from telling us that each of us had a very different style of google-ing!

1) Abidjan in it's heyday was known as the Paris of West Africa
2) After the civil war in 2004, Cote d'Ivoire was labelled as an extremely dangerous place with strict warnings issued to potential travellers by the US/UK government on their respective websites
3) Cote d'Ivoire was the largest producer of cocoa in the world

The rest of our flying time was spent quizzing each other on the meanings of mal-pronounced French words. (We were each armed with a copy of a French to English Dictionary, given that we were relocating to a country where French was the most common means of communication and English was virtually unknown!)

The sight of Abidjan Airport was very appealing to my eyes. A country ravaged by war and with an ultra-modern airport... yeah baby!

But horror of horrors struck us when we finally de-boarded the aircraft! The apparent concept of the Visa on Arrival worked well only if your local guide was present to recieve you on time! And in case your name was mis-spelt on your invitation letter (as was my luck) the process was even more tedious!

After a brilliantly funny/scary 40 minutes of trying to understand questions being cannon balled onto us in French (using our dictionaries to the maximum and with close to negligible success as far as outcomes were concerned) we were bailed out by our local guide.

The drive from the airport to town was particularly fun for me. There were men decked in green military uniforms, standing at nearly every corner, brandishing guns and how! As we passed a group of them showing off their Admiral Kalashnikov's I litterally jumped out of the car in excitement. Thank god for the thin line between literally and actually!!!

Now Abidjan is a breath-taking city. Built around the Ebrie Lagoon, the city is divided into zones (as will be described to you in future posts), each with something special (at least to me).

As I sit here in Gurgaon, on a perfect night and with nothing much to do apart from sleep, the only place I wish I'd rather be is Abidjan.
Somehow, it will always be like home to me - probably the only place where I can be on my own and not feel alone.

Le Paris de Afrique l'ouest - je t'aime!