Abidjan ma maison

Abidjan in Côte D’Ivoire is a buzz, a warmth, a party, a bankruptcy,

a conviviality, a lineage, a contradiction, a fantasy. Abidjan is the compressed and dispersed, bricks and cement and tar and grits, gated communities and cracked roads and skid-rows, cheap markets of contraband jewelry, night clubs, malls and hookah lounges, and noisy Ivorian restaurants, and street food, and toll bridges. Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, “crudes, thieves, and morons” by which he meant everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said: “teens, vagrants and nobles,” and he would have meant the same thing.

In the morning, while the moneybags from the rich side of the city are waking up, the beggars are on the sidewalk, hoping to catch the early risers. The mock merchants are walking up and down the middle of the road with their items, interfering with traffic. The irony is grand, for these hours of traffic jam are the only time the upper and lower class of town meet: when the rich ones are driving up and down and over the bridge to get to work on the impoverished half. Then rush hour passes and the wives of the wannabe merchants wake up and rush to their selling booths in the markets with their kids . Then the rich businessmen and women send their assistants and interns to get them breakfast from the markets: middle class, toddlers, and courageous women meet this time, beaten down by the sun. Then from chauffeurs pour young adults and cool kids and junkies, girls and boys in saggy pants and crop tops and gold jewelry. They come ready to sit in a lounge and smoke and drink and be seen. The market sellers holler and scream and call and whistle hoping their articles will interest a rich kid and the kids snort and snob and laugh and disregard because they are spoiled and entitled and uppity.

Then lunchtime comes around and the market grumbles and roars and booms and restaurant silverware clinks and wine spills and Attieke is served until the last client is satisfied, the last rich teen is drunk, the last businessman burps. Then the clock hits seven p.m and wobbly intoxicated young adults, dancing cool kids, high junkies, politicians, laughing businessmen and women ramble out and ride up and down and over the bridge back to smugland and Abidjan becomes itself again — split and convivial.

Its normal life returns. The buzzed youngsters act sober. The wealthy pretend they are unaware of the surrounding poverty. The lower class men and women pray to one day be able to afford a place on the other side of the bridge. The teens talk about the next lounge to try out. The phony housewives act like they live in the westernized world. The penniless play with their numerous kids for it’s their only source of joy.

How can the buzz, the warmth, the party — the bankruptcy, the conviviality, the contradiction, the fantasy —be set down alive? When you live extravagantly and pretend the bridge is a wall separating you and them, how can you be in charge of them? For those are the ostentatious politicians responsible to make decisions concerning the ones they overlook daily. And perhaps that might be the only way for the wealthy to enjoy their life — to ignore the extreme poverty surrounding them.