A bit of everyday life in the suburbs of Abidjan, Ivory Coast There’s a wonderful lack of urgency on the sandy streets of Gonzague, this ramshackle development stretched out along the pedestrian unfriendly, coastal route to Grand Bassam. Why hurry anywhere, when you can dawdle in the sun and sea breeze, chat to neighbours or a shopkeeper, making a trip to the shop last twice as long as any westerner would? A goodbye to a parting guest might become a…
At a café in a small town in Northern Benin, a young man asked if it was ok to share my table and I had to assure the waitress that I was only too happy to chat to a stranger who she assumed would only bother me. He introduced himself as Paulin and we spent a few hours discussing life, the universe and everything. It’s always rewarding to find someone interested and knowledgeable in African politics to get a better…
Public transport is a subject I have already given you a flavour of so the dereliction of its vehicles will come as no surprise but I feel obliged to cover some organisational issues with bus services. To most of us it would seem logical, when providing a regular coach service, to relate ticket sales to the quantity of seats on a coach and the departure times, but Cote d’Ivoire in particular has other ideas. Lets say the basic plan is…
You may well wonder why I would bother telling you that a 500ml sachet of water costs about 5p, but it helps to illustrate some typical daily economic issues, particularly for many African women, so let me tell you about Cynthia. She lives with her young son in Kumasi, a city in western Ghana and has a room in a building seemingly populated almost entirely by other women without any visible partners. Lets just say the building won’t be appearing…
