Ivory Coast has an unusual way of handling visas. If you need a visa in a hurry like I did you get a letter of invitation and a paper visa form. Upon my arrival in Ivory Coast they take your passport and your paper visa. Don’t expect to see your visa again for a couple of days. This is an alarming process as I am not accustomed to handing over my passport and not getting it back. I was only going to be there a couple of days anyway. So, sans passport, I proceed on to the check in. They are looking for the yellow fever vaccination card. Well. Mine’s in my passport, which you took thank you very much. So they had to send a runner to go find it and show it to the checker. Finally we go through. They give you a receipt for your passport which is your temporary paperwork. When you are asked for your papers—and odds are you will be—this is what you show them.
Once we got through and entered the main airport area we were approached by sales people who wanted us to buy SIM cards for phones or exchange money. The exchange rate was 500 cifa to the dollar, which is actually better than you will probably get at a teller booth. So reluctantly I exchanged USD $40 for 20,000 cifa.
There is a company there in Ivory Coast that provides handlers who can meet you at the airport, get you through the process quickly, and bring you to the office. So we were soon on our way to the company office in Abidjan. We took back roads so I didn’t get to see downtown. Our path took us through a poor area with ramshackle buildings and vendors selling cooked goat skins, people laying washed clothes on the ground in a big field to dry them in the sun, and a woman urinating on the side of the road. Then we passed a stockyard with thin cattle and goats that wandered about, and chickens in coops, and finally a dockyard. I can’t say I had a very high opinion of Abidjan but we didn’t see downtown and I realized hey this is Africa and probably most West African countries have areas that look like this.
We arrived at the office and started the site survey. Then towards the end of the day—about 7:30 PM—we checked into the Hotel Ibis. The hotel was undergoing renovation and the front door was barred. We used a side entrance. They had put together a temporary check-in desk in the bar area. But they didn’t close the bar. So as you stand at a small check-in desk you have a bar to your immediate right with much smoking and drinking and loud talking, and to your left is a terrible lounge act with a keyboard, drums, and local woman singing in French. And our rooms? Not ready yet. Why not? They are cleaning. They will be ready in 15 minutes. I pointed out it was very late and they had plenty of time to clean it already. I got that blank look West Africans are so good at that says all they hear is blah blah blah. We went and stood outside. Some francophones had gotten so drunk they could barely walk and they were being thrown out. Nice.
After the 15 were up I went back in to check. My companion’s room was ready but not mine. They gave me his key and I suggested rather than standing outside we just go to his room and wait for mine to be ready. We had been invited to dinner by the country manager, so my companion wanted to change clothes. He called down to the desk and requested an iron. They told him my room was ready so I headed back down.
They finally gave me my room key. They also tried to hand me the iron to take back to my companion. I shot them a you-can’t-be-serious look and headed upstairs. They put me on the top floor. I was thinking maybe they had comped me a good room for my inconvenience. Not so. The top floor hallway smelled of fresh paint and some of the rooms had no doors. Presumably they were being renovated. My room did have a door and when I got inside I was relieved that it did not smell of paint fumes. The floor had cigarette stains and there was an ashtray on the table by the no smoking sign. I looked out the window and there was a swimming pool with a chair in it. I wondered if the drunk Frenchies had anything to do with that.
In summary, I can’t really recommend the Hotel Ibis in Abidjan.
We were picked up to go to dinner and on the way to the restaurant we were stopped by an armed guard who had set up a checkpoint. We showed him our papers and I was just waiting for the “your papers are not in order” BS that they sometimes do to extort some money from you. That didn’t happen to us. We arrived at the restaurant, called Le Grand Large, which we all thought sounded stupid but I am told it’s not so dumb in French. The country manager was delayed because he did get the shakedown but wouldn't pay up. The interior was as nice as any fancy restaurant in the US and I had one of the best meals in Africa at this place. The menu was all in French but I knew filet was steak and that’s really all you need to know. So I had a filet chateaubriand with foie gras and an amazing French wine. And I decided Abidjan couldn’t be all bad if it could produce a meal like this.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Labadi Beach
Well I am back in the States and home but never had time to update this blog and bring it to a conclusion. Now that I am back home and have had time to let the experience settle in a bit, I can give you a retrospective on my last few days in Ghana and in Ivory Coast.
I’ll start with Labadi Beach. The entire time we were in Ghana we were told this was a good place to go on the weekend. But as we made overtime when we worked weekends, none of us were willing to sacrifice the time to go. Finally we were reaching the end of the project and we were basically in maintenance mode where we were waiting for things to break and we really had no reason to be in the office. So on Sunday afternoon we decided to go check out Labadi Beach. We hailed a taxi and he stopped. We negotiated a fee and headed out. We made it a couple of miles before the taxi broke down. He popped the hood and tried to get it started again, and had one of us in the front seat reach over and try to start it. Then the key just fell out of the ignition. We all looked at each other and got out, and flagged down another taxi.
I was told Labadi Beach is a private beach, which means you pay an entrance fee of 5 cedi. There is also a public beach but we didn’t see it. The entrance to the beach is a covered walkway up against a building. There is a teller window to your right where you pay your fee. The entry fee comes with a complementary energy drink. Then once you go past this area it opens up and there are the booths and setups where you can buy sunglasses or whatever. We pressed on towards the water. The beach area was filled with people all clustered together under red umbrellas. There were a few expats wandering around but mostly it was a local crowd. There was music playing and cooks grilling unrecognizable meat, children running to and fro along the water’s edge while parents watched from the shade under their umbrellas. Teenagers and young men kicked around soccer balls. This is the first thing that’s different about a beach in Africa: Africans don’t suntan!
I had heard the beach wasn’t going to be too clean. Supposedly they don’t treat their sewage in Ghana and they just pump it into the ocean. I didn’t plan to get in the water anyway. Sure enough, the beach was dirty. There were piles of trash—whether grouped together by human hands or simply by the tide, I can’t say—and boys led ponies or small horses up and down the beach offering rides. Horses do what horses do, and they do it right there on the beach. No pooper scoopers in Ghana! The horseman just slides some sand over it and continues on his way. Then kids running along the beach no doubt come and step in it.
We walked down from the entrance towards the left. There were enclosed areas with chairs or sometimes tables and chairs set up where—for a fee of course—you could sit down and relax. There were waiters who would come along and offer beers or water to the guests. Some people were sitting in those areas and reading books or talking. We were continually offered a seat in these areas but we were there to look around and declined. My coworkers were offered and accepted a beer and were handed glass bottles. Not something you would see in the US!
We did see some interesting things at the beach. There was a group of drummers who wandered around playing. They would go up to tables of beachgoers and try to play for them, like mariachis in a Mexican restaurant. Then there was a guy making a sand sculpture of a rather severe looking woman in a hot rod. Then there was Zanla the Show Boy, who pranced up and down the beach in a flamboyant costume that made him look like a member of the Ghanaian Village People. He never spoke but was very happy to pose for pictures! (Click the picture to view it larger).
I’ll start with Labadi Beach. The entire time we were in Ghana we were told this was a good place to go on the weekend. But as we made overtime when we worked weekends, none of us were willing to sacrifice the time to go. Finally we were reaching the end of the project and we were basically in maintenance mode where we were waiting for things to break and we really had no reason to be in the office. So on Sunday afternoon we decided to go check out Labadi Beach. We hailed a taxi and he stopped. We negotiated a fee and headed out. We made it a couple of miles before the taxi broke down. He popped the hood and tried to get it started again, and had one of us in the front seat reach over and try to start it. Then the key just fell out of the ignition. We all looked at each other and got out, and flagged down another taxi. I was told Labadi Beach is a private beach, which means you pay an entrance fee of 5 cedi. There is also a public beach but we didn’t see it. The entrance to the beach is a covered walkway up against a building. There is a teller window to your right where you pay your fee. The entry fee comes with a complementary energy drink. Then once you go past this area it opens up and there are the booths and setups where you can buy sunglasses or whatever. We pressed on towards the water. The beach area was filled with people all clustered together under red umbrellas. There were a few expats wandering around but mostly it was a local crowd. There was music playing and cooks grilling unrecognizable meat, children running to and fro along the water’s edge while parents watched from the shade under their umbrellas. Teenagers and young men kicked around soccer balls. This is the first thing that’s different about a beach in Africa: Africans don’t suntan!
I had heard the beach wasn’t going to be too clean. Supposedly they don’t treat their sewage in Ghana and they just pump it into the ocean. I didn’t plan to get in the water anyway. Sure enough, the beach was dirty. There were piles of trash—whether grouped together by human hands or simply by the tide, I can’t say—and boys led ponies or small horses up and down the beach offering rides. Horses do what horses do, and they do it right there on the beach. No pooper scoopers in Ghana! The horseman just slides some sand over it and continues on his way. Then kids running along the beach no doubt come and step in it. 
We walked down from the entrance towards the left. There were enclosed areas with chairs or sometimes tables and chairs set up where—for a fee of course—you could sit down and relax. There were waiters who would come along and offer beers or water to the guests. Some people were sitting in those areas and reading books or talking. We were continually offered a seat in these areas but we were there to look around and declined. My coworkers were offered and accepted a beer and were handed glass bottles. Not something you would see in the US!
We did see some interesting things at the beach. There was a group of drummers who wandered around playing. They would go up to tables of beachgoers and try to play for them, like mariachis in a Mexican restaurant. Then there was a guy making a sand sculpture of a rather severe looking woman in a hot rod. Then there was Zanla the Show Boy, who pranced up and down the beach in a flamboyant costume that made him look like a member of the Ghanaian Village People. He never spoke but was very happy to pose for pictures! (Click the picture to view it larger).
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Cote d'Ivoire
Made it to Ivory Coast today. Will try to write a longer update later but it was a long day. I know I am not doing a good job of keeping up with this thing; sorry about that. Food is good you can get French wine here. But the roads are just as bad as in Ghana and everyone speaks French. It feels completely safe althogh we went through a roadblock today where the soldiers wanted to see passports. Big hassle over nothing. I will be working in the office here and offshore, and should be coming home Monday the 6th.
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