You think you know? …but you have no idea!

Abidjan isn’t what you think it is. It is better. The trip from Charles De Gaulle started awkwardly. I found myself in an adventure involving excess luggage, hustlers selling me jute bags for 10 Euros (when it would have normally cost me about 3) and having to abandon my carry-on suitcase in the terminal. I successfully managed to board my flight without any additional incidents. My seatmate was a young Ivorian named Jean, who had just left a Swiss city and was a manager in an expensive watch store in a local Abidjan mall. He showed me pictures of his store and the mall in which he worked. First thing that struck me is how closely it matched the malls and stores I had seen in Canada and France. Unfortunately, despite my own firsthand experience of West-Africa through Benin (2 years ago) and Ghana (10 years ago), these two places have come to crystallize my vision and have frozen my view in those specific times and places. There were no malls when I left Accra 10 years ago. There are still no malls in Cotonou. However, Abidjan has at least 3 that people have told me about.

When Jean told me the prices at which designer watches in his store were sold – and they seemed quite exuberant to me (then again I am not much of a watch guy) – he mentioned that there was a huge market for these things (especially at Christmas and on Valentine’s Day). “Can you see how quickly we absorb things?”, he said, “20 years ago, no one in Abidjan knew anything about Valentine’s Day. Now we can’t go without it”. Right before our landing, he exclaimed “Zota!”. This immediately caught my attention. Was this the Zota aka La Petite Zota – i.e. Serge Beynaud’s dancer (arguably the biggest Coupe Decale star) he was referring to? Yes it was. I immediately chased after her (from my Economy seat all the way to Business Class) and obtained her number! Moments later, the pilot announced “We are about to begin our descent in Abidjan. The outdoor temperature is 28 deg C with clear skies.” The research forecast appeared hot and quite promising!

Customs were smooth and completely painless. As we arrived, medical staff systematically sprayed everyone’s hands with hand sanitizer reminding us that Ebola is still a very real threat. This offloading didn’t resemble what I had become used to in Cotonou, materializing through the heat and rude border police. My host picked me at the airport and brought me to his house. It had been 15 years since I’d last seen this city and all of its glory. We sped across the brand new highway (le pont d’ADO as it is locally called), with the Plateau (Abidjan’s business district) gleaming like a jewel in the darkness across in the distance. Yet, the thick veil of the night had not yet been pulled over Abidjan. It is in the districts of Marcory, Yopougon or Mawu that the action happens.

An array of elegant lounges called “bars climatisés” are interspersed across the city. Each of these lounges features a typical interior layout consisting of mini-living rooms and a central, but relatively small dance floor. The dance floor always features a massive mirror that dancers face as they move to the music. It is my reading that this mirror, along with the copious amounts of alcohol consumed in these places, provides a certain sense of confidence to the dancers. This is in stark contrast to other clubs and entertainment venues I have come across both in Canada and Europe. Yaya Kone, a professor of anthropology, explained this to me when we met in Calais “you see African people dance to express something and they need to be seen. It is a communicative event. In order to do this they need an audience. This is why Maquis in Abidjan are laid out in that way. Dancing in Western clubs is very different because everyone comes to enjoy themselves in a very individualistic manner”

It is in these places that Abidjan’s nightlife distills into an intoxicating brew of dancing, alcohol and sex. The parties start around 1 AM and can go up to 10 AM. As a resident of Ontario, it was quite unimaginable since last call is usually about 2.30 AM. As I appeared incredulous, a friend jokingly said “That is because you guys work the following day!”. Gazeurs (revelers) who are apparently also brouteurs (literally grazers. But it is a term to designate cyber-criminals) turn up to celebrate life by ordering buckets of beer bottles (1 bucket has about 10 bottles) accompanied by beautiful women in their entourage. I have learned that some of these women are often discrete escorts known as Kpoclés, who to the unsuspecting eye blend in perfectly with the rest of the party. A trained eye can also easily spot brouteurs from the clothes they wear, their demeanor, the cars they drive and the way they perform the “travaillement”.

On one of my very last trips to Chateau d’Eau in Paris (a place with a high concentration of West-African immigrants), I was told that Coupe Decale was dead and was being overtaken by Nigerian music. While this may be true in France, the Coupe Decale scene in Abidjan seems very much alive from what I have witnessed so far. Over the course of the following months, I believe that my primary challenge will be to retain analytic distance, scientific neutrality and enough soberness to retain all the information I am learning!