“Cet autre que je ne suis pas” (This Other that I am not) - Reflections on a slam poetry night in Abidjan.

The last time I had been to a live poetry recital was in Toronto when I still fancied myself a poet. Then, I was still involved with the Parkdale Street Writers and we occasionally performed at the Gladstone at least once every year. Despite promising myself that I was going to attend a least one slam poetry session in Paris (there is a very vibrant scene over there), things were just too busy. However, never had I imagined that 1) Abidjan would offer me my first live slam poetry recital and that 2) it would be so good! It helped that I was already at the Institut Goethe where the performance would take place in the doing some work that afternoon. From the library, I could already overhear the sounds of the rehearsal permeating through my earphones. I paid no further attention.   

A few hours later, I found myself in the middle of one of the most interesting poetry gigs I’d attended to date on an powerfully controversial topic: Homosexuality. However, the sheer brilliance and complexity with which it was tackled left me completely stunned. Not because I didn’t believe in the talent of these poets, but because my own presuppositions precluded me from believing that such a delicate topic would be tackled in a fair and sincere manner.  The results were way beyond my expectations.

Homosexuality in Ivory Coast, just like in the West, remains a widely controversial issue. As countries slowly embrace more liberal approaches towards the issue, a certain level of apprehension is still present in all communities on the basis of religious, moral and societal underpinnings.  However, this apprehension more often than not has caricatured the debate presenting the very two extremities of the question: homophobia and “tolerance”. Nonetheless, the debate is often significantly more nuanced. People not supporting homosexual marriage are not necessarily intolerant, they are occasionally torn between societal and religious pressures and their own moral codes.

As Amina Meliane Bamba’s piece demonstrated (even if presented more eloquently than this), “God does not hate gay people, but it is against his scriptures. And He simply hates it when we stray away from his scriptures”. Upon first hearing these lines and the crowds loud cheers, I couldn’t help but impose my own precipitated judgment on the piece and label it as “homophobic”.  But it was not until I heard the following recitals that I understood that the tolerance/homophobia dialectic often present in most of the debates on the issue fails to capture its cultural complexity. As an example Olili Armelle Renée Zako’s piece mostly recited in Bété, showed that culturally the word “homosexuality” simply does not exist in the language, thus illustrating the incredibly foreign nature of the concept and the tension that one could face while trying to come to grips with it. Another poem presented by a gay poet certainly shocked some with its graphic content but appealed to everyone through its lyrical complexity. It received identical cheers and ovations.

But of all the poems performed, it was the ones delivered in Nouchi that I found the most interesting. They were rich in imagery and utilized very complex and imaginative syntactic forms. Most importantly, they powerfully delivered opinions from a very poignant vantage point – that of the everyday man struggling to make ends meet. “Si ils veulent il n’ont qu’a aller grayé Cabri/ moi je cherche Cabri a manger” (if they want they can go have sex with goats/ I am simply looking for a goat to eat). This  illustration does not aim to offend or portray homosexuals in a demeaning manner, but rather portrays a form of tolerant indifference, typifying an average Ivorian with too many economic, social and political challenges to face to even be bothered by this "new" issue.

The session ended with an invitation from the public to voice their opinion on the issue by anonymously presenting their views on a piece of paper that had previously been dissimulated under our chairs. This slam recital has certainly reignited my passion for spoken word poetry and reformed the gaze that I was posing on this issue in this very specific context. It was a salient illustration of the complexities of a society positioning itself in an increasingly globalizing world and torn between its customary conventions and the stresses exerted from religious, social, ethical and cultural factors.