This is taken directly from my journal 30 January 2010. My exit from Côté d'Ivoire turned out to be even more interesting than my near arrest in Bouaké. For those of you who think I'm an idiot for even considering traveling in countries who've all been through major conflict in the past decade, I'd advise continuing no further.
Last night, I totally got hooked up while at dinner in Man. I'd finished writing for the day, had finished eating, was exhausted beyond all belief from an all-day hike and was waiting for my check when in walk two Germans, a married couple, who spoke good English but barely any French. What shock! The first tourists I'd seen in over a week. So I introduced myself, blah blah, from America, blah blah, first travelers I've seen since I left Yamoussoukro, blah blah, so where are you going?
Well my husband here is working with the embassy in Monrovia, so we decided to fly to Accra, rent a car, and drive overland to Liberia. Have you been in Man long?
Oh no, we're leaving tomorrow, just here for the night. Ya, I'm going to Liberia tomorrow as well, but I'll probably be jumping bush taxis with a prayer in my heart for easy transport.
Well there's room in our car if you'd like to go along. I couldn't believe my luck.
Knut and Bianka have lived the past ten years in Kenya. She's a doctor; he's an electrical engineer. They never planned to end up in Kenya, but on a trans-African road trip, they just fell in love with it and never left. They regaled me with stories of sailing around the world (Knut had his own boat and took tourists to all ports of call in all the far-flung seas and oceans.) It's actually where they met and fell in love. Knut now tends to travel on land, working with German embassy projects all over Africa, and Bianka's work takes her to the refugee camps and the like all over Kenya. Needless to say, I was fascinated with these tales of adventure from seasoned travelers and felt amazed that they'd be at all curious about my adventure. I guess hoofing it around West Africa by oneself can seem pretty interesting to other wanderers as well.
Taking a ride from Knut and Bianka would turn out to be one of the best decisions I have yet made on this trip. The road from Man to Danané is paved the entire way and really rather nice. We left around 8 am and were at the gendarme's post by ten. They told us in town that we had to get our passports stamped in Danané because there was no passport control at the border. It quickly became apparent that the commandant had never done this kind of thing before as he had to be instructed by a junior officer. After he had stamped two of the passports, Knut's and mine, he said that we had to pay a little something. I objected saying it was "obligatoire," at which he took some offense, refusing to stamp the final passport. I suggested to Knut and Bianka that we just leave, as there had to be something near the border if he didn't know the procedure for exiting the country. As I got up to leave, he lectured me on how he was doing us a favor (instead of his actual job), and called me a "bad boy" for leaving Bianka behind without a stamp. He took care of her passport, and continued to call me a "bad boy." I couldn't tell if he was joking.
If I hadn't gotten a ride with Bianka and Knut, I don't know if I'd be in Liberia today. I think it would have been nearly impossible to get a car in Danané, where the road basically ends. Despite this being the main road from Côté d'Ivoire into Liberia, these border posts only see a few people a year and probably no Westerners for months at a time. The entry book was pitifully empty at the first control point, which we thought was the border, where we were asked to pay 5000 cfa (about $10). I don't know why I thought this was legit, but I did it, assured that we would have to pay nothing else the rest of the way to the border. At the second stop, a mere 12km down the road, we were told we had to pay again. "Because this is a different post. You paid at that post, but that isn't this post, and you have to pay to cross." We didn't pay that time through, as we'd forgotten the car papers, and had to return to Danané, a full hour's lost time on the shoddy, unpaved road. We picked up the papers from the commandant (who pointed at me from across the yard and shouted "BAD BOY!") and again started for the border, bouncing over crater-like potholes, fording giant puddles, and teetering along crevices carved by the rain. I don't know how I fell asleep on the way back to the border, but I somehow slept through about three more border posts, where uniformed men demanded 5000 cfa at each site. Knut and Bianka, though, are old hands at handling African corruption, and we didn't pay a dime. After another 45 minutes, I awoke just in time for the complete clusterf*** at the bridge.
The bridge spanned a small creek separating Côté d'Ivoire from Liberia. It was the final Ivorian checkpoint and probably the only official one of the whole 30km to the border. Knut went through the whole rigamarole of passing the barrier while Bianka and I waited. Of course they wanted more money, but back we went to the car. There was only one soldier at the control, only one man in any kind of uniform, and when he called to the guy Knut had been talking to, "Is everything okay?
No, they didn't pay, it's not okay." I just figured we'd play the waiting game or at least negotiate the price somewhat. I was wrong.
As soon as we were in the car, Knut blasted through an opening in the peage. Some of the guys who would come to cause the greatest problems tried to stop him by running in front of the car. I'm not entirely sure he wouldn't have run them down if they hadn't gotten out of the way. The soldier, shouldering his kalishnikov, tried to block the car with a bench, which Knut quickly drove around. This was kind of funny, but I could never shake the thought that there was one guy with a gun involved, and I made sure I never took my eyes off him. Knut, meanwhile, ignoring shouts for us to stop, blasted it for the frontier. We made it as far as the bridge across the creek. So close to our goal, but we were blocked by a big truck and a tire blockade.
That's when all hell broke loose. Knut got out of the car to move the tire as I looked back to see about half a dozen guys, including the soldier, still with the kalishnikov, running after us. They caught up while we were at the blockade. Shouting ensued. One guy stood on top of the tire Knut was moving, and Knut, being a 6'5", heavily-built German, continued to move the tire with the other guy on it. He took a swing at Knut and I thought shit was really going to go down, but Knut didn't retaliate. He just moved the tire and drove on to the bridge, where we were stopped by the soldier and his friends, who were in the process of barricading this plank bridge, no wider than the car, with branches and a log stuck upright between the slats like a pylon. This started another fight about the bridge toll, etc when I noticed a guy letting the air out of the back left tire. I moved toward him, he ran around the back of the car, and I grabbed him on the other side. I wasn't afraid he would take a swing at me, I was more afraid of what would happen if he tried.
All this time, the soldier is looking more and more nervous, like he's gotten himself in over his head. And that's something you never want: a nervous guy holding an automatic rifle. Let me just repeat that for emphasis: YOU NEVER WANT A TWITCHY GUY HOLDING THE ONLY KALISHNIKOV. I got into an argument with a guy who was claiming racism, that we thought we didn't have to respect the law because we were white thought of them as stupid, black men. If there's one thing I hate, it's this argument: that because I'm white and he's black, I'm trying to get one over on him, when the reality is this: he and his friends are assholes, and we were tired of all the graft. More yelling. They've now changed tack from bridge toll to requiring a laissez-passez from the rebel commander. It's starting to sound desperate as none of these guys are in uniform, and the only one who is has disappeared. I walked back to the passport control to hash things out as the yelling has started to calm down. The bridge is broken, the commandant is on his way, you have to go around, the bridge has a toll that we have to pay, the story just keeps changing. I don't believe the commandant is on his way from Danané, as there's no one that would willingly make that trip for a reason as stupid as this. I walk back to the bridge and test it out with Knut. Looks safe to both of us. I walk up the bank to the Liberian side and ask a bystander if the bridge is safe. It is, we should just wait a bit until the truck blocking the bridge is fully loaded and out of the way. By the time I found my way back to the car, there was a woman mercilessly berating the punks who've blocked the bridge. If there's one thing I've learned in West Africa it's this: Fear the angry African woman. The "rebels" sheepishly take down the barrier under her watchful eyes and try to lecture Knut on respect, but he isn't listening. We cross the bridge into Liberia without paying a dime, glad to be out of Côté d'Ivoire and the worst border crossing ever.
I think there were two main reasons we were finally able to cross. The first was the involvement of a woman who obviously had a lot of influence in the community taking our case against some younger guys who make a lot of money exploiting those who move through this basically lawless land. The other factor? After over 30 minutes of arguing and near violence, I think these same punks realized that they might have pushed a little too hard against people who weren't going to be pushed around. When I walked over to the Liberian side, I didn't realize that I was steps away from a UN border post, with Bangladeshi blue helmets looking on from behind their razor-wired compound walls. I think they realized that if I took the time to strike up a conversation with any of the UN peacekeepers, the "rebels" would have had bigger problems to deal with. Once we got to the Liberian side, it was all smiles and sunshine. Though we still had a good ten hours to Monrovia, we were all glad to be out of rebel-held Côté d'Ivoire.
No comments:
Post a Comment