Rebels and Roadblocks: Escaping from Côté d'Ivoire

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.

The Tragedy of Man

My final stop in Côté d'Ivoire, after the beautiful beaches near the Western city of San Pedro, was Man, once a tourist Mecca in Northern Côté d'Ivoire, now completely vacant except for the occasional adventurer like me. Man is the launching point for the fascinating villages in Yacouba (Dan) territory, an area known for it's masks, child juggling, and stilt dancing as well as beautiful mountain scenery and a climate quite a bit cooler than the rest of the country. However, during the crisis, Northern Côté d'Ivoire, especially around Man, suffered like nowhere else in the country. The guide books describe Man as one of the most beautiful inland Ivorian towns, and it would be if one were to look at it only in geographic terms. The city is known as The City of the Eighteen Mountains, and I'm sure that one hundred years ago, when Man was little more than a village surrounded by impressive forest-covered hills, it was one of the most beautiful places in this part of the world. However, illegal logging has devastated the surrounding hills, and the crisis has done much worse to the city of Man.

Man is, quite frankly, one of the dirtiest, most filthy, unattractive cities I've seen in West Africa. And that's saying a lot. I've traveled through cities in Niger, Burkina Faso, and Mali, Sahelian countries all with less money and resources for community clean-up and beautification than Man. At one point, tourist money poured in to this area. Now only ruins remain of the many banks, hotels, and restaurants that made Man a target for wealthy Europeans. The main market burned down before the crisis and wasn't ever rebuilt because of the fighting. Fabulous hotels like La Cascade are now dirty shells with a haunted feel, like a broken boom town remembering it's former inhabitants. The largest building in town, a former bank, has been stripped down to the foundations. The streets that are paved are cracked and broken. Those that aren't cover everything in town with a fine, red dust whenever a car passes. Unlike the rest of Côté d'Ivoire, including the northern, rebel-held city of Bouaké, Man has no one to clean the streets or muck out the sewer drains. Trash is everywhere, the sewage just sits in open-air troughs. The UN presence, visible everywhere in Côté d'Ivoire, is especially felt in the roaming Land Cruisers that seem to outnumber taxis.

But perhaps the worst hit are Man's residents. They seem in stasis. By now, I've become used to tourists cities like Djenné and Timbuktu, where children cry for pens and any guy on the street is a potential guide. These problems exist in Man as well, but they're further exasperated by the fact that you're the only target in town. I saw no other travelers in my three days there. The tour guides and hotels are desperate for any kind of business. It's definitely a buyer's market for the intrepid types who make it up that far. My guide, who wanted to take me to many places I couldn't afford told me that before the crisis, he used to be able to combine poor travelers like me with wealthier groups for trips to outlying villages to see mask ceremonies, ritual dances, and natural wonders like Mt. Tonkoui, the country's second highest mountain. With me, we walked out the five kilometers to the cascades, flowing lively with an out-of-season rain the night before and stopped on the way back by the sacred forest, where monkeys very accustomed to Europeans seem to melt out of the forest looking for food from excited tourists.

At the end of the short tour, we sat in the shade and he gave me the long and the short of Man's troubles. At the cascades, he'd pointed out the ruined buvette, looted during the war. The gazebos and picnic areas, popular with locals for a weekend getaway are rotting away after almost five years of neglect. The tourists haven't come back. The local people haven't had a reason to reinvest in their natural wonders. La Dent de Man, the sacred mountain, which was once a popular day hike is now so overgrown that the trail has closed in on itself. Nearby Danané's vine bridge is no longer there. I was one of only a handful of tourists he'd worked with in the past year. I decided to hike La Dent de Man the next day with some local kids. It was supposed to be a four-hour hike. It turned in to six hours of the hardest hiking I think I've ever done. The trail is now nothing more than a hunting path, and not even a very clear one at that. Two kids went with me because they needed one another to find the path. Along the way, I quizzed them about the amount of business they'd had recently. It used to be there'd be dozens and dozens of hikers in the high season because of it's close proximity to town. There were fifteen total this month (I didn't ask if that included me), which would have been a slow afternoon during this time of year before the fighting broke out.

Perhaps most interesting, and horrifying, for me were the stories of local people. Man experienced three major attacks during the crisis. The rebels attacked first. The local people, unsupportive of both government and rebels, fought back somewhat, but really stood little chance. When the government counterattacked a few months later, they took all the men who understood Mandé to a field for questioning. The Mandinka were supposed to be the leaders of the rebellion. This was told to me by my tour guide, Touré, who is a Dan but knows some Mandé. He came back. Others didn't. By the time the rebels attacked the city again, all utilities had been cut. I heard from more than one person how they hid under the beds at night and tried to fall asleep to the sounds of gunfire, mortars, and rocket attack.

My time in Man was spent with a Volunteer named Martin working with the UN mission for the upcoming elections, if they ever indeed come. He and his girlfriend Sarah gave me a lot of insight into the violence and its causes. It's the same as many other conflicts in Africa: populist leaders stirring up inter-ethnic disputes both among native Ivorians but especially focused on immigrants from neighboring Burkina Faso, Mali, and Guinea. Ancient land disputes never resolved. Neighboring political issues spilling over the border. Rebel militias never demobilized. Colonial ambitions that remain in place fifty years after independence. Unscrupulous Western gun-merchants quick to cash in on conflict. The list could go on and on.

But despite all the problems, it does appear that there's hope for Man. The UN has moved out of the local hotels and there are no longer blue helmets on the ground. While I was there, I noticed a new hotel going up, and one lone bank has a small office and ATM in town. The post office has been rebuilt, and with any luck, the villagers will start to rehabilitate their "traditional" villages. Man is showing signs of life, but, as with everywhere else in Côté d'Ivoire, it's waiting tentatively for new elections to bring a stable peace to the country. Much like other popular tourists destinations, Agadez in Niger or Timbuktu in Mali, the rebellion hasn't been good for the city. But, with any luck, peace will come soon and restore hope to Man.