Reflections

It's been about one week since I left Sierra Leone. More than any other country so far, I've gotta say, that place has everything. It's the only country I've been to that combines jungle, beaches, mountains, and savannah in equally beautiful measures. Hell, even the mountains combine jungle and savannah, and Freetown Peninsula has lush green hills for hiking if you want to escape from the beach for a while. The country's a tourist gold mine just waiting for people to come back and discover it. Sierra Leone is safe now. The war is over. Valentine Strasser spends most of his time in the Stop Press cafe, sitting in a corner by himself, remembering his former glory as the youngest world leader of his generation. (Look him up; it's good for you.)

However, even with all that the country has to offer, I ended three weeks with the uncontrollable urge to get out. Why? Chalk it up to some pretty minor setbacks worsened by an existential mid-trip crisis. I tried to hike Mount Bintumani, one of West Africa's highest mountains, and failed for reasons so stupid I won't bother to mention them here. Nevertheless, the failure was palpable, and I've now sworn to return to Sierra Leone some day and rectify my mistake. Vengeance will be mine (channeling Skeletor there).

Failure's always a bit of a bitch, but it has the uncanny ability to teach you things about yourself. For me, the failure of Bintumani was aggravated by an inability to cross into Guinea. For three days I tried to arrange something, but all my attempts kept falling through from Kabala, Sierra Leone to Faranah, Guinea. Eventually, I went back to Kamakwie, where I'd met some awesome French NGO workers who put me up for the night and sent me on my way the next morning. But I couldn't shake this sense of defeat. That is, until I got to Guinea, found a night bush taxi (which I ordinarily avoid like the speed-freak death-traps they are), which raced through the darkness from Kindia to Mamou at about 100 km/hr on the roller coaster roads of the Fouta Djalon. Sometimes you just need to run, and this was one of those times. It didn't hurt that I had Rage Against the Machine blasting in my ears, steadily by my side the whole way.

But back to this malaisem, this existential crisis. What caused it? I think I have to blame the amount of amazing people I met in Sierra Leone and Liberia. That sounds absurd, but hear me out. After 12 weeks on the road, and more than two years in Africa, I felt like I'd lost all sense of self. I have not been home since I left Indiana on January 7, 2008. In my time in Niger, I had no neighbors, which allowed me to really claim my village and my region as my own. However, I left that on September 7, 2009 and only had one week back to say goodbye. That was a pretty traumatic experience already well documented on this blog, so I'll save you any further trauma reliving it.

In Burkina and Mali, where there's a strong Peace Corps presence, I couldn't feel this loss as acutely as I did later, specifically in the last few weeks. In Liberia, I began to meet and spend long periods of time with new and interesting people. NGO workers, ex-pats, Peace Corps Response Volunteers. After being solitary for so long (throughout most of Côté d'Ivoire), it was nice to be able to share stories and build new relationships. However, the life of a traveler is transitory, and after a few days, I move on, unsure if I will ever see this or that person ever again. Of course, you exchange email addresses and hopes, but the reality is you never know.

So it was with Liberia, so it was with Sierra Leone, so it will be with everywhere I go. I met some awesome people, but slowly, they had to leave, and I had to move on. I think all of this meeting and parting came to a head my final week in Sierra Leone, when fatigue and several setbacks all seemed to jump me at once. I realized that I've been away from home a very long time. I haven't seen anyone from my past life in America in over two years. That was alright as long as I could build a new life in Niger, find new supports. However, I left that behind over three months ago, and now, now I'm doubly removed from any kind of past life. It's difficult to determine where you are without anyone who knows you. And when all your new relationships have to, by nature, end, it's difficult to find continuity.

Sometimes though, all you need is a light heart and some Rage (Against the Machine). I threw off my doubts and my losses with the realization that I'm doing something amazing. That's not to boast or appear proud. I'm just continually confronted by new cultures, new landscapes, awesome people, and challenging situations. And I realized I was complaining about that! It's difficult to continually meet and leave people and places that you're falling in love with, but we always carry these experiences with us, and if we leave parts of ourselves with others, it only means we have more reason to carry us back.

I don't really know the point of this blog. Only that it needed to be written to demonstrate that it's not all candy and rainbows on the road in West Africa. I've been very lucky so far (Ivory Coast excluded), and running through the cool, Guinean night with the Bulls on Parade, I realized how amazing life is, and how much living there is left to do.

Rockin' those Freetown Streets

This entry will have almost nothing to do with Freetown, but I liked the title. Deal with it. While I haven't been rockin' the city, I have had an amazing time traveling around provincial Sierra Leone and visiting the variety of landscapes it offers.

I started down south near Sulima, on the coast, about as Liberian a city as you can get in Sierra Leone. It's one of those places I went to because it was out of the way, only to discover that there was very little I could actually do there. I wanted to sleep on the beach and just enjoy the ocean. The village chief didn't have any problems with it. Neither did the police or a village council. However, once the Navy got involved, my plans were quickly derailed. I ended up hanging out with Staff Sergeant Davis for the night and left early the next morning. No worries, for those who fear my current legal status after Côté d'Ivoire, they just told me it was too dangerous to sleep on the beach, and I ended up just hanging out with the Navy guys, listening to stories about the war. Not exactly a cheery subject, but of all the ways to understand a country, war stories are the some of the most interesting in a country like Sierra Leone.

The next morning, I jetted out of Sulima on a motorbike early enough to get the first bush taxi to Poturu, the jumping off point for Tiwai Island. Tiwai Island is a 12 square kilometer island in the middle of the Moa River, which flows through the Gola National Wildlife Reserve. The area is some of the most pristine in the Lower Guinea Rainforest, which stretches through Sierra Leone, Liberia, Côté d'Ivoire, and Ghana. Here, however, is one of the densest concentrations of primates in the entire region, eleven different species including the endangered diana monkey and red colobus. The island also hosts the very rare pygmy hippo, of which there are less than 2000 left in the wild. However, they're very shy, so our chances of seeing them were slim. But then we did! Ha, nope, they were just rocks. They didn't even look all that much like hippos.

I spent a bit more time than I'd originally planned in Tiwai in part because the jungle is just so beautiful: towering cotton trees with buttress roots you literally have to climb over, the gentle night noises which lull you to sleep, and some great swimming in the river (if the oyster shells imbedded in the rock don't tear you to shreds). But I also met some other white people! This was a real shock, as I hadn't really seen all that many who were traveling since I was in Mali, over a month ago. I stayed an extra night to hang out with my new friends and before I knew it I was pulled along for the beaches on Freetown Peninsula.

Now, if you've been a longtime reader (and why would you be, this is a pretty shoddy operation I'm running here), you may remember me gushing about the beaches of Busua/Dixcove. The best beaches I'd ever been to. Well no more. I've found a beach which knocks any Ghanaian beach out of the water. Freetown Peninsula has 40km of pristine beaches. Pristine mostly because of a war, but who's keeping score there? The beaches stretch the entire length of the peninsula, which is itself dominated by a mountainous green landscape. Because there are so few tourists in Sierra Leone (the war's over, I swear!), it's easy to have a beach entirely to yourself, which is exactly what we had at Bureh Beach. I could go on and on describing this paradise to those of you who are suffering in winter right now, but I'll break it down like this: fine ochre sand backed by green mountains, falling into a beautiful turquoise sea. Maroon Island, which is just a tiny little thing, is a fifteen minute swim from shore and seems to perfectly complete the image of an island paradise as an aesthetic point to the curve of the bay.

Did I mention that the only food you can get on the beaches is lobster and barracuda? Often I've faced the dilemma: Do I really want to have sweet, succulent lobster for the third time in two days? Wait, being from Indiana, I've never faced that dilemma. But I had no problem answering with an ecstatic YES.

See, now the problem with this description is that I keep wanting to say, "But the best thing was..." as if there is any one thing that could be described as "the best" in Paradise. Like there's one thing better than all the rest. However, my favorite thing I feel as if I have to describe in detail here. At night, after the moon had set, which was around midnight this night, if you braved the cold air and swam out past the breakers, you were rewarded not only by the warm water but by thousands of tiny lights which sparked with every movement you made. The scientific explanation came from one of my fellow travelers, Dave. The spot is a breeding ground for a specific species of zooplankton, which lights up as a defense mechanism when it senses another body in the water. Whatever. The explanation is fascinating, but only secondary to the wonder of thousands of tiny blue-green lights, like the stars reflected in the ocean, swarming over your entire body. Whenever we thrashed, it sparked a reaction among the plankon like a pale green aura that encompassed you like a sea spirit. As we marveled at the sight, one of the guys shouted over the roar of the surf, "I'm 30, and I feel like a kid! This is amazing!" It really was, like nothing I'd ever seen before. Exhausted after 30 minutes of swimming and trying to take in this unique experience, we returned to the shore and curled up on blankets around the fire, only a thin layer of cloth between us and the sand, nothing between us and the stars.

I'll leave it at that. My love song for Sierra Leone beaches. Tomorrow I head up to Outamba-Kilimi National Park, hopefully for some close encounters with the animal kind: hippos, elephants, leopards, etc. Don't know what we'll find, but I'll definitely write more soon.

Definitions

I'm a week deep in Sierra Leone, so this should probably be the last post I make about Liberia. I can't help that the country has a bit of a hold on me, and eventhough I am loving Sierra Leone, I have to give a farewell entry to Liberia after nearly two weeks away from the Internet.

Liberia made its impression on me in a number of ways. It's essentially a land defined by destruction. Liberians are rebuilding everywhere, so you could say it's also a place defined by reconstruction, but this would hide the signs of the war, which are apparent everywhere. There are a few new cement houses, but the majority of people in Tubmanburg and Robertsport, towns very close to Monrovia, are still living in shacks pieced together from corrugated zinc, rusting desert tracks, and palm leaf. Many are without even that and just squat in ruined, pre-war skeleton houses. The wrecks without squatters are overrun with vegetation, as the jungle slowly retakes what it lost when civilization conquered nature.

In some of these places, the land has grown up too thick for much exploration, all but obscuring concrete walls and twisted rebar. Other places, however, for one reason or another, haven't been overtaken, and they stand out as beautiful broken shells, ghosts of a fabled past. I've explored a variety of these, mostly small churches and one-story houses, but perhaps one of the best I've found is in Robertsport: St. Bethany's School for Girls, the jewel of ruined beauty in provincial Liberia.

The school is a massive boarding house set on a steep hill overlooking all of Robertsport and Lake Piso. For those of you who are curious, Robertsport was once a gem of West African beach getaways, boasting some of the best surfing and the most pristine beaches in the area. I was awestruck by the school when I saw it from the town's mayor's office and knew I had to explore. The staircase up the hill is cracked and parts of it are missing completely. I had to scramble over the broken masonry to get up to the main building, only to realize the grand hall's floorboards were pulled up long ago, leaving only the supporting beams. These were still solid enough to provide access to the rest of the classrooms, cafeteria, and dorm rooms however. I spent a good hour up there photographing the building and longing for a camera with a better lens and more shooting options, but as it was, my time spent in this ruin really brought home how much Liberia (or at least the Americo-Liberians) had before civil war tore the country apart.

The people of Liberia are in large part defined by this war, and how could they not be when they're still surrounded by its aftermath? Many people's lives were completely disrupted for years at a time as they moved from place to place without a home, escaping the destruction. I think of my own life: twenty-three years living in a developed country where the worst violence I ever experienced was the occasional beating in junior high (it's a hard life when your mother's a teacher). How would I have survived rebel incursions which started when I was six years old and lasted until I was twenty? All those years, I was at school in Carroll County, Indiana. One school, one home, and the occasional spring break trip to Georgia. What would I have had after fourteen years knowing nothing other than violence and fear?

The short answer is that I would have had nothing. No education, no health care, certainly very little food and even less by the way of a normal life. But if living and working in Niger for two years has taught me anything, it's how remarkably resilient people are. This isn't to say that there's nothing wrong with being exposed to the occasional horror like that of Liberia's civil war. No one should have to experience something like that. But we do have to admire and respect those who have come through such an evil time and not let it destroy their future. Because above all, Liberians seem to be defined by their resiliency and their hope/faith in the face of the great challenges they've been through.

This hope is, in the end, what defines Liberia for me. There are probably some who live or work there who may disagree, but this is what I've taken away from that country. I guess if you can survive something so terrible, you can survive nearly anything. Entire communities were uprooted and tossed like chaff to the wind, displaced by violence and a fight that wasn't theirs. They ended up as refugees in Sierra Leone, Guinea, Ivory Coast, even as far as Ghana and the United States. Slowly, they've made their way back and are looking for those places torn from them by war.

On my last night in Liberia, in Robertsport, I met one of these amazing young people who will be one of the standard bearers for the future. I wish I could remember her name, because I was so taken by her drive and determination. She was one of those who at 17 has already done more and been through more than I may ever do. At 25, I felt a bit like I'd wasted most of my life. She was taken out of a refugee camp in Ghana at the age of four, and now, at 17, she seems to have all the resources and the will to do great things. She wants to be a fashion designer, to start the first teen magazine for girls in Liberia as a way to promote women's empowerment. Most young girls don't have access to any kind of magazine meant specifically for them. One may ask, "How does this help a young girl who may worry about ten thousand other issues the average Liberian confronts everyday?" Well, I think that anything that can lift up a young girl and make her feel pride in her people and herself can't be all bad. It sounds like an interesting project, one among many ideas this girl wants to put into practice. She, and others like her, are the future of Liberia, of Africa, and, quite possibly, of the world.

Addition: The Internet, is quite possibly, good for everything. The girl's name is Lovetta, and you can find out more about her here:

http://www.strongheartfellowship.org/akawelle/Designer.php

http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/wayoflife/12/22/o.gifts.that.give.back/index.html

Invest West Africa

I've been in Monrovia, Liberia for about a week now, and I've done almost nothing. Oh true, I did spend four days milling about the Sierra Leone embassy trying to get a visa (it's amazing how quickly they'll process the paperwork after you fall asleep on the consul's couch waiting for a freakin' signature) and wrestling with ATMs (when only one bank controls all the cash machines in the city, the inefficiencies of West Africa become very apparent). I probably walked five miles a day trying to find a working machine while on a treasure hunt for the legendary Leonean visa.

Basically, Monrovia has been one big pit stop after eight weeks on the road. Now most would stop here and say, "Really Sterling? You chose a city that less than a decade ago was only somewhat controlled by Charles Taylor and a cavalcade of competing warlords?" Well, it's true. Monrovia has seen better days. At one point in time, Liberia was one of Africa's brightest stars. It was stable, with a strong, commodities-based economy, and an educated elite. However, that educated elite, almost all descended from American slaves repatriated to Africa, controlled all facets of life in the country. The great majority of indigenous people lived in grinding poverty. However, that all changed when one plucky young army officer named Samuel Doe decided to speak up for indigenous rights...by slaughtering most of the landed elites in government and installing himself as President. Gotta love the underdog.

The only problem with getting rid of everyone who knows how to run a country is...well...there's no one left to run the country! Doe tried to steer the ship of state for a while, not too effectively, and, before long, the country descended into a brutal 14-year civil war. Talk about landing on the rocks. And thus, Liberia became known to the rest of the world as "that jungle place in Africa where they're all killing eachother." Congo? "No, not that one." Angola? "No..." Libya? "Ya, something like that."

But the civil war ended over five years ago. Charles Taylor is being tried for war crimes in the Hague. One of the largest UN contingents ever deployed still has boots on the ground; the country's safe, secure, full of happy smiling people! Actually, dark humor aside, Liberia is probably one of the most refreshing countries I've visited in West Africa. Sure, Monrovia is in ruins, but they're rebuilding. There's a massive UN presence all throughout the country. There are more Bangladeshis and Nigerians here than in some parts of Nigeria and Bangladesh (especially in the unpopulated parts of those countries). Every car on the street seems to be driven by an aid or development organization. The major influx of capital in the form of volunteers, development workers, drivers, cars, and money has pushed prices sky-high for foreigners, as most of the secure hotels and restaurants cater exclusively to outsiders and wealthy Liberians. Americo-Liberians who fled during the conflict, however, are returning and bringing a lot of their own wealth back with them.

One can only hope that with the influx of services catering to a wealthier clientele (you wouldn't think development and UN personnel would rank among the wealthiest people in a country would you? Try coming to Africa sometime) that basic services will return to average Liberians. The money doesn't look like it stands much chance of trickling down, but promising signs can be seen in new roads and renovations to buildings that are nothing more than a burnt out shell after 14 years of fighting.

Walking through Monrovia, it's impossible not to notice these hulking monstrosities all over the city: collapsed cement housing, broken high-rises, and once elegant, beach-side homes torn by bullet-holes and neglect. The most impressive of these former glories is the old Ducor Hotel. At it's height in the 70s, it was a five-star hotel, catering to dignitaries both famous and infamous, including Sekou Toure and Idi Amin. From it's perch on Mamba Point, it overlooks the Atlantic on three sides with a view encompassing all of Monrovia on the fourth. It was, in its hey-day, the shining achievement of unadulterated excess and one of Africa's best hotels. But then the war came. So it goes. When it ended and the new owners (a Libyan conglomerate which has bought up and renovated some of the best hotels in West Africa) cleared the building, they threw out over 350 families who were squatting in the ravaged wreck. I don't know where those families went, but it's most likely they took up residence in some other abandoned building in Monrovia (there are plenty to choose from) or moved down into the slums along the beach. As opposed to the rest of the world, beach front property in Monrovia is a poor man's domain. The wealthy tend to stay at home behind their ten foot-high concrete walls and concertina wire.

One would think that the poverty, inequalities, and wreckage would overwhelm the population, but I've found Liberians to be the most hopeful people I've yet encountered in West Africa. They elected Africa's first woman president four years ago, and most still stand behind her. The legacy of corruption and graft in the country is hard to overcome, but she's trying. The refrain among all the people I've met is that they were just tired of fighting. After 14 years, there were many who knew nothing other than violence. They just wanted it to end. Even now, with all the problems, the average Liberian seems reticent to complain, the ghosts of the past still too near. As a result, they're remarkably hopeful. Whereas many in Niger didn't have much faith in the democratic process, here they're looking to America and putting their faith in the ability to overcome their own history.

One of the other remarks I've heard again and again is that I'm the only independent traveler anyone has met in Liberia. Everyone asks what my "mission" here is. Am I a Volunteer? Aid worker? Development professional? UN worker? Liberians and expats, the Lebanese community and every other white person I've met: all are amazed that I decided to come here and see this country. Why do you travel? To see new places, meet new people, and then take back those experiences to the US. And then, when you get back, you'll write a book about our country. Well maybe, but that's too far in the future to tell. For right now, I'm just keeping a blog.

And then the most important, most vital thought I've heard from more than one Liberian on more than one occasion: And you'll be able to tell people that they should come back to Liberia. That we need them. We're a safe country now. We're stable. We're trying to recover and we need people to visit. We need people to see us as more than a war, as more than refugees and amputees. We need people to see us as human again.

I only hope this helps.

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.

Parisian Life in Abidjan

Near arrests aside, Côté d'Ivoire has been a pretty crazy experience after traveling through the Sahel region for six weeks. Even more so than Benin, Togo, and Ghana, which if you've been following this blog for a while (and if you have, barka!), Côté d'Ivoire seems to be the promised land. Any kind of fruit you want, you can find it here, being sold on the street by crinkly old Ivorian ladies. The streets are paved and generally goat-free. And then there's Abidjan. If I thought Yamoussoukro was a beacon of development, I can only say that Abidjan put it to shame.

I originally had very little desire to visit Côté d'Ivoire. The country went through a political crisis only a few years ago and seems on the verge of another if elections don't work out. The northern half of the country was reportedly off-limits and, like Niger, the north is where all the cool stuff seemed to be. But I was drawn to the country by Ms. Emilie Ross, the Volunteer who opened Tanka Lokoto, my village in Niger. I'd heard so much about her from my villagers that I felt I knew before I even met her. She's working in Abidjan for the moment, so it seemed pretty convenient to rendre a visit to see her and trade stories.

I wasn't ready for Abidjan. I can just say that outright. As I pulled into the Adjamé district, I thought it looked like every other capital city I'd been to in West Africa. That's because in Adjamé you can feel the crush of every other part of West Africa surging around you. It's where most of the immigrants live. People packed shoulder to shoulder, pressing through thronging masses swirling through the streets among animals, street vendors, and motos. The guy that picked me up, Charles, said that there were no Ivorians living in Adjamé. I don't know about that, but Adjamé is kind of unique in Abidjan, a little piece of Niamey, Bamako, or Ouagadougou thrown into the middle of a developed, cosmopolitan city.

After traveling throughout the Sahel, you can't help but be wowed by Abidjan. Coming across the lagoon, you get a look at Plateau, the business district, and you'd be forgiven if you thought you'd jumped through time and space to arrive in Miami in the late 70s. It seems seconds away from taking off and becoming a major player in the region. But then you realize that it already is a major player and has been for decades. Abidjan's high rises are unlike anything I've seen in the rest of Africa. The amount of money here from the port, the cocoa, the palm oil, lumber, rubber, etc probably surpasses all of Niger's GDP. This is definitely a city that, if I had the money, I could spend some time in. So many restaurants, hotels, clubs, shops. It's been called the Paris of West Africa, and I think this is appropriate. There's little African about large sections of the city. I felt my traveling wear and tear seeing men in tailored suits and women in nice Western-style outfits, hair in weaves or under stylish wigs, and "designer" handbags (most in West Africa are fake, but I'm sure there are plenty here that are real). Class is defined by whether you wear pagne fabric in the African style or if you ape Western culture and dress. I will be the first to admit that I looked lower class, but how else could I look after six weeks on the road?

But I didn't come to Abidjan to feel bad about my rugged, weathered exterior. I came to trade Tanka stories and that's what I did. Besides, my budget didn't work for a city like Abidjan. The cheapest, seediest hotels were outside my price range, and luckily I had a place to stay. Emilie was very open and friendly, but what struck me most about our time together was how unique our experiences were. Despite living in the same village for two years, we had different friends, different work, different lives. We served only a year apart from one another, but in that year, kids grew older, families moved in or out, children were born, older people died. My favorite kid in village, my little attakurmizo, was born while she served. His older brother Zedu was his carbon copy for her service. Children that she saw all the time weren't around much because they are now in school. And, of course, the biggest difference in predominately-Muslim Niger is our gender. Emilie spent most of her time with the women. I spent hardly any time with the women as it's just not done, and whereas a Western woman can break into men's circles, it's very very difficult for a man to do the same with women. If for no other reason than because they are always working. But despite our different experiences, we did have a mini-reunion with a villager who now lives in Côté d'Ivoire, bringing the experience full circle and reminding both of us of how great an impact Peace Corps has had on our lives.