Postcards from Côte d’Ivoire: Entry 2

Ou sont les pieds d’Alicia cette semaine?
(Where are Alicia’s feet this week?)

Thursday, February 11, 2021

We’ve settled into our Airbnb apartment in the M’Badon district in Abidjan, a newer suburb that was a village not long ago. We are renting a newly constructed 3-story townhouse with a kitchen/living room on the first floor (called “ground” floor here) and a bedroom with en suite on the 1st and the 2nd floors.  Also, it has a small swimming pool which is an important adaptation for this Northern European Viking-by-ancestry when I’m out of my element in sub-Saharan Africa.

Alicia's feet cooling off with a late night swim in the pool at her apartment

Abidjan is growing so quickly they haven’t named the new roads yet. Now many people have smart phones and use Google maps to get around, so the streets may not get named for a while.  With no Internet in the car our first night coming from the airport, we had no Google, so instead we stopped every three blocks as we neared our district and asked for directions to the Pharmacie Bonne Fortune near our apartment - the only named landmark near here.  Well, I guess navigating the old-fashioned way works because we made it!

Alicia with sister-in-law Mariam (Sekou’s little sister) in Alicia’s modern Abidjan kitchen.

It’s the first time I’ve had an apartment with amenities like a washer/dryer, ironing board, hair dryer, oven, rice cooker and microwave while in CI. C’est ca tres chic. What wasn’t provided by our host Felicia - like a toaster because no one eats toast here - we were able to purchase at the Orca store, a relatively new household goods store full of the things Made in China we order from Amazon in the U.S. In the 10 years since I first started traveling, commerce is one of the things that has changed the most. In 2011, the only western brand chain store here were Shell gas stations, and the only U.S. food product was Coca Cola. Now there are KFC, Burger King, and Pizza Hut restaurants around the city, and air-conditioned malls with Clarks shoe stores and modern Target-type grocery chains that sell salsa and tortilla chips. Things are becoming more familiar to me here as a result.

Alicia leaving the apartment for the Carrefour- can you find the bananas in the photo?

Speaking of modern appliances, I have longed for an oven here because I’d like to prepare some baked goods for our friends and family, which would be a novelty for them because most people don’t have an oven. So, during our first shopping trip to the modern French grocery chain called Carrefour, I purchased the ingredients I needed for brownies. On Friday, before we planned to leave for a weekend trip to the village of Songon, I was preheating the oven and mixing the batter for my first test batch and realized I didn’t have baking powder. We needed to run an errand anyway, so I turned off the propane oven, put the batter in the fridge, and off we went to see if such a thing could be found here (it can be - at Carrefour). When we returned from our 2-hour errand, I immediately went to the oven to get it preheating again. I can’t say if I heard the “whoosh” first or first saw the ball of fire explode from the oven when I opened the door and hit the ignite button. Important CI life lesson #1: Close the valve on the propone bottle when you’re done using an oven here. I’m OK, but my eyelashes are little stubs and my bangs have been “layered” so to speak. I learned not to get too comfortable in my own skin here - some things that seem familiar are still VERY different. - Alicia

 Koné Consulting
CELEBRATING 10 YEARS INSPIRING CHANGE
AND LASTING IMPROVEMENTS

Follow us on our Facebook, Twitter and LinkdIn.