Two Days in Cote d'Ivoire

I'm back a few days from my quick trip to Cote d'Ivoire.  I was there for the launch of an initiative to share resources and coordinate curricula for teaching evidence-based policy evaluation across the world, ADEPT (Alliance for Data, Evaluation, and Policy Training).  It was a fun and interesting two days, with a number of things that surprised me.  (I'm not sure why I so often frame my experiences with the expectations I had going into them, but so be it.  I think it's a pretty common inclination and a good way to get a handle on some entirely new place or event or setting.). 

The first thing that surprised me was the very chill vibe of the place.  My frame of reference was India, as it and Cote d'Ivoire are probably the two countries I have visited with the lowest per capita GDPs.  On my trip to India several years ago, I found it impossible to walk down the street without drawing the attention of every shop keeper, as well as college students, children, people with cameras, panhandlers, shoe shiners, etc.  After an hour or so of this extreme attention, I needed to seek refuge back in my hotel.  It was intense and exhausting.  The contrast with Cote d'Ivoire was striking.  I walked the streets of Abidjan alone, went into shops, visited a museum, wandered aimlessly, and mostly people were friendly but uninterested.  I did have a car pull up beside me as I was walking down the street.  I had my guard up, thinking it was an aggressive cab driving trying to give me a ride.  It was, in fact, a cab driver I had had the day before, but he had just stopped to say hello and ask me how I was enjoying the city.  Shop keepers were friendly but not insistent or aggressive.  Same with the staff at the Museum of Civilizations of Cote d'Ivoire that I visited.  

Food is also an important element of travel for me, especially when I'm visiting a country for the first time and sampling a new cuisine.  The Ivoirien food was decent but sort of ... one note.  Actually, three notes:  fish, plantains, cassava.  I believe those three elements were in every meal I had there.  The cassava was, I think, grated and cooked, and it looked and tasted like quinoa.  And the plantains came in different forms, sliced and fried or made into a very gooey paste.   Normally the fish was served whole and fried, but one meal it came in a stew instead.  A spicy green chili sauce was available a couple of times, which livened things up.  And, finally, I had a delicious ginger and lime drink that was so strongly ginger that it made my throat burn.  Since Cote d'Ivoire is one of the world's leading producers of cacao, I had to try the bean-to-bar chocolate bars they had there.  I think they were not tempered, so they were very brittle and did not have the melt-in-your-mouth property that American and European chocolate normally does.  (Note:  I just checked with Anna, our resident expert on the science of chocolate.  She said that the bars are, in fact, tempered, but that they had an unusually high chocolate solids to fats ratio.  She said that in bars in the US and Europe, extra fat is often added, either in the form of milk fats or by just adding additional cocoa butter.). One sweet that I found interesting and delicious was Cacaote, carmelized cacao beans covered in (lightly) sweetened chocolate.  They are pleasantly crunchy, and they start out with a sweet taste which evolves into a nicely bitter one after a few seconds.  

Above, I mentioned a small museum in Abidjan where I spent a couple of hours one morning.  Its grand-sounding name suggested a much bigger scale to me than was the case, but it was interesting and lovely to visit.  The museum itself consisted of three small rooms with some panels providing history of Cote d'Ivoire and information about its pre-colonial divisions and tribes.  The artifacts ranged from ancient sculpture to modern drawings to weaponry to household items.  We were not allowed to photograph anything.  

Outside of the museum, there were two large courtyards housing sculptures as well as booths selling Ivoirien handicrafts, clothing, and artifacts.  There I was allowed to take photographs.  Some are below, including a large installation using old tires and concrete, a tree-stump sculpture that I loved, a sculpture with casts of hands of various famous Ivoiriens, and a booth selling interesting vintage artifacts of unknown provenance.

By the way, the photo at the beginning of the blog is from the lobby of my hotel.  The wall was adorned with these playful papier mache animal "trophies."  In the previous post, I included a photo from my hotel window overlooking an inlet across to another area of Abidjan.  I did not realize it at the time, but I was taking a photo of where we would have dinner on Monday night.  A group of us went to a lovely restaurant right across the inlet (directly across the water from my hotel).  Here is a photo of the restaurant.

I had fish, cassava, and plantains.

One missed opportunity was that we were not sufficiently organized to go see a soccer game.  Cote d'Ivoire was, by coincidence, hosting the Africa Cup of Nations, and the early rounds were being played while we were there.  If we had arrived one day earlier, we could have seen a game right near our hotel in Abidjan, which would have been great fun, I'm sure.  It was nice, however, enjoying the festive atmosphere in the country surrounding the Cup.  There were often games being broadcast in the hotel lobby, along with boisterous, enthusiastic crowds.  And the city was dressed up to welcome players and fans.  Below is a photo I took at the airport.

And, finally, here is a photo of me with some students at ENSEA, the reason for my trip in the first place.

Overall, a successful, interesting, enjoyable trip!