IVORY COAST - Abidjan (1999)

Abidjan: 13.10.1999

Whereas Gabon economy is down, Ivory Coast seems to be doing okay. Cocoa and coffee exports are up, but they say the gasoline bill is eating into it. In any case, we could see renovations and building constructions, which is always a healthy sign.

Abidjan is a bigger place than Libreville, no doubt. A lot of high-rises, wide 3-lane roads, quite clean. Many eating-places and shopping arcades. Streets are quite safe to walk in. A lot of goods come from Nigeria and Gabon into this small country. The income levels are probably higher.

We met our major customer in the morning and they took us out to lunch. Four of them taking the two of us out to lunch - an outing for them! Srikanth, poor chap, had to be (un-)happy with a dish of tomatoes and legume, with bread. He firmly refused rice with avocado and lettuce. The rest of us had lobster, chicken, fish roast and beef stew (Trying to eat lobster with knife-and-fork is quite frustrating). The fish seemed interesting, but the hosts attacked it so fast that I was left at the starting post. Anyway, there is one Indian restaurant here, I believe, which we shall patronise for dinner.

In these places, the cab charges are low enough if you go by meter, but if engaged by a tourist or business traveller like us on a "per hour" basis, the charges are quite high. We got a cab driven by a teenager (who spoke a bit of English) whose car did not even have a rear glass! There was sheet of semi-transparent polythene fixed with masking tape all around. He charged us cfa 5000 (apprx $10) per hour.

As we travelled along the west coast of Africa, we found the facial features of African natives become much more "regular", especially in these French colonies of Gabon and Ivory Coast. The hair is still crinkly, but the lower part of the face is less ape-like (pardon the expression). There are a lot of Nigerians around, of course, but they are not very good-looking. In both Gabon and Ivory Coast, signs of mixed blood are quite evident.

We located the Indian restaurant and dined there. After sitting for a few minutes, I suddenly realised that the song playing was in Bengali !! I called the owner and asked him: "Who has bought this cassette?". He replied, rather diffidently: "I did - you do not like the music?" It turned out he was a Bengali from Jadavpur, Calcutta!! Been here for about 7 years. There are around 150 Indian families in Abidjan, 5 of which are Bengalis. "Not enough for Durga puja," he said. "But we Saraswati puja and Lakshmi puja at Mr Sengupta's house."

It's a small world.



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GABON - Libreville (1999)

Libreville: 10.10.1999

We landed in Libreville on 9.10.99 around 7.30 pm. The flight was late, so the Meridien car was not there. We took a taxi. The Meridien was a relief after the Federal Palace in Lagos. Luckily there was a receptionist who spoke a little English. Otherwise, this place is quite quite French.There seems to be a sizable French population living here and lot of French people come here to spend a holiday.

It was a Saturday evening and we had gone to the hotel restaurant Olambo for dinner. The lady usher welcomed us, surveyed us and thought it fit to warn us: "It's all pork!". My colleague Srikanth is pure veg, so he faintly said: "No problem." . I also said, not so faintly: "NO PROBLEM!". If Federal Palace had been African, the cooking here was pure French. What a spread - from sausages (thin and fat) to ham to bacon to ribs to the standard salami stuff. There was a bit of cabbage which I took by mistake (rather stinky). I really freaked out on the non-veg. Srikanth had to stick to some salads.

There was a French band playing an accordion, sax and trombone in traditional shorts. There was a lot of dancing and people were shaking mugs of beer at the tables and shouting request numbers. There was REVELRY going on - it was as if it was a hep French town. We were, of course, as much out of place as a couple of Chinese in Muscat, but it was fun.

Today is a Sunday. We took a cab and asked him to show us around the town. He was quite non-plussed as to what to show and started off with: "This is the Tati building, this is a big grocery shop .....". We told him to move on to higher things, so he showed us the Radio Station, the Army Barracks, the President's house and so on. After an hour of this, he ran out of steam and started showing us roads. Before he got to petrol pumps, we cut our touring short and went back.

What is Libreville like? In short, it is like an overgrown Pondicherry! A clean sea-side city, with small streets, small old buildings, one or two market places. Very quiet and laid-back. It is as if they would have preferred to have remained a French tourist spot, had someone not to them to buck up and become a capital city!. Then they were forced to put a few high-rise buildings (not too high), a few embassies and airline offices and a couple of supermarkets at the ends of modest blind alleys.

For lunch we had gone looking for the only Indian restaurant in town, but they were closed for Sunday lunch. The Indian couple running it offered to make something for us but we declined. Apparently there are only three Indian families living in Libreville. The other two families eat here, I suppose.

So I had a French lunch again. Rice, chicken, pork chops, another unidentifiable meat. Followed by the most delicious black forest cake! We were trying to get some yogurt for Srikanth, which I'd found on the breakfast buffet. Very difficult to communicate - "Cup, white-white inside, milk product". The fellow brought a cup of milk. Srikanth went up to his room to order through room service using his French book.


Although all native residents here speak French, the white Frenchmen living here do still look down upon them a bit - the kaala aadmi mentality. There are a lot of Nigerians here, especially in trade and business.

Libreville: 12.10.1999

On 11/10, we finished our total work practically in half a day, the place is so small. We paid a visit to the Artisan Village here, which is very much inside the city, and I picked up a head made of sandstone.Our driver had said: "Leave the negotiating to me!", which meant he wanted us to buy at as high a price as possible and then take his cut. We negotiated by ourselves, but still must have got gypped.

On 12/10, we left Libreville for Abidjan, Ivory Coast. On the last day, we got into officialdom-related problems twice. We had kept our passports in safe custody in the hotel. But on a random road-check, the police refused to believe us. We had to fork out cfa 5000 (around $10) to keep him happy. The second instance was much more costly. While leaving Libreville, the immigration officer took us for body search. Seeing so many $100 notes, he could not resist putting one in his pocket coolly, saying: "OK friend?". Remonstration was of no avail - in very bad English he said there is no proof that I have brought them into the country. I had not expected a body search. For Abidjan, we'll have to think up good hiding places.

We reached Hotel Sofitel in Abidjan around 11.00 pm local time, which is 1 hour behind Libreville.

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NIGERIA - Lagos (1999)

Lagos: 6.10.1999

The country: 
Our impressions of the country were majorly based on what people told us. The new civilian president had been in office for 7-8 months and was apparently a sincere man. The Nigerians were very bullish about him. They say : "Things are better!". Power is available now 3-4 hours a day instead of half-an-hour. The price of petrol has gone up from 11 cents to 20 cents per litre but nobody minds. "In 3-4 years' time we will live like white men."

Nigeria is actually a very rich country with plenty of oil, power generation (they give power to other countries), mineral deposits etc. They could have been rich like the Gulf countries but was always mismanaged. Terrific corruption - second-highest in the world after Indonesia! The previous president had salted away billions of dollars. There are many people in Nigeria who can 'buy' the country several times over. Indians living in Nigeria for a long time say that nothing will change because of single president's good intentions.

Lagos: 7.10.1999

The city:
Although the administrative capital is Abuja (around 700 km from Lagos), Lagos is the business centre. It is a major port and a vast city, including two islands - Lagos Island and Victoria Island - connected by bridges around 10 km long. Most of the big offices are located in V.I. and it is the most prosperous area in Lagos. We were staying in Hotel Federal Palace in V.I.

The government had spent a lot of money in trying to make Lagos a modern city. There are flyovers and multi-lane highways. And there are areas in between that are terribly congested and traffic crawls along.("go-slow", according to them). It is as if after some initial enthusiasm, the government has stopped bothering. The roads are now full of pot-holes, open drains abound, there is not much concern for clean living. I suddenly had a vision that this might be Calcutta after 10 years - a combination of fly-overs and go-slows - with the city as dirty as ever. Definitely, the traffic and manner of driving is quite Calcuttan.

Our rooms in Federal Palace overlooked the port. The hotel, although a 5-star, was a bit run down, and more African than international, especially with regard to food. My companion was anyway vegetarian, but all the meat dishes had such a peculiar smell that I could not eat any of them. Maybe they used olive oil. There were three Indian restaurants we knew of so some of our meals were quite decent.


Speaking of the hotel, the only thing I enjoyed there was live music in the restaurants. The girls singing had really good voices. One chap, who was belting out Harry Bellafonte numbers, on seeing us, suddenly broke out with: "Phoolon ka taaron...." from Hare Krishna Hare Rama.

Lagos: 8.10.1999

The people:
Nigerians are generally a friendly people. Their favourite phrase is : "You're welkom!" Nigeria was a British colony and practically everybody speaks English, often very good English.

There is a lot of poverty in Lagos, as in most of Nigeria. Like most poor countries, they have very rich people and very poor people. Only in the last 10 years, some moderately rich people are also emerging. However, we did not see much begging in Lagos. A lot of young men sell knick-knacks standing on the road in between cars - from biscuits to telephones! They say you can do a full shopping in a go-slow.

Till a year ago, the law-and-order situation in Lagos was quite bad. Nobody dared to own a new car, for fear it will be taken away. Even now, almost all cars on the road vary from old to decrepit. Armed robberies were quite common. We could still see a lot of shops with iron grills. Companies would give their executives around $1000 to keep in their house for giving the robbers. But a few months ago, the military police started strong security checks. The general 'janata' cracked down even stronger and started burning the robbers if caught; now the situation is better. V.I. is supposed to be the safest locality.

There are a number of Indian families living here. Either they are doing business, or they are executives in companies. But life for them seems quite restricted. You cannot walk around doing shopping - partly because it is dangerous, but also because the range of shops isn't much. No shopping locality like Ruwi, nor arcades like CCC. No places to go to on outings as such. In one of the Indian restaurants, we saw a sort of office family group of Brits as well as Indians celebrating some body's birthday. They all seemed like a huddled, defensive group trying to be boisterous.


We were talking to one of the restaurant-owners, an Indian from Gujarat, Mr Pandeya. He'd worked in Tanzania earlier and then came and settled here 10 years ago, purchasing this restaurant. Walk-in customers were few; he mostly survives on outdoor catering. One of his imminent projects was Navratri catering. Navratri is celebrated in a field here with food stalls and catering, with quite a lot of pomp, he said. He invited us, but we were leaving anyway. There is a temple in Lagos.

Lagos: 9.10.1999

Travel incidents:
1) On 4/10, we had travelled to Dubai, reaching the airport around 10 pm. Our flight was at 5.45 am next morning. We came out to sleep at Hotel Phoenicia courtesy Ethiopian Airlines. We could go to bed by 12.00 but were woken up and pushed out at 2.30 am saying that the airlines are asking for us. Not worth the checking in.

2) We travelled from Dubai to Addis Ababa and had a gap of 3 hours till our next flight to Lagos. I was in a mood to complete my morning rituals and repaired to the toilet, which was crowded as if it was the first show of "Blame It on Rio" in Muscat. It was almost like a guessing game, as to which door will open next! And there was this old Ethiopian attendant standing with a roll of toilet paper which he will roll out like displaying a reel of the finest silk cloth and tear it off with a deep bow!

3) On the flight from Addis to Lagos, they were showing a movie called: "Deep End of the Ocean", starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Treat Williams. Very nice senti movie. My neighbour was a huge Nigerian and both of us were sniffling away to glory.

4) In Lagos, we had invited one of our customers to dinner. He landed up at the hotel, accompanied by a lady, who I assumed was his wife. During dinner, I asked him: "So Iyk, how many children do you have?" He choked over his beer and his companion gave him a thoughtful look. He finally recovered smartly and said: "None yet - what about you?". I said I had two and he should not delay. They were a joy to watch. Later on I learnt he was yet to marry.

5) On 9/10 we were travelling to Libreville (Gabon) via Douala (Cameroon). On the first leg of the journey, we had a young small Nigerian in the window-seat, followed by Srikanth (my colleague) and then myself on the aisle seat. That chap polished off his own food, put two extra buns in the bag ("for me brother") and asked Srikanth what was it he was not having. Srikanth was not well and gave him all his things. The Nigerial was upset with Srikanth since he had not taken repeat helpings! To quieten him, I gave him some of mine, which he put in his bag ("for me brother").

6) Nigerian businessmen, however small the business, are always "Chairman" or "MD", and rightly so. A small fellow with a tiny shop would hand over a card saying: "Chairman/ CEO" - take your pick. One of them, who was a President, kept on addressing me as "Chairman" and was offended when I laughed. They take these things seriously.

7) At Douala, the transit point between Lagos and Libreville, the language turned French. The police kept our passports and told us, with a lot of pantomime, to get boarding cards for him to stamp (banging fist on hand) from Air Gabon (whoosh! flight taking off). We were wandering around looking for Air Gabon when an English-speaking "friend" attached himself to us, kept on giving us various useful tips about surviving the next two hours and finally asked for some help for "his friend". We gave him a dollar and he was terribly unhappy.

8) We had a funny mix-up after we had arrived at Lagos in the night. I got a call just after checking into the hotel: "Hello Mr. Ray! Welcome to Lagos." He was a Mr. Tato and he said his boys will be coming after half-an-hour to collect me for dinner. "My wife has cooked many many African dishes for you." I thought he was a customer I didn't know of and told Srikanth. He was also mystified. We called back the mobile number but there was no proper response. It was intriguing who could know about my arrival. We anyway went down for dinner at 9.30 pm, telling reception where we were. At 10.30 pm, when we were back in our rooms, I got a call again: "Mr. Ray! I come to hotel and go to restaurant but you are not there." It emerged he was looking for a different Mr. Ray in the same hotel. By then all his wife's cooking had gone to waste!

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