After another afternoon of sweaty, backbreaking dancing, I was taken out for dinner at an Ivorian 'Maquis', a semi open-air restaurant in a ramshackle little street in the local neighbourhood. To one side, some rough wooden tables covered in plastic Guiness table cloths and to the other side, some grills and a table covered in skewers of beef and large fresh fish.
We chose our food, which came with friend plantain, had some beer, and listened to the upbeat Ivorian pop music spilling out of a bar behind us. The waitress was pleasant and polite, the food was fantastically fresh, good tasting and not expensive, and I now find myself looking at Dakar as if she were the ugly sister who can't quite get stuff right. And disliking, immensely, myself for it.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Monday, June 25, 2007
Dancing in Abidjan
Arriving in Abidjan by plane, you can't help but notice the vast expanse of water stretching across the city. Stepping outside of the air conditioned airport, it feels like the water is just as much in the air as it is in the lagoons and rivers of the city's landscape. Dakar is hot, but it's a heat with no respite because the rains haven't yet come so the heat never breaks. Everything is dry, yellow, sunburnt, uninspiring. This is the Africa I had got used to, especially as the African country I know best after Senegal is Mauritania, even more dry, more yellow, more sparse in its signs of life.
Abidjan, on the other hand, is like the Africa of novels, it's the tropical rains, the deep green grasses, the puddles by the side of the road, thick flowering bushes, gardens bursting with life, rains dripping through the leaves of every tree. The air is hot, but so wet that it's almost cooling, and there is no direct, burning sun. Cloud obscures everything, which in these parts, is good.
Last night my friend and I went to the shops and drove by the artists' village where Dobet Gnahore grew up. We got caught in the car on a crossroads where the traffic wasn't moving, and no one could escape from the gridlock. It was dark, much darker than I am used, and women sold sweetcorn on the pavements beside us. One by one, people got out of their cars, or clients got out of the red taxis which dot the city's traffic jams, and started to direct cars around eachother. A young boy approached a robust white four wheel drive with the black letters 'UN' stamped on its doors, with a six foot long radio arial bending across its roof, as he begged for money through the jam. An older boy stood infront of our car and slowly moved us through the traffic until we were out the other side and driving up to the commune. We gave him 100 francs, and he moved onto the next client in need of his freelance traffic wardening skills.
This afternoon I went to the village to take my first dance class. My teacher is called Rita, a young Ivorian dancer who showed me into a cupboard to get changed and then swept the water from the crumbling open-air auditorium floor. We started with the dance of central Cote d'Ivoire, performed with the chest almost parallel to the ground, bottom out, and led by the neck which juts forwards and back as the chest, back and arms follow. The founder of the village, called Were Were (pronounced Weray Weray), came to watch how we were getting along, her dreadlocks falling the her stout waist, her carved wooden walking stick in her hand. When she tried to help me coordinate my head and hands I saw a reflection of myself, so white, in the terrific glassiness of her eyes, and I realised that she looks at me as if she can see right through me. She has a smile, a constant glow in her face, which is both comforting and perturbing at the same time, as if this mother figure could cut you down with just a single glance.
We danced for two hours, the drummer sometimes stopping to answer his mobile phone, and I sweated as much liquid as I could get inside me. In the breaks I practised some Senegalese dance moves, feeling good to be in an enviroment where people experiment and pracise, rather than the Senegalese sabar parties where the girls are so intimidating that anyone short of a professional would be mad to try and join in. My body is aching, I am still hot from the exertion, but feeling good.
Abidjan, on the other hand, is like the Africa of novels, it's the tropical rains, the deep green grasses, the puddles by the side of the road, thick flowering bushes, gardens bursting with life, rains dripping through the leaves of every tree. The air is hot, but so wet that it's almost cooling, and there is no direct, burning sun. Cloud obscures everything, which in these parts, is good.
Last night my friend and I went to the shops and drove by the artists' village where Dobet Gnahore grew up. We got caught in the car on a crossroads where the traffic wasn't moving, and no one could escape from the gridlock. It was dark, much darker than I am used, and women sold sweetcorn on the pavements beside us. One by one, people got out of their cars, or clients got out of the red taxis which dot the city's traffic jams, and started to direct cars around eachother. A young boy approached a robust white four wheel drive with the black letters 'UN' stamped on its doors, with a six foot long radio arial bending across its roof, as he begged for money through the jam. An older boy stood infront of our car and slowly moved us through the traffic until we were out the other side and driving up to the commune. We gave him 100 francs, and he moved onto the next client in need of his freelance traffic wardening skills.
This afternoon I went to the village to take my first dance class. My teacher is called Rita, a young Ivorian dancer who showed me into a cupboard to get changed and then swept the water from the crumbling open-air auditorium floor. We started with the dance of central Cote d'Ivoire, performed with the chest almost parallel to the ground, bottom out, and led by the neck which juts forwards and back as the chest, back and arms follow. The founder of the village, called Were Were (pronounced Weray Weray), came to watch how we were getting along, her dreadlocks falling the her stout waist, her carved wooden walking stick in her hand. When she tried to help me coordinate my head and hands I saw a reflection of myself, so white, in the terrific glassiness of her eyes, and I realised that she looks at me as if she can see right through me. She has a smile, a constant glow in her face, which is both comforting and perturbing at the same time, as if this mother figure could cut you down with just a single glance.
We danced for two hours, the drummer sometimes stopping to answer his mobile phone, and I sweated as much liquid as I could get inside me. In the breaks I practised some Senegalese dance moves, feeling good to be in an enviroment where people experiment and pracise, rather than the Senegalese sabar parties where the girls are so intimidating that anyone short of a professional would be mad to try and join in. My body is aching, I am still hot from the exertion, but feeling good.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Patchwork Elbow
Anyone who's been to my house recently will have been quizzed on the new patchwork cloth, and what to do with it.
I've given myself patchwork elbow sewing the little squares together after a long day's work at my desk next door, but it is at last finished and now I don't know what to do with it. Originally it was going to be a pair of trousers, for a boyfriend who, happily, showed his true colours before I got onto row 2, so now it has developed in to two metres of pinks, greens, blues and the odd piece of orange scattered throughout, and it's going to be for me.
I wanted to make it into a pair of trousers for myself, but then I moved onto the idea of a dress, then someone suggested I use it to make another bedspread, a chaise longue, cushions, a ball gown, a tunic, and now I am back to the trousers. But at this rate it's not going to be anything because it's still sitting on the back of a chair being shown to anyone who comes to visit, and Omar the tailor is still waiting for me to come down and give him instructions on what to do with it.
It's been a busy few weeks, and it's suddenly got very hot. I've been spending my saturdays at Now's new shop, where his niece cooks lunch and we drink Nescafe and I amuse his clients by getting up from the broken plastic chair I sit on outside the shop to sell them one cigarette or a teaspoon of pepper. I guess they've never seen a white person spoon washing powder (bought in bulk) into little plastic bags then tied in elaborate knots and hung on a metal wire to be displayed on the back wall before. I've also been working hard, having the annual contemplation of moving to another country, but mostly just trying to do my job well, make new friends and amuse myself with music and going to the tailor to find new scraps of fabric.
I recently wrote an article about an Ivorian singer called Dobet Gnahore, who gave probably the best performance I have seen in a year at the French Cultural Centre in Dakar. She's an absolute fireball of a woman, a singer, dancer, actor, drummer, who's intimidating in her talent on stage but just the nicest sweetest and most modest woman in person. She grew up in an artists' commune in Abidjan, where she learnt every art under the sun, and as I was researching this village, it reminded me of how when I came to Africa I was going to dance, that I said to myself, even if I never find any work, at least I will be able to do what I love most: to dance. Luckily I found a lot of work, but I never did much dancing. So, I am off to Abidjan today to stay with my friend and spend the week taking dance classes in Dobet Gnahore's village.
Next post from Cote d'Ivoire, then.
I've given myself patchwork elbow sewing the little squares together after a long day's work at my desk next door, but it is at last finished and now I don't know what to do with it. Originally it was going to be a pair of trousers, for a boyfriend who, happily, showed his true colours before I got onto row 2, so now it has developed in to two metres of pinks, greens, blues and the odd piece of orange scattered throughout, and it's going to be for me.
I wanted to make it into a pair of trousers for myself, but then I moved onto the idea of a dress, then someone suggested I use it to make another bedspread, a chaise longue, cushions, a ball gown, a tunic, and now I am back to the trousers. But at this rate it's not going to be anything because it's still sitting on the back of a chair being shown to anyone who comes to visit, and Omar the tailor is still waiting for me to come down and give him instructions on what to do with it.
It's been a busy few weeks, and it's suddenly got very hot. I've been spending my saturdays at Now's new shop, where his niece cooks lunch and we drink Nescafe and I amuse his clients by getting up from the broken plastic chair I sit on outside the shop to sell them one cigarette or a teaspoon of pepper. I guess they've never seen a white person spoon washing powder (bought in bulk) into little plastic bags then tied in elaborate knots and hung on a metal wire to be displayed on the back wall before. I've also been working hard, having the annual contemplation of moving to another country, but mostly just trying to do my job well, make new friends and amuse myself with music and going to the tailor to find new scraps of fabric.
I recently wrote an article about an Ivorian singer called Dobet Gnahore, who gave probably the best performance I have seen in a year at the French Cultural Centre in Dakar. She's an absolute fireball of a woman, a singer, dancer, actor, drummer, who's intimidating in her talent on stage but just the nicest sweetest and most modest woman in person. She grew up in an artists' commune in Abidjan, where she learnt every art under the sun, and as I was researching this village, it reminded me of how when I came to Africa I was going to dance, that I said to myself, even if I never find any work, at least I will be able to do what I love most: to dance. Luckily I found a lot of work, but I never did much dancing. So, I am off to Abidjan today to stay with my friend and spend the week taking dance classes in Dobet Gnahore's village.
Next post from Cote d'Ivoire, then.
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