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.