A night out in Abidjan

Today I got over an enormous hurdle which has been looming on my horizon for about three years. I wrote the first, and only (so far), paragraph of a short story which I have been wanting to write for some time. For a long time after I started making my living from writing articles, I still thought of myself as a writer, not a journalist: journalism was just what I did to make money. Slowly, I have forgotten about that and just enjoy what I do.

Recently, my perceived 'inability' to write has been haunting me, my fear that if I do start to write, it won't be any good, or that it will be too hard to do, or even worse, that I won't do it at all. The fear stops it from happening, and so for a year or so now I have been putting it off, telling myself that I am too tired to write at the weekends when all I do all week is write. This week away in Abidjan, I thought as I sat on the plane feeling free from all weight of Dakar and of my job, I will write, I will have all week to write. Of course, all I really wanted to do was to read, but this morning, Sunday, I sat down and I started to write. Even if no one ever reads it, I hope I will finish it. Just to let myself know that I can still do it.

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On Friday night, we went out to a bar in one of the districts of Abidjan. It had rained heavily, and it was still before midnight so things were quiet. There had also been an attack on the Prime Minister's plane in the morning, and three people had died. Many people were staying at home.

Abidjan is much more developed than Dakar in its basic infrastructure. Shanty towns still nestle in the green crook of hillsides between large, middle-classed neighbourhoods, and the slum-road that leads of kilometres out of the city towards the countryside is much the same as Dakar- mosques, little roadside stalls, bars, girls in boubous walking together along the congested road. But in Abidjan there are shopping malls with escalators, there are street lights, and there are pavements. There are even curbs, that you can not drive up, and that people don't.

But the bars still have one thing in common: pretty girls in tiny outfits vying for the attentions, however short term, of the white man.

The 'Taxi Brousse' was a lot more colourful and well-kept than the average Senegalese hooker bar, with an impressive glitter ball rotating on the ceiling spinning out not just white but red lights too. The bar, rectangular, had bar stools all around it and we three took our seats on one side and ordered our drinks. A stunningly beautiful woman in a small red miniskirt and matching top sporting a pair of intellectual-style glasses (which I am certain were not to help her see) smiled charmingly as she served us. Other girls, all dressed in similar red outfits, dittied up and down seeing to the clients. More pretty young girls sat on the other side of the bar, some getting up to dance on the empty dancefloor and inspect themselves closely in the wall mirrors as they flicked their hips to Ivorian pop music, others chattering on the elbows of the white men who began at midnight to drift in to their, no doubt, favourite joint.

The lone man, probably French military, sitting across from us on the other side of the bar, was not lone for long. A young girls in a stretchy black and white shirt, siddled up, clinked glasses with him gleefully, then within minutes was lolling her head on his shoulder with a puppy-dog vacant look on her face, which was almost charming. For once, I thought, I am not the target. Not an Ivorian man in sight.

We moved onto another bar, slightly more run-down but even more entertaining. This place had an 'orchestre', a group of young guys and an older guitarist (who was forced to play standing on the dance floor because the stage was too small to accommodate him) who played every kind of cover song you can think of: Stuck on You, a Richard Bona hit and as much Reggae, Antilles and Ivorian pop you can desire. The lead singer was wonderful, so full of energy for every single song, even though they play there four nights a week, every week, to the same clientele- hookers and the odd ageing white man.

During the band's break, there was some commotion as three young guys shuffled onto the dancefloor, took the mics and started to body pop and dance an outrageously athletic and expressive dance routine. They each wore large diamante studs in their ears, wore chains around their wrists and necks, and one had a tough hip-hop twirl of plaits which wound around his head like a pretty African village girl. The hookers went wild, jigging up to thrust money down the boys' shirts, taking the opportunity to dance a little dance on their way back to their sits. A photograph projected onto the wall beside the dancefloor showed a white girl with an 80s perm, naked from the waist up. I felt like I had stumbled into someone else's life, and felt bad for finding it thoroughly amusing.