Like all worthwhile journeys, the voyage to EDEC (ecole de danse et de l'exchange cultural) can be dividied into several distinct parts. I have al. ways travelled this way, mentally dividing the legs of my journey into separate stages, each one qualifying as a bona fide journey of its own.
What are the qualifications of a good journey? While this is a topic that could easily derail my entire post- I've narrowed it down to two for the moment.
Closeness. Usually this is obtained by walking but slow moving traffic or a bicycle could also do the trick. I am a lifelong believer in the idea that you never really get to know a place unless you have walked it, however.
Attention to detail. This usually means being alone, only because once we become part of a traveling pair, we generally tend to focus on the other and not the surroundings. I mean this in the event of taking a routine path (it's a lot easier to be part of a pair and awed by the Great Wall of China on your first visit than it is to be part of a pair and notice something new on a walk to the store you have made a million times. You tend to get more lost in the conversation with your partner than the street sights that have become a lifeless wallpaper.)
I enjoy the journey to my dance and drum classes almost as much as the classes themselves. In fact, as I have been considering searching for a new school or changing classes, a part of my mind that resists brings up the trip. "But then you won't get to go this way anymore...." it says with a kind of finality that closes the question for now.
Leg 1
The first leg stretches from my house to the 'big road' where I will take my first taxi to 9 kilo, where I will leave Riviera III in the direction of Palermaie. I travel this part of the trip several times a day, every day, as it is the only way to get somewhere from my house. There are small variations that could be made- a few forks in the road where one can decide if they want to 'go low or go high,' but in general it is routine. I say hello to the same people, occasionally run into a neighbor I haven't seen for awhile but mostly pass the same houses and wonder about the same strangers.
One of my favorite places to ponder about is the home of the towel people. The towel people are early risers. We see them often on the way to school in the morning- 6:30 am! They are outside their gates, just across the dirt path. It looks like they are planning a garden of some sort as they have been working the earth here. Digging, weeding, turning over. And they do this work in their towels. Never together. It started with glimpses of the man. He looks quite sexy in his towel- it is long and reaches his ankles. There is something alluring about a man in a skirt- the right kind of African skirt. (I hear women around the world laughing at me in disagreement and men just shaking their head in impossibility, but it is true. You must come to see it- dancers in Congo with their torn fabric skirts sewn back together in tatters that allow for freedom and movement, swirling color and every so often a glimpse of bare leg. And now, my neighbor, outside in the dawn raking his soon to be garden in a long, dark green, terry cloth towel. )
It is not just the man in his towel- hence the name towel people. It happened one afternoon that a woman came out in her towel. She had been sweeping and was throwing the pail of dirt and dust away. That was the day they earned their name. A whole house full of people who could be seen at any hour wearing their towels to perform household and garden chores. Fascinating.
On this day, as I make my way out to the big road, the recyclers are passing through. They usually make the rounds early in the morning and once in the evening. "Gâté, gâté, gâââtéé," they sing. It is the word that means spoiled or broken. They are here to collect broken electronics. After the refrain, they sing out different kinds of electronics they will accept. Anything really. Telephones, T.V.s, one guy even called out for refrigerators which brought a smile to my face. Typically, it is a single man walking down a dirt road with a sack hung over his shoulder, santa style. I conjured up images of him arriving at my house and throwing our oddly functioning refrigerator in his bag and hoisting it over his shoulder, carrying on with his calling and collecting.
Once I get to the street, I begin walking toward the main crossroads. I haven't had to actually walk to the end in months. Yellow taxis make their way up to the small bridge where they can turn left and head out to 9Kilo or Deux Plateux with ease. There are two car washes on this corner, and what looks like the makings of another. Car washes are definitely a thing in Abidjan and they deserve their own post- one with pictures, which is currently my challenge. The camera phone does nothing justice and Abidjan car washes can be akin to nightclubs in their bright lights, big style and waiting lines. I've even begun amassing a list of hotspots to cover if I find myself back in gear again. I imagine a bewildered taxi driver who will chauffeur me around to all the random places I've selected and shake his head and tsk tsk as I click away. Crazy Americans, he will say and this time he will be talking about me (but only after he has discerened that I am not German (super high on the guess list these last few weeks...??!!?) or French or from any of the other countries everyone supposes before I tell them the truth.)
Once inside the taxi, my journey changes perspective. I am now eyes looking out at scenery rather than becoming part of it. As a pedestrian, I am the background, but in my new mode of transport I whizz by my favorite new park filled with basketball players, kids on swings and soccer teams. I look longingly at garden trees and flowers for sale, imagining those I hope to purchase newly nestled in my small front patches of yard, welcoming me home every night. I whizz by my bank- which I love to hate, and the pizza place recently closed which always makes me wonder about the sweet and patient South American man who made ice cream by hand. We pass the bread store, and I check to see if the woman I buy avocadoes from is sitting in her usual spot out front. There is the photo guy who never has ink to print his pictures, the little haircut dive with the young hipster inside who is the only one the boys trust with their precious tendrils, and the other photo place where we get the endless photo identite from. I watch all of these places pass outside the window, each one spouting forth another memory, a momentary sensation of having shared time together and therefore having lived.
Upon reaching 9 kilo- the big, big road at the end of Riviera III where all the stores and the fruit and vegetable market lie, where the yellow taxi station is and the bakkas come to discharge passengers, where worlds collide and passengers embark and disembark each on different legs of their own personal journeys, I exit the taxi and so commence leg 2.
