Not just the Rich

News reports are full of the recent attack(s). Ankara and Grand Bassam  were hit on the same day, though the resulting news stories read quite differently.  As  seems too often to be the case with Africa, special attention is paid to the foreign victims of the tragedy. Everytime I read about the "French nationals" my mind rebels with images of the local children flipping into the waves and gorgeous young couples holding hands and laughing as they walk the beach.

Grand Bassam, described as a playground of the expatriates, has always struck me more as the "sleepy oceanside town"  with a funky artistic underbeat. It reminds me a lot of places I once considered home. I like it because it exudes an air of reality and humbleness. It is not where the uber rich usually spend their time (they gravitate more to Assine and San Pedro I think, where the undercurrents are said to be calmer and surfing is popular.)

When we head out to Grand Bassam, we often stop by to say hello to a missionary family  who has a sweet little house just across from the beach. While they do have a wall surrounding their home, there is no barbed wire. No sense of danger or unease. It is a beautiful town striving to keep afloat.

The family has a few friends in the neighborhood and we always make time to see them, too. Most often we gather at the beach sometime just after lunch and play in the waves, shovel piles of sand into buckets and listen to the music coming from any one of the little restaurant-bar huts lining the ocean edge. There are often crowds of local kids practicing their acrobatics or playing a game of soccer. There are couples walking and young guys on horseback trying to get you to snap a photo- or, for the more adventurous-hop on the saddle and ride off into the breeze.

It has a family feel. A solid, small town local flair. Definitely not the kind of place one would think as a target for a terrorist group looking to make a statement.  It seems more like terrorists targeting their own fellow Africans. Or like they weren't really targeting anyone at all but everyone in general.

This account, especially vivid and heartwrenching, brings it all together. In the midst of the terror, there is no separation of local or expatriate. Everyone was hiding. Some managed to escape with their lives, others did not. Reuters at least mentions 'Foreign citizens from Burkina Faso, Cameroon, France, Germany and Mali were among the victims' seeming to put them all on the same level. The Washington Post tries to get it right, but what's with including statistics on Americans included in other attacks as if they hold some sort of prestige? BBC is the worst, simply stating "four of the dead were Westerners" as if that is all that really counts. While they go on to mention that nationalities of victims hadn't been released, the pictures clearly show this event affected the local population.

It's anyone's guess where they will strike next. Speculation is on about Senegal and apparently in Guinea they have made some arrests. The only thing that seems certain is they will strike again, it will be unexpected (in the way that no one can really prepare or prevent) and it will affect us all, as humans.

Discouraging. Distressing. Too close to home. For all of  us, not just the rich or the Western.

The lady of grand bassam

The small batik stall we were headed to was tucked in off the roadway. It was the kind of place you would have to know about from a friend in order to realize it even existed. We walked down a crowded dirt path strewn with the remnants of working artists. It was the kind of dirty that inolved ashes and burnt fire pits and discarded pieces of metal. Buckets filled with blackened water sat on a small crest just above the shoreline of a small lake.

She was standing there, in the midst of it all, on a worn metallic plate. Her skirt slightly open to reveal a long, sensual leg. One of her arms was extended behind and I could imagine a child just there, reaching out to grab her hand. The woman's skin was the color of beauty and the weathered blue-green of her clothing made her appear as if the sea itself were wrapping her up in waves of allure. She was magical, standing there in the blackened aftermath of creativity.

I was not the only one affected by her beauty. My artist friend was also captured. We made circles around her, admiring the beauty from every angle. We wondered what she was doing there, this exquisite sculpture that threatened to spring forth into life. Why had she been placed there, on the ground, in such a random way?

After several inquiries, the artist was finally located. He confirmed, as we'd suspected, that she was drying. He also told us she was already sold. She'd been made as part of an order. He pulled out a companion piece dripping in white and gold. She was admirable but lacked the magic and charm of the woman on the ground.

Her price was astounding. Far out of reach. I lifted her briefly, just to see, and she was solid, as heavy as a baby. It's been awhile since a piece of art has affected me so. After a week or more I am still reminiscing about her, the lady of Grand Bassam.

The artist was happy to share his phone number and invite us back to view the process. We were interested in the molding technique and the application of color. Though I remain intrigued by witnessing, and possibly learning, a new process, I am certain there are some things that can't be explained.

She was vivid, surely living in some other world.

Nothing Beautiful

It wouldn't be a vacation without a trip to the beach and so a mom friend and I, ever in search of ways to amuse the children and fill up endless days of sameness with something different, headed out for a day of fun in the waves and sun.  A ride across the new bridge was a bonus.

Turns out the bridge wasn't the only new sight in store. The road to Bassam was littered with debris. A grand project in destruction was underway- the first step in construction, to be sure but forever the question at what cost? It would feel so much more like real progress if those whose businesses and homes were destroyed directly benefitted from whatever newness took its place. Driving past the ruins left me in a sour mood for the beach. I felt, illogically, as though my touristy beach endeavor was somehow contributing to the mess.

Kilometers and kilometers of concrete broken into rubble

Man vs. man- woven furniture for sale among the ruins

100 pictures wouldn't really show the devastation

You have to know what was there before
to truly comprehend what's missing

A shell of a stand left, or hastily built back up

All that's left of stores and restaurants and crafty shops

Looks like the wreckage from a hurricane (Andrew, yes,
I remember seeing miles of this in South Florida)

Oversize billboards breaking out of their frame, typical C'I style
This one marks the end of the construction zone and the official
entrance to Grand Bassam

A glance at the opposite side of the street gives a clue to the masses of storefronts that have been razed on the other side. Surely they weren't much too look at but without doubt they provided the means for food and shelter to plenty. Where have they all gone?

I don't have the inside story on this one, though random people could be seen wandering amidst the ruins. Some gazing out at the ocean, some sifting through the remains and others appeared to be just taking it all in, similar to the survivors of natural disasters, walking around in shock and awe. Though in this case it was not the hand of Mother Nature to be marveled at but the will of Father Man. 

Grand Bassam is a sleepy town with an artistic edge. I was transported back to my days in Key West or Woodstock. It was a cozy, comforting feel that made me want to find a place and settle in, wander the streets and become a regular. Get my art on. 

The buildings have a definite colonial design, many in stages of disrepair, hollow shells of their former glory. They are at once majestic and mysterious, ominous in what they hint to in the past. I wondered aloud at the history of the town and my friend remarked on a building she'd heard was used in the slave trade. The sound of crashing waves made the images in my mind come to life. Later on, as I looked out across the ocean to the distant horizon, I hovered between the present world and the past with pain in my heart. 

I wondered at how the buildings could even be left standing and how the residents could continue their daily lives with such gruesome reminders of tribulations gone by. Searching online for the history of the town hasn't given many clues. Apparently named a world heritage site, complete with striking photos, but not many details. Former French capital, trading post and port. That's all it says. I guess we are left to infer what was being traded. 

The UNESCO site is even more cryptic, referring to a multiethnic capital with complex, yet harmonious, social relations and 'principals of hygiene' used in the town planning. Not enough details about what this means to satisfy curiosity or provide a clear history of the area. This post includes one small comment that lets me know I am not alone in wondering if the buildings aren't a bane on current residents. Phrases like "historical significance" and "French colonial charm" baffle me. From my current knowledge base, minimal to low for certain, I cannot imagine anything charming or significant(ly worth saving) from colonial rule.

Obviously it is time for me to get my history on. And while a part of me gets the idea that preserving places from the past is important, and about more than just the pretty moments, I felt that same anger and revulsion I had during early tours of Kinshasa that highlighted Stanley's "discoveries" and the old, old church -Sims church. My rejection stems from the fact that I want to know more about the African history of these places, the African developments and importance. Impossible to extricate. The European history in Africa is oft times the only history to find. But what of those who were there before? First and always? 

Needless to say, my trip to the beach lost most of its charm to these thoughts. The rough breaking waves were a good fit for my confusion and melancholy. 

And the only bright spot to my research? This gem of an institution which makes me want to overhaul my resume yet again in hopes of finding a good fit on the faculty here. 

In the end, the ocean experience made both boys' grateful lists, which in turn made me grateful. A little bit of pleasure for them and a mind full of things to contemplate for me = a day well spent.

Eerie shell of a house

If all those haunted houses could be made into
houses of art, maybe some healing could occur

The empty beach everyone is writing about

Rough waves make the boys happy and fit my mood

Nothing beautiful about this horse on the beach. The riders
tap him with the switch all day. 

Mid afternoon the empty beach came alive

Soccer partners and good waves is pretty much all
 Mohamed needs to make his grateful list