Five must-haves while visiting Abidjan

Abidjan might be called "The Paris of Western Africa", but this is Western Africa nevertheless so if you are searching for Parisian standards, the locals also will probably start searching with you. Having said that, Abidjan is a fairly developed city and has its own share of posh areas and hangouts. You anyway have to put up with some quintessential African-ness if you are visiting Abidjan, so it is good to be well-equipped with the following must-haves.

1. A Strong Nose

Abidjan smells. It smells so bad that it leaves your shoes and clothes smelling long after you are off the road. I don't know what causes this stink, but it is omnipresent and hits your nose hard. If you also use a no-breathing till the smell goes away technique like I used to, you would probably die of lack of breath here. That doesn't work here...it smells everywhere. People don't mind if you cover your nose though, I guess.

Abidjan as seen from the 22nd floor of a building in Le Plateau

2. Haggling Skills

Cab drivers, local markets, shops, restaurants... you have to haggle everywhere. You could choose to skip this part, but only if you are okay with having a big dent in your wallet. Haggling is very common in the whole of Africa, and Abidjan is no exception. Bargaining sometimes can reduce the price up to half or even less than half of what was originally quoted.

3. Being an early-riser

Abidjan rises early and sleeps early. Almost all commercial establishments open around 8-9 am and close at 6 pm. Some places even close as early as 3 pm. The Cap Sud mall, the largest mall in Abidjan with the largest supermarket in the city(Hyper Hayat) is open until 8 pm. Even then, you can see shops shutting down around 7 pm, if there are no customers inside.

4. Maneuvering through traffic / Being patient while stuck in traffic

This is true of most big cities during rush hour. In Abidjan, a 5-6 km distance could take anywhere between 1 hour to 1.5 hours by car. This is because the city has grown in a single direction in the past decade, so if you are going towards traffic, you are likely to get stuck. for hours.

5. Tolerance to noise

This city is noisy. You can see people yelling(talking) to each other from across the road and when you visit the local markets, you are likely to get a heart attack when someone shouts "my lady!" right into your ear. The locals are generally courteous to foreigners, but if you hear over-enthusiastic hellos,  just politely smile and walk away.

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Shopping in Abidjan

Yes. We are still here. This is apparently the longest port stay ever since Cheena started sailing. He has been on an extended watchkeeping duty, 12-6 day and night so his lack of sleep and exhaustion is starting to take its toll. So he refused to come out with us today, the third officer joined us instead.

We took Ali with us today. He has been visiting our ship everyday with a puppy dog face and he also apologized to Cheena and offered to give him free fridge magnets. He is also getting us some provisions for the ship, so I guess he is our friend now.

Our shore passes had expired a few days ago. We went into the immigration office to renew our passes and met officers wearing THIS uniform:

Who has uniforms like this?! Wow Africa!

A few officers had saner uniforms (light blue shirts and navy blue pants) and the chief officer observed that the female officers were pretty. But he was not looking at the women, he was staring into the package in her hand. She must have spotted it, for she offered us what was in the package – APPAM. Yes, appam, the sweet that we make for karthigai deepam back home. It tasted exactly the same too. I am going to imagine that the old celebrated Tamil kings had extended their reign up to Côte d'Ivoire OR that Côte d'Ivoire was part of the hypothetical Kumari Kandam. It sounds cool, no?

Flaunting our new shore passes, we walked out and caught a taxi straight to the artisan’s market. Or so we thought. Ali misunderstood “market” and took us to another local market - Marché de Treichville. This was literally the local market, and had nothing to offer for us tourists.  We just walked around for a few minutes. Almost all the proper shops in the market are owned by the Lebanese. The largest Lebanese diaspora in West Africa is concentrated in Ivory Coast. Since Abidjan is the economic capital here, one can safely assume that the largest concentration of that large concentration is in Abidjan. The chief officer got a great bargain for a perfume from one of the Lebanese shops – after haggling, he paid the equivalent of 500 INR for a perfume that would normally cost 6500 INR for the original (update: the smell lasts for a LONG time and everybody here claims it is as good as the original). Ali also showed us to an Indian shop. He also mentioned about an Indian restaurant and reckoned that it was his favourite. Sorry Ali, we are not tipping you any extra for that. (the restaurant is called Delhi Darbar and is located in Rue des Jardins)

We spent a lot of time at the artisans market today. Thanks to our honed bargaining skills, we struck pretty good deals. If you are looking to visit, ask the taxi drivers for the CAVA (Centre Artisanale de la ville) market and they will bring you here.

Fertility Masks!

The CAVA market is the best place for souvenir shopping in the whole of Abidjan. The market is designed to resemble an African village; it is tidy and also has a tiny café inside. The first thing that the shopkeepers say here is, “This is Africa, my friend. You bargain. You tell your price”. Haggling is expected. So all the items are overpriced at the beginning. The best strategy is to hide your interest in an item and look indifferent while asking for prices. Also, when you look at an item, decide in your head the price that you are willing to pay for it; be prepared to let go if that price is not accepted.

The shopkeepers here are pretty enthusiastic. With whatever little English they have, they keep calling you in. “My lady!”, “Please visit my shop”, “I give best price for you”, “Namaste!”, “Come on, my friend!” – some of them are so loud that their “my lady”-s gave me a heart attack. The market has all kinds of things – huge wooden dolls that are a Côte d’Ivoire special, typical African masks in all shapes and sizes, jewellery, clothes, brass and bronze statues, crocodile skin purses and bags, fridge magnets, wooden chairs, paintings – everything under one roof and everything at a bargain price.

The African clothing is still a mystery to me. The last time I got a pyjama set kinda thing which fit me perfectly, but the top that I got this time was way too tight. They are the SAME size. But there is a difference – the earlier top did not have a demarcated stitch for the sleeves, but this one did. The shopkeepers were showing me clothes that looked huge and insisted that they were my size. But I was blatantly refusing to believe them. Maybe it is the sleeves. Some of the shops were selling materials though – and one lady mentioned that the local women buy these materials and get them stitched the way they wanted. The chief officer was a lil’ disappointed at not being able to find a good top for his wife. We finally settled down for a spaghetti top (no sleeve problem you see).

The boys men wanted to go Go-Karting next. It was bang opposite CAVA and they have been eyeing it ever since they saw it. The price was pretty reasonable and cheaper than some Go-Karting places in India – 5000 CFA for 10 minutes and 10000 CFA for 30 minutes. Thankfully, they decided to try it out for just 10 minutes. The Go-Karting place also has a café attached to it and I got myself a glass of orange juice and settled down with Ali to see the Go-Karting action and click pictures. Two people in black attire were racing in full speed through the course and our men were crawling behind; it being their first time. The third officer even hit some tyres and had to pause for a few minutes. It was hilarious. The chief officer picked up some speed later on though. I was just glad it was only ten minutes because I was starting to get bored and my juice was over. While we were about to leave, we saw the black-attired folks walking out. One of them was a woman. The look on these guys’ faces was priceless.

After clicking some pictures, we went back to Hyper Hayat to refill our snack boxes and also dined in the same pizza place. We got back in flaunting our new passes again. I am hoping that we leave this place soon so we never have to go out again. We have already exhausted all the places of interest here.

The best of Abidjan

We went out again today. After googling Abidjan for the past few days, I was finally convinced that there is nothing special to see here. But the guys working here with us on the ship had chalked out an itinerary that sounded very promising, so off we went, the three of us accompanied by Steffen, the P&I guy here. We were scheduled to leave at 3 pm, visit the local market for souvenirs, the cathedral and then end the trip with dinner either in Cap Sud or elsewhere. But we started only around 4.30 pm, so we had to skip the market.

Our first stop was St. Paul’s Cathedral located at the Plateau area of Abidjan. The area is called Plateau because, well, it is a plateau in the middle of the city. This area is the commercial centre of Abidjan and has tall towers and office buildings.

From atop the cathedral we had a good view of the city, and the cathedral itself was a pretty sight. This is apparently the second largest church in the whole of Africa and has a unique and modern architecture. The cathedral is getting renovated now, so we couldn’t go inside, but I hear that it has lovely stained glass paintings. The highlight of the cathedral is the huge cross, supported by flanks – the symbolism represented by the overall structure of the church and the cross is that of Jesus opening his arms, similar to the Christ the Redeemer statue of Rio. You could go to the top of the church throw a narrow staircase, close to the head of the cross, but we couldn’t do that either, because of the on-going construction.

The cathedral had a lot of trees, including a drumstick tree, a few banana trees and even something that looked like a gulmohar. Steffen thought we would as excited as the American tourists to see the banana trees; I guess he was a bit disappointed when we brushed him off saying we have more of these back home. We saw a few people praying by the curb under the statue. We sat down in the benches there and Cheena was upset that I didn't pack sandwiches; it really did look like a good spot for picnic. The staircases that led down to the back entrance had sculptures in the wall depicting the crucifixion of Jesus; after the marvel of the temples of Tamilnadu, this looked pretty amateur for me.  You could see the Bay of Cocody from here, it looked pretty much like the Adyar/Cooum river to me – dirty and desolate.

We saw a group rehearsing for the mass the next day. They were wonderful and we stopped by to listen to their music. Music, indeed, has no languages. The choir’s song was a foot tapping number and we enjoyed the song as much as the singers enjoyed performing it.

Our next stop was the artisan’s market (Centre Artisanale de la ville). This was the most fascinating place for me in Abidjan. All types of African masks and clothing, and all of them available for a good bargain. The timing wasn't all that great though – we went in went everybody was getting ready to close for the day(they close at 6 pm). But once we saw us foreigners coming in, some of them went back to their shops. We didn't have time to explore, so we just quickly got some sesky African masks and left. I also picked up a silly night dress(?), full African ishtyle. We vowed to brush up our bargaining skills and come back here again before we left.

After the experience with Ali, we had decided not to exchange money from the locals and concluded that withdrawing money from the ATM is the best bet. What we didn't realise at that point is that folks here in Abidjan do not understand what an ATM is. The ATMs themselves are far and few. Anyway we somehow made the guys understand what it means with hand signs and phrases like “automatic bank”, “you put card and money come”, “you know visa card?”. Opposite the Cap Sud mall, there is an ATM of Attijariwafa Bank (I am attaching a picture of the logo of the bank for easy reference) and trust me, the exchange rate is MUCH better than the best exchange rate that any local would be willing to give.

Tried on, but did not buy :P

Approx. 550 INR for both the masks

The men had a change of mind and we wanted to explore the restaurants of Abidjan, instead of settling down for a pizza in Cap Sud. But were taken to a dingy roadside restaurant, not unlike the akka shops of Chennai, when chief officer had grandly said that we would rather have the local flavour. Unrelenting, we then looked up restaurants on Trip Advisor and asked Steffen to take us to one of those.  Thankfully, he understood and w soon entered one of the more posh looking streets strewn with restaurants on either side (Rue Pierre et Marie Curie). But there was a catch. Almost all the restaurants opened only at 7:30 pm and had tough bouncer-like guys posted outside. After not being given entry to #3 restaurant from TripAdvisor because it was only 7 pm, we whiled away half an hour at a dessert pub filled with Lebanese and the fashionable folks of Abidjan. Cheena pointed out to the dish that a woman in the adjacent table was eating and asked for that. Steffen looked very amused. The bill was only 8,000 CFA. By now, we had devised an ingenious method of conversion – cut down the last zero and you have the approximate value in INR. We agreed that this was cheaper than Cream & Fudge. At 7:30 pm, we went back to that restaurant only to be told that we needed to have a reservation to enter. Goyyala...

Gimme all the veggies!

We were left with no option but to go to an over-crowded but well-lit and welcoming Lebanese restaurant, which was the only restaurant in the entire street that didn't require a reservation – Restaurant Marrouche. I cannot say much about the food since I had very little options as a vegetarian, but the portions were huge. I just had the free veggies, some falafels and one Lebanese bread with the super yummy sour cream. The sour cream went with everything that I had. The bill came to 24500 CFA for four people. Pretty decent (remember the conversion?)

We doggy bagged the left overs for the third officer (hee hee) and came back to the hotel without any cop incidents like last time. Nasty traffic though, Saturday nights are crazy everywhere I suppose.

Bonjour Ivory Coast!

After a few brave people ventured out in the past two days and confirmed the safety of the place and the surroundings, Cheena, chief officer and I decided to step out today. We thought we were well prepared, but nothing could have prepared us for the stink of this place. You know how every place has a smell? You don’t? Well, I do. Chennai smells like the sun, Mumbai smells of dirt, Bangalore smells like diluted smoke and cold, Venice smells like algae… and Abidjan smells like… how women smell like during their periods rotten fish left to rot. 

We were told that we were passing through the fish storage area, but later I realised that the smell lingered almost throughout the city. I guess you could get used to it after a while, but we all couldn't help but cover our noses. An article that is read in BootSnall kinda sums up my feelings – “Abidjan is so bad, that it leaves your clothes and shoes smelling – basically you’re glad to get away from the place, and dread going back.”

Our companion was a guy called Ali, an immigrant from Ghana who is making a living here by doing odd jobs in the port like escorting the seamen when they go out, selling phone cards and internet cards, procuring provisions and so on. Apparently, he Presidential Palace (called The Flagstaff House) in Ghana was constructed by an Indian contractor. The Indian government gave a $30 million loan for the construction of the building. He also enquired about our "PM Modi, from Gujarat". Wow. Either Modi is super famous or he read up on India to impress us.

The vehicles were dirty, but the roads are ALL well-laid

Ali haggled with the cab driver, not unlike how I deal with Chennai’s autowallahs, and we were huddled into a cab that was playing Arab music. Abidjan is the second largest French speaking city in the world, only second to Paris. Although French is the official language of Ivory Coast, there are about 60 different languages/dialects that are spoken here. The city has about 38% Muslims and 30% Christians.  I have something to confess – until now, I had assumed that Islam was restricted to the Gulf and Middle-East.

Our only stop today was Cap Sud, the most modern shopping centre in Abidjan, as good as any of the malls that we have in India. Almost all our money was spent in Hyper Hayat, the biggest supermarket in Abidjan. We were pretty surprised to find such a good place to shop here and spent all our money there. We ate at a pizzeria, which served really good pizza, and with our bags and stomachs full, we left the mall contented. The bill for 4 petite sized pizzas and coke came to 15,500 CFA.

 

The mall was swag!

The cops caught us on our way back. The poor man just wanted to make some money I guess. But we had proper documents and we had Ali, so he had to let us go. The men said that this was the time that something like this has ever happened in all their years of sailing and traveling. I wonder if it was my luck.

We got back to the ship through the fish storage and stink again. When we sat down to do the hisaab, we figured that Ali had cheated us with the money exchange. He gave us 450 CFA for $1, but a quick Google search told us that the exchange rate was somewhere above 560 CFA. Ada paavigala!

Lesson learnt: Always withdraw money from ATM.

Land at last!

We are here! We have finally reached Abidjan. I can see trees from my porthole! I can see birds! I see LAND!

Every ship has an agent who handles the local coordination in ports. According to the chief officer, these agents come in two types - the ones who are honest and call a spade a spade and the ones who pretend to work hard giving false hopes and toothless smiles just to appear good in front of the ship’s owner. Our agent is of the second type. For the past few days, berthing kept oscillating between today and tomorrow, and our hopes swelled and ebbed. Finally, we berthed sometime last night and when I woke up this morning, yoohoo… land! 

Warehouses in the port