Abidjan Report- February 2011

Jay is due to return for a visit in mid-March. Hooray! This month, he kept busy standing in for vacationing coworkers including his boss. At one point, he was doing the work of 7 people. Needless to say, it made for a lot of extra time spent in the office. Kind of a crummy situation, but it’s not much worse than returning to an empty house.

An interesting thing happened to Jay this month. He and a few representatives from the US Embassy had to meet with Ivorian officials at Abidjan’s port. Apparently, there was some concern regarding a U.S. shipment bound for Burkina Faso (the land-locked nation just north of Cote d’Ivoire). The shipment contained a Military Peacekeeping Training Package which included air rifles, paintball guns, slings, grenades, paper targets, a chainsaw, herbicide, genuine Red-Rider BB guns, and some other stuff.


Well, when Ivoirian Customs x-rayed the container, they got REALLY excited because the officials were convinced that the U.S. was shipping arms to Burkina Faso (sworn enemies of the Gbagbo regime). So Jay and the other representatives from the Embassy sat around for hours waiting while 15 customs people, 30 gendarme and navy officers, and a bunch of workers emptied the container. They removed the “arms” from their boxes, took pictures, and tried to figure out what the stuff did. All of them were stumped by the wrist sling.

Anyway, the top brass immediately recognized that the stuff was benign and left quickly but the other reps took the time to “confiscate” (aka “steal”) the guns, pellets, targets, and safety glasses. (Good thing about the safety glasses because they might shoot their eyes out.) The most dangerous item in the shipment was the chainsaw, but they left it behind. Probably because they had no idea what it was. Thank goodness none of the guns showed up in the paper or on the news.

The situation in Cote d'Ivoire has gotten a lot worse lately. With political and trade sanctions in full effect, products are seriously getting scarce. The Squatter (Gbagbo), since he is not the internationally-recognized president, cannot cash a check anywhere in town. He ran out of money to pay government workers and his troops, so he announced that a few international banks in Abidjan would be "nationalized" and then sent armed men to them to "withdraw" all of the money from their vaults. Subsequently, all of the other international banks decided to pull out of Abidjan, severely limiting cash flow for the average citizen.

Cocoa-growers demonstration

Bank-closed

Militants have been terrorizing people in pro-Ouattara (the elected president) neighborhoods to the point that the residents were effectively forced from their homes. Ivoirian refugees inside and outside of Cote d'Ivoire number in the tens of thousands. It's a very sad situation and we hope the African Union will decide to take any action necessary to remove Gbagbo.

Refugees from the Abobo neighborhood waiting for food

As the days pass and the stalemate worsens, we are slowly becoming convinced that our family won't be going back to Abidjan. By the time the politicians and diplomats sort the situation out, it is possible that our 6 month re-entry window will be past. This has been a very sad realization for us, since we really liked living in Abidjan and if we cannot return, we will miss the people we met there.