Africa is Awesome: Focus on Côte d'Ivoire | Abidjan (Traipsing the traffic) [Part II]

Day1: Monday, 10 September 2018

Bonjour Côte d'Ivoire!

Usually, I am rather antisocial on airplanes, this time I sat next to a very pleasant guy by the name of Moris, who was returning to Abidjan after being involved in the sunglasses business in South Africa for three years. He advised me where to get a SIM card and data so that I could at least be contactable via WhatsApp (after an insane MTN bill after a layover in Dubai many years ago, I refuse to activate my mobile roaming facility).

The pic above is of the Bureaux de Change inside the airport; what was particularly interesting to me, was that the Euro is much stronger than the US Dollar; the reason for this is that there is an agreement with Europe / the Euro and Central African Franc (XAF); the price is set. This is very good to keep in mind the next time when converting local Rands into foreign currency and travelling to Francophone countries.

There was quite a strong military/police presence at the airport, as you can see from the photo above not many people or cars outside the airport. Moris, helped me negotiate with a taxi to my next destination, where I was to meet with my Rotary host Désiré Woï.

The traffic is something else! Firstly, it always messes with my head when it's a left-hand-drive / wrong-side-of-the-road traffic system. Traffic lights and street signs seem to be mere suggestions. It is absolute madness. I only saw one guy knocked off his moped, fortunately, nothing serious; am just really quite surprised (but grateful) that there aren't many more accidents. 

There are a lot of cars. Unlike our minibus taxi system, they use sedans, which does explain why the traffic jams are something else. There are green taxis and yellow taxis, they are limited to work within specific suburbs, the red taxis can work across suburbs. There are also white taxis (Taxi Ivoire, no photos above), they are newer and can also travel inter-suburbs. Generally, the taxi fee is about XAF 2500 (R80) but depends on who is doing the negotiating and traffic jam situation.

After instructions from Moris and the taxi boss, I was en route to Cocody (a suburb) to meet up with Désiré. My taxi driver could not speak a word of English, and my French negligible, but we managed to chit-chat our way through the traffic.

I was very grateful to find out that Désiré and his amazing wife Casimira, could speak English. They are a wonderful power couple, they both studied law in Abidjan; Désiré continued his studies in the US and Casimira in Paris. Désiré was the President for Rotary Club of Abidjan last year, and Casimira is very involved with the Lions in Gabon; this is where she is originally from and still returns there often to work on projects.

Casimira greeted us with the most delicious homemade supper!

Part III tomorrow