Danone to Man – Cote d’Ivoire

The following day was always going to be a mixed bag. Down as a trip highlight, we were off to stay in a village that performs a dance ceremony featuring people on stilts. We arrived in the village around 3.30pm. I say village, but it was more like arriving in Neverland as waves of children broke upon the truck. There were of course adults lurking in the shadows yet the ratio of children to adults looked unnaturally colossal and I imagine the adults were only too happy for the children to be distracted by our arrival instead of causing mayhem around the home. While confusion over the timing of the performance escalated everyone had the difficult task of finding somewhere to put up a tent. We had parked in the middle of the village and what little space remained was largely taken by the odd passing motorbike, pigs, and children. Watching a little boy in the middle of it all, maybe two years old, peeing into the sky as far as he could at a distance far exceeding his own height also added further complications to deciding on a place to camp. In the end I set my tent up near to both the truck and a house under the assumption that I would be well out the way of any random traffic, pee, or pop-up events that may occur over the coming 12 hours. 

The performance scheduled for the following morning that was now rescheduled for 7pm began at 5.30pm; there was no warning other than the sound of a drum from the other side of the village. We filed down, pulled up a chair and watched the lone drummer work his magic as a few children playfully danced around him. From that moment onwards everything grew. Most of the local men came and sat amongst us, as much the spectator as we were. The children ended up pushed to the perimeter as women took the back of the stage chanting and giggling away, almost as though they were doing their own thing. A series of young men began to perform dances, one of which simply involved spinning on one leg until falling into the arms of a fellow dancer. The lone drummer continued throughout, crouched over his drum, never faltering, never breaking the rhythm, always smiling as though possessed. Ash fell from the sky like a scene from Dante’s Peak, its source revealed as night fell and the hillside lit up with the bush fires that had been burning there throughout the day. One of the guys in our group had refused to come and watch on the grounds he disliked such cultural displays even more than me, but then he materialised, bottle of coke in hand. He offered a local man a drink who happily took the whole bottle and promptly passed it onto a child completely oblivious to the contents being 70 percent rum. Queue an African four-year-old child being chased by a European middle-aged tourist around the village trying to retrieve his bottle of rum in the background of traditional African dancing, drumming and chanting in some kind of weird Monty Python sketch. It was hilarious. Meanwhile, more drummers joined the show and finally the stilt dancer showed up. The stilt dancer is no man, but a spirit, and is supported by a crew of humans who will ensure that the illusion is maintained throughout by rearranging the spirit’s clothes or offering a helping hand should the spirit get into difficulties, such as falling over unintentionally. The spirit moved with surprising finesse alternating between dancing and walking around shrieking at the crowd. Although there was no face to see, it was easy to understand how fear could be struck through the way the spirit would stop and apparently stare into the face of people. It was quite chilling, a sensation dampened only by the joyful mood of the music and chanting from the women. After 90 minutes the show was over. We paid up a large sum of US dollars, donated gifts of sweets, toys, and clothes, and headed to the truck for dinner. 

Cooking is never fun when its late having coincided with an activity. Luckily, I was not on duty but the Blonde Squad were and so I provided a support role through keeping the coffee mugs discreetly topped up with beer and lining music up on the playlist. Not that you could hear the music over the crowd of children that had gathered around the kitchen area (hence not openly drinking beer) who although were well behaved, did provide an intimidating atmosphere and an insight into how things feel when the roles of tourism are reversed. However, it was all downhill from then on as the children simply wouldn’t go away. We went to our tents around 9pm to the sound of giggling and chit chat from our observers who hung around outside the tents daring each other to unzip them and generally being a nuisance. Finally, after midnight, peace took hold and I feel asleep for a few hours until frustratingly awoken by a desperate need to pee, and so off I went. I returned and fell into a deep sleep once again only to be shocked out of it by that all too common sound of Africa. Out came the cockerel, which I kid you not, cleared his throat before crowing so loud that it echoed around the surrounding hills, a feat he managed starting at 3.30am until 5am when he was finally drowned out by the sound of vehicles pulling up to the side of my head. There followed two hours where the village had turned out to load a couple of vans with everything and anything that could be sold in the local town, and I was in the middle of it all. Completely oblivious to the locals, I left my tent around 6am, cleared it out, packed it away, and went and sat by the truck with a cup of coffee suffering from a complete sense of humour failure. It’s extremely rare, but on this occasion, Africa had broken me.

24^th December 2023