Heart of the Matter

Twilight in Za

After lunch, I meet back up with Fanny and Yoda and we make a last attempt to meet Colonel Magnon, but he doesn't pick up his phone. We drive off for Man. Just outside of Yamoussoukro the road is completely flooded. We have to ford a small, muddy lake where the road used to be. We are assisted in this by a group of boys who spend all day running back and forth through the muddy water in their bare feet guiding cars in exchange for a few dozen CFA. The last time I forded water this deep was in Iceland and I was in a serious 4x4 equipped with a snorkel. I am worried Yoda's Toyota wagon isn't exactly up to the task. I worry that the engine will flood or that we will become mired in the mud (another car is stuck in the middle of the big puddle and some other boys are trying to push it out, without much success.) But somehow we make it through just fine.

We drive on past banana plantations and groves of cocoa, coffee, palm trees and occasionally maize. Once or twice we pass a rice paddy. Yoda is trying to teach me the difference between the different types of tress, although given the fact that Yoda never speaks English I am not sure I quite get it. Fanny is dozing in the back as usual. This drive is more interesting than some of our recent legs. There is less elephant grass so I can see more of the landscape. Here and there you can see what remains of the ancient rain forest that once covered all of southern and central Cote d'Ivoire. There are these incredibly tall old trees that don't have any branches except at the very top where they unfurl a leafy green canopy. They are beautiful trees, but there are unfortunately not many of them left. Most of the land we past what you might describe as thinly-wooded savannah, planted with cash crops. And judging by the logging trucks carrying gigantic tree trunks that pass us on the other side of the road and the occasional timber yards we cruise past, there soon won't be any big trees left. At some point we pass through what look to me like fairly dense woods, but the trees are not that tall. Fanny says these trees are actually planted by the government along the sides of roads. At some point the trees are cut and the wood used to generate electricity for villages.

We pass through Koudougou a town that Yoda says is all Burkinabe. I think about stopping and trying to do some interviews, but Fanny is asleep and we are driving fast. Then we come to Bouafl?, where Yoda has a niece. Yoda's press ID says he was born in Bouafl? and he often tells people this, especially policemen at checkpoints. But it's not true. Yoda was born in Burkina Faso. From Bouafl? it is only a 6 km drive to the entrance to Parc National de la Marahque, one of Cote d'Ivoire's smaller nature reserves. I am not sure the reserve is open to the public any more because of the political situation, but I wish I had more time to find out. It is the first of several times on this trip that I wish I wasn't here to do a job or that I didn't have such limited time. I want to play tourist. Parc National de le Marahque for example is supposed to be home to lots of hippos, baboons, chimps, buffaloes and antelope. There are also supposed to be about 25 rare "forest elephants" (a kind of dwarf elephant) left in the park. I am sorry I have not scheduled time to go and see this.

At little outside of Bouafl? I ask Yoda to stop so that I can photograph one of the small villages we keep speeding past. I just want to document how people live here to show people back home. I am amazed by how rustic and undeveloped these villages are: small collections of tiny mud brick rectangular dwellings with thatch roofs and that's about it. No electricity. No running water. I photograph some of the buildings and some children who come out to investigate the white guy who just showed up in their village. Some of the children are clothed, but the younger ones are running around naked. Fanny points out some weird sort of pineapple-looking fruit lying on the ground. He says it comes from a certain kind of palm tree and is used to make a "grav" (I am sure I'm spelling this wrong) sauce - a sauce that I have had with chicken and foutou -- and also a kind of palm wine.

Suddenly we arrive in Daloa, a major trans-shipment point for cocoa and coffee. There is a lot of truck traffic in the town, which houses some big cocoa and coffee processing plants. During the war, Daloa (pronounced Dal-wa) fell to the rebels. Then it was recaptured by the FANCI. After FANCI retook the place, local Ivorians - perhaps encouraged and assisted by FANCI -- went on a rampage, massacring Burkinabe and Malian immigrants, including members of the Malian and Burkina Faso consulates that were in town. (These immigrant groups are thought to be sympathetic to the rebellion.) In one of the clearest cases of attempted ethnic cleansing in Cote d'Ivoire, the immigrants' houses were burned and those who were not killed were chased off. But the process was not complete and there are still a few Burkinabe left in town. Yoda says he knows a guy here who documented the massacre on behalf of the Malian Embassy. He still has the negatives and Yoda says he would be happy to sell me some photos for my magazine to use. I express some interest because I am curious to see the photos but I am pretty sure I don't want to buy any.

Yoda calls his friend and we drive over to some hotel where he is swimming with his family. The photographer doesn't have the negatives with him and he immediately wants to know how many photos I will buy. I tell him I won't know until I see the photos. This causes some consternation on the photographer's part even though I think it is a perfectly logical position. He says he needs to know what I want to buy so he can make the photos - he only has the negatives. I say I would like to see the negatives then. The photographer seems reluctant to do this. He objects that it will take time to get the photos made and that if I just see the negatives on Saturday - when we might be passing back through Daloa - then he might not be able to make them in time. I say fine, I'll try to find him on Saturday, but I'm not buying anything sight unseen. We leave. I am a little annoyed. I have wasted some valuable time and now Yoda is saying there is no way we'll be able to make it Man before nightfall. Driving into rebel-held territory at night is very dangerous, so we'll have to spend the night here in Daloa or drive on to Du?ku?, about 85 km further west, and overnight there before heading on to Man in the morning. I wish Yoda had told me that the trip was going to take this long beforehand. Yoda says I shouldn't worry - I can get some reporting done on cocoa here.

Yoda asks if I am more interested in trying to talk to the cocoa buyers in Daloa or some of the planters in the surrounding villages. The answer is that I want to talk to both. But given the time I decide to try to see the planters, in part because I think they can provide me information for both my cocoa reporting and for my reporting on the political situation in the country. Yoda says he knows just the place to go.

First we stop at this little compound located next to a French military garrison on the outskirts of Daloa. The compound is occupied by a large group of Burkinabe farm workers. They seem to know Yoda. While Yoda is talking to him I take the photograph of three adorable little Burkinabe girls who are playing next to the compound. They come over to give me high fives. The women at the compound tell Yoda that the men and the owner of the farm are still out in the fields. So we hop back in the car and drive off, heading south on the road to San Pedro. I notice that compared to other roads we've been on, this one - or at least this section of it - seems to be very well paved. San Pedro, several hundred kilometers south, is the primary port for exporting cocoa in the country and I guess the government has been smart enough to make sure that this economic lifeline has been properly maintained. (I later find out that this isn't exactly true and that actually some sections of the road closer to the port are some of the most pot-holed major arteries in the country.) We travel south for 15 km and then turn off onto this bumpy, dirt track, heading toward a village that has the wonderful name of Za. (These names are like something out of The Phantom Tollbooth.) The sign when we turn off says Za is 5 km away but the drive seems to take forever and I keep asking Yoda if he really knows where he is going.

We pass through Za, which is really just a collection of mud brick huts, and pull up in front of one set of huts that seems walled off from the rest of the village behind a fence of wooden stakes. Yoda gets out and warmly greets the old man who emerges from one of the huts. They talk for a while and then a teenage boy comes out and gets into our car. He is apparently our escort to the farm. We drive off down another dirt track, this one bumpier and narrower than one that we took into Za. In fact, the track gets so narrow and overgrown that I am sure it was intended only for foot traffic. Vegetation is scrapping both sides of the car and low hanging trees branches are hitting the roof. We have to roll up the windows to keep from getting hit. With the windows up, it gets very hot in the car very quickly. I am starting to feel claustrophobic and car sick. You can hear the bottom of Toyota's chassis grinding against large stones. The road is so bumpy we have to creep along at about 2 miles an hour. Where are we? I am getting nervous. Can the car actually survive this trip? I want an SUV now! Can we make it down this path? I ask Yoda and Fanny in a panicked voice exactly where the hell are we going? To the farm, they say nonchalantly.

Many minutes beyond the point at which I think the car will certainly breakdown or hit a tree, the path opens up to a clearing that consists of a substantial concrete lot. The lot is completely surrounded by dense groves of cocoa trees. At its corners are several small covered structures that might be dwellings or might be tool sheds. Coffee and cocoa beans are drying on tarps in one section of the lot. Sitting on a scrap of carpeting on the ground in another corner is an ancient man with a gray beard. He is wearing a bright yellow T-shirt, white sweat pants and what looks like a Scandinavian-style wool ski hat. There are some boys of various ages around the lot too. We greet the man who turns out to be the plantation owner. I am elated to be out of the car.

We sit on the lot's concrete curb and talk to the plantation owner. Or I should say that Yoda talks to the plantation owner, because the old man only speaks some sort of Burkinabe tribal language (that Yoda happens to know). In order to interview him, I pose a question to Fanny in English, Fanny translates it into French and tells Yoda, who in turn translates the French into Burkinabe and asks the old man. When he answers the process reverses itself. It's all a bit like a game of telephone and I wonder how much linguistic entropy is taking place - how much meaning is being lost in each subsequent translation.

Still so far as I am able to gather the old plantation owner's story is really interesting: The man doesn't know how old he is, but I figure he is at least 70 and maybe closer to 80. He moved from Burkina Faso to Cote d'Ivoire in 1945 when it was still a French colony. By the mid-1950s he had done well enough to acquire his own land. He owns 30 hectares, most of which is planted with cocoa. The man also claims have 30 children, the eldest of whom is a doctor in Abidjan. The war has been hard on the man. He has 25 workers on his farm, but he used to have more - at least 8 have fled because of xenophobic attacks. One of his sons, a shopkeeper in Daloa, was shot twice by FANCI soldiers while his store, but survived.

The man says that village of Za has been split right down the middle by the war. One half of the village actually took a vote to kick the Burkinabe out. They then proceeded to attack the foreigners and burn down their houses. But the other half of Za disagreed and offered the Burkinabe shelter. This has led to tremendous tension in the village. The two sides don't talk to one another. At first I have trouble understanding how a tiny village could be so divided and how the division could be enforced. After all, wouldn't the villagers from one half of Za just go over to the other half and attack the Burkinabe again? No, there are separate parts to the village, Fanny says. He tries to explain by using an analogy he thinks I'll get: "It's like in New York, you have Manhattan and Queens and Brooklyn and they are all New York but they are all separate." Except New York has 10 million people. Za has at most 300.

Any way, the plantation owner says he used to have his family with him on the farm but he has sent them to live in the Burkinabe compound in Dalao because he thinks they will be safer there. He worries that the Ivorian villagers may come to try to burn his farm or to take it over by force. He says he used to like to sleep on his farm so he could get up early and work, but that now he goes back to Daloa whenever he can because he is afraid his farm will be attacked at night. And if they don't take his land by force, the old man is worried the villagers of Za will find some other way to force him out. They have already tried once to impose a tax that he says is so high that it might force him to sell his property. But the farmer refused to pay the tax. He says the villagers have asked for a second meeting with him just this past week, but he has decided to skip the meeting. He is not sure what will happen now. To make matters worse, he says that the price of cocoa and coffee are not good this year and his production is far less than last year (he couldn't get all his planting done because of the war) so he's having trouble getting by. If I had come at this time last year, he says, the whole concrete lot would have been filled with cocoa. Now he just has the one tarp.

Before leaving, the man presents us with a gift of three cocoa fruit and three large melons. Yoda pounds one of the cocoa beans on the ground to break it open. Though I am a fan of chocolate, I have never seen cocoa before. The fruit is oblong and yellow, a little larger than a papaya. Inside its thick rind there is a fleshy stem to which the cocoa beans(the part that is ground into powder for chocolate) cling. The beans are covered in thick, gooey white stuff. Following Yoda's lead, I take one of the seeds and put it in my mouth. The gooey white liquid covering the bean is sugary and sweet. It tastes like candy, but not like chocolate. I crunch into the bean itself. It is really bitter and also doesn't taste anything like chocolate. I spit it out. (I later find out from Timothy that you aren't supposed to bite into the beans at all unless they have already been dried or roasted. They are too bitter and might make you sick.) Sucking on the cocoa beans though makes the bouncy trip back up to Za more pleasant than the drive down to the farm.

I am fascinated by the story of Za. I think it might be a great way to explain what is happening in Cote d'Ivoire through the prism of this one tiny village. It is twilight, but I ask Fanny if we can go talk to the other villagers in Za, the ones who attacked the Burkinabe. Fanny doesn't want to do this. Neither does Yoda. They say that if we just walk into the village and start asking questions the villagers might react violently - and in any case they are unlikely to admit they burned the Burkinabe's houses. I am disappointed at Yoda and Fanny's timidity. I don't know whether to believe them about the villagers or whether they are just being lazy and want to go find a hotel. I leave thinking that if I have time I will try to come back to Za.

On the drive down the dirt track to the main road I actually do make Yoda stop so I can try to interview someone who might live in Za. We pause by a lone man walking down the road carrying a machete. It turns out he is not from Za, but from a neighboring village called - get this - Bla. He works a small bit of his own land where he grows cocoa and he has also worked for larger Burkinabe plantation owners before. He says he has no problem personally with the immigrants. He says he remembers witnessing his father sell some of the family's land to the Burkinabe, so he is sure they acquired it legally. He says that most villagers in this area don't have any issue with the Burkinabe. He says problems tend to arise when Ivorians living in cities and towns come back to their villages with new political ideas and stir up resentments. I thought this was an interesting observation. The man then told us that during the war, some Burkinabe people and some northerners from Korogho joined together to attack Ivorian villages in the area. He said some of their homes were burned. Then when FANCI came back through the area, the villagers took revenge by burning Burkinabe homes. He says now relations have calmed back down, in part because most Burkinabe have fled. We give the man a lift back to his village. (His BO is awful. I am glad the windows are open.) As we drop the man off, he points out a cluster of buildings. They are just concrete walls. The roofs of the structures are gone. He says these were the Burkinabe homes that were burned. It is a sad image, these deserted gray homes disappearing into the indigo embrace of night.

Yoda drives us back to Daloa. He knows a good hotel in town, called Tropical Village. It isn't too expensive (and just to overcome any objections I might have about the price Yoda is quick to tell me that "all the journalists stay here when they come to Daloa.") The rooms are nice. There is a restaurant in the hotel, but I tell Fanny and Yoda I would prefer to go to maquis like we did the previous evening in Yamoussoukro. So after a little rest we go out to try find dinner. This proves harder than expected. There don't seem to be any nice maquis in Daloa. Instead there are some scary looking restaurants. The first one we go to only has some ugly looking fish for sale so we go to another. This one is full flies but it seems to be the only game in town. Yoda orders some sort chicken stew for me that comes with white rice. I pick at the stew, while trying to keep the flies away. I just know this thing is going to make me ill, I can just tell as I'm eating it. (Since one of my readers wrote in about how I should always eat raw onions if possible to try to kill food-borne bacteria I have tried to scrupulously follow this advice. So far the results have been good. But tonight there are no onions in sight.)

Posted by Jeremy Kahn at October 30, 2003 01:06 PM