Don't move to Abidjan without these 10 things...

10 Things you should bring with you to Abidjan:

1. Tupperwares, and all sorts of cookware.  Remember that air
2. Wellies, and lightweight rain ponchos
3. Antibiotics and vitamines: I paid 20 USD for an 8 day course of Amoxicilin.  I would have paid a fraction of that in Europe.  Vitamine C costs a FORTUNE here.
4. Contact lenses and contact lens solution. I just paid 22 dollars for contact lens solution.
5. Your Mattress: I got the foam mattress from Ikea in Paris, and it set me back 50 euros. Mattresses in Abidjan are expensive
6.  Sheets and towels
7. Kids toys -- Children's toys, especially electronic ones, can be very expensive
8. Children's books in English:  Think ahead and bring them with you
9. Curtains, unless you want to settle for crappy expensive ones, or have some made...
10. Carpets, if you like proper floor coverings, bring your own...
11. MATERNITY WEAR

Bonus points for bringing back-up power cords for your laptops, adaptors, and whatever, music speaker system you don't want to pay an arm and a leg for in Abidjan...

Tune in tomorrow for my list of things that I could have left at home...

T-Pain, or a journey down memory lane

I look back fondly on the early naughts as years of studying, interspersed with some pretty wild partying. On campus, we would have massive parties where everyone would dance to songs with silly titles (and sometimes equally silly dance moves): "Chicken Noodle Soup", "Buy you a drank" and "Superman [dat hoe]" come to mind. If these don't ring a bell, check out the videos -- real gems... Sadly, once I graduated, my undying love for Auto-tune was no longer, and T-pain was largely forgotten.


In fact, T-Pain was so forgotten that when I heard people saying he was coming to Abidjan, I couldn't remember a single song he'd released. All of that changed, as I sat with my room-mate in Abidjan traffic yesterday morning.  The familiar beat of "Buy you a Drank" came on, and my French room-mate sat looking aghast, as I did the shoulder lean made popular by the song's music video so many years earlier.  I got to the office, opened Itunes and found some of T-Pain's masterpieces: "I'm in Love with a Stripper" was the first song to come up.

For those of you unfamiliar with T-Pain's "I'm in Love with a Stripper", I've posted the video.  It should help you decide whether or not you want to go see T-Pain in Abidjan on August 7th at the Hotel Ivoire.

Not sure I'll attend, but I really hope he performs I'm in Love with a Stripper, which for many men in Abidjan is a reality they are intimately acquainted with. Needless to say, this situation only brings heartbreak, or as a male friend once said: "The worst thing a guy can do here [in Abidjan] is domesticate/privatize a public good [bar-girl/semi sex-worker]."

It's raining, it's pouring and Abidjan is flooding...

It's rainy season in Abidjan, and I am soooo glad I have my rain-boots and large umbrella. 

Unfortunately, they can't protect me from the flooding. The thing is, in Abidjan, when it rains, it pours "Noah and the Ark" style, sometimes for 24 hours straight. Combine that with a local government that hasn't cleaned out the ditches that are supposed to catch the excess water, and corrupt planning officials who let developers obstruct drainage systems, and you end up with a murky swimming pool instead of roads when it rains.

I instagrammed a pic of what part of my harrowing taxi ride to work looked like this morning (the widget is on the left side of the screen) and the pic below is the view from my friend's window on Boulevard de Marseille...  

Here are a couple of things I wish I'd known before rainy season:

• Zone 4 floods in the rainy season.  It doesn't flood as badly as parts of Riviera i.e. your car won't be swept away, and people don't die on this side of town, but it can get  pretty bad.  The main affected roads are the alley that takes you to Hayat (the alley that leads to Rue Lumière), many of the streets off of Rue Mercedes (aka Rue Pierre et Marie Curie), including Rue Marconi, Rue Fleming and Rue Docteur Calmette. If you're off of Boulevard de Marseille, near the Wafou, you'll be stuck, unless you're in a SUV with high clearance. 

• Y'a pas route Taxi drivers don't like to go to places that are flooded.  This means finding a ride in or out of your neighborhood can be an uphill battle. Case in point, I stood outside in the pouring rain for 15 minutes with taxi after taxi refusing to take me to Plateau.

• Now is the time to look for housing.  After all, you know whether your future road will flood...

•  Bad roads + murky pools of water = flat tires.  

• Not having an SUV means having less control on your ability to navigate the city... 

• If you have to go out, and the rain has caused flooding, leave while it's raining.  The terrible visibility makes most people wait for the rain to end.  Once it clears up a bit, you're sitting in flooded traffic Armageddon. 

• If you have a car, make sure your insurance covers water damage that can happen when your car is parked, and water damage caused by driving in deep water.

But hey, malaria and flooding aside, it's not all bad. The weather is cooler.  And there aren't as many mosquitoes as you would think there would be.

Multiple allegiances in Abidjan during the World Cup.

Love it or hate it – and I have been known to do both on occasion – Abidjan is a city that pulses to its own vibrant beat. Part of what gives it its vibe is the fact that Abidjan is a city of immigrants, who’ve left their home countries in search of a better life. That said, they remain proudly Burkinabé or Lebanese, and one barely need scratch beneath the surface to see that the city is full of people with mixed allegiances. Come World Cup time, everyone gathers around the national team and cheers them on with high hopes. What looked like every man woman and child was decked out in an Ivorian jersey, and for a couple of weeks, everyone morphed into diehard soccer fans, and all of the old tensions were forgotten. 

The incredible display of national and regional unity, has made watching the World Cup here particularly special. I have watched matches in Lebanese bars, in Ivorian maquis, and in my office building. Once it became clear the “Elephants” would not advance, everyone started cheering for other teams – primarily the remaining African ones.  Slowly, but surely, you could feel unity exit stage left, as multiple allegiances began to reappear.  So much so, that no one batted an eye when I cheered for the US to beat Ghana, and a local taxi driver said he was supporting France because his brother lived there. This place reminds me of how much we are all connected to one another in ways that we often forget. Here, somehow, it all works.  And that’s what makes this place special.    

Update: When I got home last night, I saw my building's security guard staring intently at a TV screen, watching the last minutes of the Germany Algeria game. He looked up at me and said the French equivalent of: --Welp, there goes the last African team...

5 Things you don't need to take with you to Abidjan...

1. Clothes Labor is cheap and chances are you'll have a cleaning lady.  You are also going to want to buy local clothes in African (wax) fabric.
2. Good leather. It molds in the humidity here, unless you are extremely diligent.
3. High heeled shoes.  The roads are too bad for me to waste my precious shoes here.
4. Most foodstuffs.  I have found a million different kinds of foodstuffs I would never have imagined. If you can find it in Paris or in Paris Store  (www.paris-store.com/)  or in a Lebanese grocery store you can probably find it here...
5. Wood furniture (especially wardrobes).  If you're comfortable working with a carpenter, get it done here: Abidjan has nice wood and good carpenters. Also, most apartments have wardrobes in them...