Walking through the Ghana tree tops

the rain forced us to leave the Ivory Coast behind a bit earlier than scheduled and we continued onward to Ghana, not a long distant, but enough to have Thomas' phone disappearing right before the border.

A lot of people told us good things about Ghana and we were looking forward to that distinctive English speaking vibe in Africa. Our first stop was Cape Coast, a little beach town with a UNESCO heritage castle previously used for the slave trade (very reminiscent of Ile de Gorée), and a nearby nature park where you can walk on canopies through the treetops.
We only stayed one day (but two nights) before moving on to the capital, Accra, from where I'm writing this post.

7 years already....

Story telling on the market square

There is something about African stories and legends I find fascinating. Riddled with proverbs, often a lesson to learn from it, mixed with songs and dances, imitations and lots of facial expressions...
Yesterday, we attended une soirée de contes on the main square of the coastal village of Grand Bassam, with three story tellers and a (rather mediocre) poet.
It drew hundreds of kids, listening with various degrees of concentration, and many adults, commenting and criticizing each story and the techniques used by each teller.
My personal favorite was the first one, Floppy, a young lady with a lot of energy and focus, and some dance steps and songs mingled into with her stories.
My favorite proverb of the evening was: "Celui qui a la diarrhée, ne craint pas l'obscurité..." ("He who has diarrhea does not fear the darkness"). Not exactly sure what it means, but it sounds great.

I wish I could say the evening was improvised, and that people just randomly got up and started sharing stories for the delight of the audience. However, it was actually part of a street festival (Festival des arts de la Rue) taking place this weekend in Grand Bassam, with magicians, body builders, music and all kinds of performances. Hence, there was special lighting, sound system, some of the story tellers came from far, even Equatorial Guinea, which all made it great and more professional, but in a way I regretted not stumbling across this kind of event by chance... We also met up with Pierre-Jean, a French DJ, friend of a friend, who had traveled down from Ouagadougou to perform his set...
Next day however, the rain prevented us from doing much...

Ciné Droit Libre

One of the advantages of a big city is that, although there often isn't too much to visit in terms of tourist attractions, there are certain cultural or artistic activities to enjoy. Chance had it that we were in Abidjan for the Festival Cine Droit Libre,  a cinema using short movies and documentaries as a tool for expression and to promote human rights. 

This year's festival centered on the children's rights and debuted yesterday, coinciding with the International Day for the Rights of Children. We attended the opening ceremony, with some youth singing and performing.

Afterwards, we watched two short movies, one regarding the Mali situation with Tiken Jah Fakoly (see below), from droitlibre.tv. The final movie was regarding female circumcision, entitled "L'appel de Diégoune". 

It was followed by a brief debate with a woman who formerly performed female circumcision, an immam prohibiting circumcision and the representative of UNICEF.

During the festival, two Master classes are also organized, and after explaining a bit regarding our projects in Morocco, I was invited to attend. A welcome treat, especially as today I just learned I wasn't shortlisted for a peace building job as I applied for (Asia Regional Director in Cambodia), which I was feeling really excited about and had put a lot of time drafting the application for. Not always easy to combine job hunting with travelling...

L'appel de Diégoune from Tostan on Vimeo.
The master classes turned out to be an interesting place to chat and hear about other initiatives in the region. The facilitator, a Dutch guy Gideon Vinck, is based in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso and they are promoting these Human Rights festival in several countries now. However, on a technical level, it was more for beginners and I don't really think to have learned something new., But, as I said, always nice to see and hear what is happening and how others work with multimedia and development.

Abidjan

Last segment of our trip, and starting big, with Abidjan!

Abidjan is a huge city,  and after three days, I still feel as if we've only scratched the surface, walking around the neighborhood of our residence and the city center a bit. It definitely has a very nice vibe to it, though many of the residents complain it was a lot better before the crisis.

We visited the local cathedral, build in 1980 and which allows you to go to the top, a 100m high, though part of the climb is in the dark and it doesn't feel very stable, especially if you know parts of the roof of the church were hit during the conflict and are in dire need of repairs.

The skyline of Abidjan is quite impressive, and more than we've seen anywhere else in Africa. If you squint your eyes, you can feel the NY vibe just a bit.

 

Love this. "To rest: hamac, bed and carpets"

There is quite a bit of rain in the air, which makes for beautiful sunsets. Look closely however, the dots in the sky are no specks of dirt, nor are they birds. It's all... bats! Thousands and thousands of bats, very impressive sight... and sound.