The Taxi Chase

Just getting out of the capital is already an adventure.

I left my hotel late in the morning and walked to the main road, passing men repairing cars and women peeling pale yellow oranges. I was headed to a branch of Orange, like Verizon for the francophone world, about a half hour walk away to by a SIM card. This was the same walk I took yesterday top the Cap Sud Mall, but this time things felt different. People were paying me much more attention to me. They smiled, waved, shouted hello, stuck a thumbs up out of a crowded minibus window. 

This treatment also felt familiar. I noticed the same thing when I took the subway to the airport. On the way, I noticed people smiling wistfully in my direction, making eye contact when they wouldn’t have before. 

But I have a theory. I think it’s because of my 40 pound, battered, olive hiking backpack. I already know that when I hitchhike, I get far more rides when I wear my big backpack. There is a kind of magic when you put on a backpack like this. You are no longer a normal person, you become a backpacker. I know a bit about clowning, and clowns describe their red nose as sacred, much like a backpacker’s pack. Usually the red nose is the last part of the costume to go on. And once it’s on, they have become a clown. A hiking backpack functions in the same way. When I wear this, I transform.

Interestingly, travel is not unlike clowning. When I don’t speak the same language as the locals, I communicate through exaggerated facial expressions and gestures. Clowns play dumb - that’s why their funny. They are simple, pure, gullible. I have been in Ivory Coast not even 24 hours, so I literally am ignorant and gullible. I am like a baby in the world of the locals. The only way through is to be goofy, ask lots of dumb questions, and hope for kindness.

My pack cuts into my shoulders as I walk in the humid heat. Taxis and motorbikes roar past on the main drag of Abidjan’s Markory District, and when I finally arrive, the shop is closed for All Saints Day. Feeling frustrated, I head to a nearby Lebanese Patisserie, and eat a $20 chèvre salad and labneh, sharing the air conditioned restaurant with what looked like Lebanese businessmen. Boulangeries still mark major intersections in cities here, and I see people walking around with baguettes, a remnant of the country’s colonial past. The large Lebanese population here is also linked to France. Lebanon was a French Protectorate, and after Ivory Coast’s independence in 1960, many came here to do business. Many have been here for generations and consider themselves primarily Ivorian. If you go to a grocery store in this country, chances are it’s run by a Lebanese family. 

It would be more Rainbow of me to rely on local transport, but I splurge for a taxi to the bus stop to head to the Gathering. I feel a little guilty, but time is ticking and I want to arrive at the Gathering before dark. Makossa music warbled on the car radio, my hand hangs out the window. We whizz past manicured parks, up a hill, into Adjame. 

This neighborhood is completely different from downtown. If chaos had a home in the world, it might be here. Thousands of people crowd each side of the taxi. We slow to a crawl. Each side of the road is piled higher than the car with rubble, in top of which people work on every task imaginable. Some are hammering the rubble, another repairing a shoe. Many seem to be waiting for a bus. Kids play. It’s like being in a Where’s Waldo. Ahead of us, two black plumes of smoke block out the sky. ”Car fires,” says my driver. He tells me to roll up my window for the smoke, but I wonder if there are other reasons. We keep climbing uphill, and the chaos coalesces into a market. Stalls selling eggs, clothes, and phone chargers crowd the side of the road. I have been feeling comfortable and safe so far. But then, a few young men start to notice me, “He le Blanc” (Hey White guy!) they call. One slaps the window by my face, making a steering wheel motion with his hand. I shake my head, unsure what he means. We inch by, he recedes. But soon there are other men. 

“What do they want?” I ask the cab driver. 

‘Does vouyous,” said the driver, looking furious at them. “Vouyous” is an old French word for crook, like “brigand.” On my left, one guy rubs his thumb on his fingers, a sign for money, and leans towards my window.

”You can lower it,” says my driver. I roll it down all the way. He raises it back up to just a crack, and asks about the location of the bus. The man answers, and we keep driving. 

“This is the bus station,” says my driver, pointing to a concrete hangar filled with more market stalls and people sitting, “but no bus is there now. I will take you to the bus,  then you get straight on the bus. There you are safe. No open will bother you on the bus. But my price keeps rising.” 

“Where is the bus,” I ask.

”Not far, up the road,” he replies.

I am unsure if he’s being serious about the risk or if he is just angling for a higher fare, but I agree. We reach a white coach bus, but it’s headed the other way and not stopping. The chase is on. My driver weaves back down through the market, beeping furiously and waving out his window at the bus. We reach the open road at the bottom of the market, and the bus speeds up. The driver levels things up. He speeds broadside the bus into oncoming traffic, edging it to the curb. Finally, it stops. I run out.

”Vice vite!” (Quick quick!) my driver calls, tossing my backpack onto my back, I toss him 10000 West African Francs (about $16), double the fare, and I am on the bus.