This post was triggered by our recent crocodile-sighting.

No, not that one:



This one:



Back in the late 1990s, we lived for almost 10 months in Cote d'Ivoire. That time is up there in my memory with some of my life's best experiences.

And yet we have hardly any photographs...

I quoted Jason Wilson in a post the other day. He talks of the need to periodically check in with the younger traveller that is our earlier self, and ask new questions about places we've visited long ago. One of the questions I would ask that earlier self is: "Why the **** did you not take a camera?"

Partly it was a desire not to stand out. Many of those around us had very little. You didn't want to be for ever rocking up to places with cases full of expensive kit (and this was the pre-digital era, so our camera was heavy and cumbersome). But local people EXPECTED us to have a camera, and were often disappointed that we didn't. I particularly remember a conversation in Burkina Faso: It had already become a subject of huge concern that I had no children, and when it transpired that I also had no camera, I became of all women the most to be pitied.

So, no photos of the crocs of Yamoussoukro, my subject for the day. Instead, some stand-in photos, but at least they originate from that period of our lives.


He likes to think of himself as a crocodile


Once a croc, maybe?

Possibly, the lack of photos made me more careful with my diarizing. So here, straight from the horse's mouth, is an account of my first of several trips to Cote d'Ivoire's official capital:

Sun 28 Dec 1997

There were six in the group. Myself, our Christmas guest from the UK, two Indians who lived in Lagos, and a French couple.

The motorway stretches to just beyond Mbrimbo; then it's a slower, windier, dual-track road, past little villages and markets.

Until, that is, you reach the edge of Yamoussoukro, where the highway widens to three or four lanes for each carriageway, and is studded with street lights. A network of these huge, empty roads criss-crosses the city. It is so quiet for an African town. There are hardly any people, hardly any vehicles, hardly any houses, and we'd been there hours before I saw a chicken. Only in the centre do you start seeing all the normal stalls and bystanders of African life.

The Harmattan is definitely here now. It feels quite cool in the mornings in Abidjan, but here in Yamoussoukro it brought a hot, dry wind. And it was very hazy, making the whole vast emptiness of the place, punctuated only by the colossal buildings of the basilica, the Peace Foundation, and the Maison du Parti, even more surreal and dream-like.

We were able to appreciate all this from the top floor of the Hotel du President, our first stop. It's another vast edifice, apparently with an extraordinarily low occupancy rate. But we certainly appreciated the viewing gallery of the restaurant, and also the toilets.

We then drove past the Maison du Parti to the truly impressive Fondation Houphouet-Boigny, where you sweep up the monumental approach, and enter the massive marble hall. It is a splendid design. Behind you is the glass facade, above you the lofty heights of the hall.

Such opulent use of space and materials... For the umpteenth time already in Yamoussoukro, you wonder: Was this the best way to spend all this money? And yet people no doubt thought that when the English built their fine cathedrals. There were surely millions of poor then too. The poor you will have always with you... Do Westerners not also restore opera houses while young people live in cardboard boxes on the streets? Who gets to calibrate these balances?

And Houphouet-Boigny's projects, though they remind you of socialist megolamania, do have a sublime quality, and will probably be admired for generations. Our local guide spoke with pride of the number of lifts and escalators, the number of square metres of marble.

We went into the massive lecture theatre, which seats thousands. They're not at all precious here. If you want, you can climb up on stage, and pretend to lecture.

We went on to the site of one lot of Grandes Ecoles -- engineering, agronomy, business studies, etc. La creme de la creme of graduates comes here, apparently and they are practically guaranteed jobs once they finish. Again, the architecture is grandiose, the designs are impressive, and they're way out of town.

Back to the basilica, briefly, for a preview, and a glimpse of les fideles emerging from mass. It's mostly the wealthy who go. The basilica, like the universities, is out of town, and really needs a car for access...

I haven't mentioned the mosque, which is in the middle of town, and is quite impressive. Our guide told us that [the late President] Houphouet-Boigny had had it built, but because he was a Christian, the Muslims wouldn't use it. Until, that is, he started offering a premium for attendance...

Lunch next. More good local food, with attieke, aloco, carp, etc.

And after lunch we went to see the crocodiles...

They inhabit the rather splendid lake which forms the foreground to HB's former palace (now inhabited by his nephew and family, according to Akan tradition) and also to one of the best views of the basilica.

When we arrived, the crocs were all (well, not all, as I believe there are loads) splayed out on a sort of shelving beach arrangement. Totally motionless. But totally. They looked like rubber crocodiles.

But when the gardien emerged with a lump of (rubber-looking) fish, these were rubber crocs no longer. Massive jaws; awesome teeth; prehistoric gait as they lumbered off towards the water. And then this split-second transition back into total suspended animation, freezing in whatever pose came handy: mouths open, heads raised, or that sinister water position with just the snout showing...

Impressive.

But not as impressive as the basilica...

This is, firstly, vast. It dwarfs the humans surrounding it, who provide the only indication of scale. It is bigger than St Peter's Rome (and masses bigger than Notre Dame de Paris), as carefully designed diagrams are at pains to point out.

It is, secondly, surrounded by coloured glass. The walls are effectively stained glass, and each section round the circumference is designed to open up as a huge door. So the whole thing has a feeling of light, lightness, and glowing colour. The windows are magnificent, indescribably beautiful, filled with vivid, almost overwhelming hues.

The ceiling is also beautiful, leading the eye up, up, to the dome, where hovers the dove of peace. There are just a couple of chapels -- the rest is all open-plan, centred around the huge canopy. There is some lovely carving, gifts from a local artist (a kneeling Pope Jean-Paul, a pieta, a depiction of Mary as an African woman).

Again, the guide was keen to point out the technical achievements -- an electric sanctuary lamp, an electronic organ, the only church in Christendom to have lifts concealed in the pillars... He didn't mention, but I noticed, with displeasure, the imported electric candle machine. I would never pay money to light up an electric bulb as the memory of my presence or my prayer... We whizzed up one of the pillars to the gallery, from where we got an even more astounding impression of its size, as we looked up to the dome, down to the main body, and outside to the atlantean parvis and the colossal columns. Extraordinary.

The grounds of the basilica also contain two huge mansions. One houses the main priest, and the other housed -- presumably once -- the Pope.

After a visit to the suitably palatial toilets, we hit the road home.

*****


Not sure if there would have been crocs here...


But definitely none here

It's been interesting to do some updating of all this. I had no idea at the time that V.S. Naipaul had written an essay entitled The Crocodiles of Yamoussoukro, back in 1984. Sounds interesting: "One keeps waiting for Mr. Naipaul's famous contempt to drip. But it never seems to, and this is either new for him or he's been previously misunderstood. His disdain, at least in 'The Crocodiles of Yamoussoukro,' is not for what is primitive about Africa. His scorn is reserved for those who impose their fantasies on the continent... For the Africans and their magic night world, symbolized to him by the crocodiles of Yamoussoukro, V.S. Naipaul seems to have respect amounting nearly to awe."

In 1999 there was a coup in Cote d'Ivoire. It's still struggling to maintain its equilibrium: "The presidential election of 31 October could have been an opportunity for Côte d'Ivoire to end the series of crises that began with the death of President Felix Houphouet-Boigny in late 1993. Instead, the country is heading for a new confrontation between supporters of Alassane Ouattara, Henri Konan Bedie and Laurent Gbagbo, the three figures at the heart of the contestation for nearly three decades. Their conflicts have already led to a coup d’etat in 1999, the country’s partitioning from 2002 to 2012 and an armed confrontation following the disputed 2010 election that left 3,000 dead by April 2011."

Truly, the crocodiles aren't all in the lake.

But the rep of the actual reptiles hasn't improved much either.

The gardien we saw, who was in charge of feeding the beasts for almost four decades, was killed by one of them in 2012.

Yamoussoukro sounds as though it is much less smart and shiny than it was back in 1997, and locals face not only potholes and broken street lights, but also rogue populations of crocodiles, who have apparently made off into the city's waterways, and reproduced. One local testifies: "There has been no policy for the crocodiles. If you go near the water, they will eat you." No-one even knows how many there are now.

Despite their thuggish ways, though, they have maintained their sacred aura: "So when they come out of the water looking for a snack, the palace guards do not shoot them. Instead, firemen are called to put them gingerly back."