To The West: A Night In Cocody...

Wale, a Nigerian low level expatriate, he knew the nooks and cranny of Abidjan. He had an ego to boot, you would think he had the key to the city. It's Friday and I am sitting at the 27th floor of an office building in Plateux (Abidjan's CBD). I am patiently waiting for Wale to wrap up his unending series of phone calls. I look down to the street and I see people scuttling toward the park, hopping onto Woroworos (mini-bus, danfo, tuke tuke). Wale lifts his head up, covering the mouth-piece of the telephone with his palm, and says, 'it is on tonight'.
We head to L'hotel Ivoire, on our way we are stopped by some gendarmie (mobile police, oh yes in Africa we have entire units of SWAT teams making sure the roads are safe). Wait a minute this dude isn't supposed to stop us, we were driving a marked car, we are now working up some anger, and practiced a line or two of our phony American accent. The guy takes one look at us, we chorus 'Hi', and he hisses and goes L'American. We nod, and he waves for us to go ahead. Aha, works every time.
The skating rink is broken, the ice partially melted, since there isn't liability insurance in Africa we pass on that one. I end up sitting back sipping some local brew and watch Wale play table tennis with a drunk, pot-bellied, French man, in his Hanes underpant. Oh yes Abidjan is as hot as Lagos, with a smelly lagoon too. Oh how all those French paint and chemical plants polluted the water day in day out.
It is dark now its time to party, I never knew techno melded so well with mapouka, as I dance the night away with my logobi moves (sorry I can not describe this, it involved a lot of booty shaking though). I ought to mention that Ivorien's are healthy people, wink, wink, all that rump shaking was a delight to watch. This was one night I would live to remember, everything went well until the French folks started throwing off my rythm on the dance floor. As we walked towards the car that night, I thought to myself, the beat did start from Africa.
A couple of days later, I was woken by the sound of mortar, nothing was on TV. We get a call from pop's office asking us to vamoose to the airport asap.Thank God it was only me and pop that time. As we made our way towards the airport, the only cab we could get, driven by some greedy Nigerian guy who charged us enough money to build a tiny bungalow, I looked back at Cocody, it was so serene and so beautiful. I miss Abidjan.