Footnotes from Abidjan

I moved to Abidjan with my husband in the early 1990s at the height of the AIDS epidemic when treatment was unavailable in most African countries. He was excited at the prospect of working at an AIDS project run by the CDC while I had huge reservations about taking two small children to Cote d’Ivoire.

Apart from the risk of malaria and other tropical diseases, there was the high crime rate in Abidjan and unsafe blood supply. Yet it didn’t take long for me to fall in love with the country and people, though it was hard to witness the poor health and economic conditions of many around us.

A positive HIV test result was a death sentence back then. One of the guards at our house—who played hide-and-seek with our children and drew chalk animals on our driveway with them—developed AIDS within a year of our arrival.

Over two agonizing months we watched his steep decline, visiting him at his compound and at the hospital where he died. Five years later, our part-time cook grew ill just before we moved back to the U.S. in 1999. He and his wife tested positive for HIV, and both died within a year of their diagnosis. Those events were the book ends around our sojourn in Cote d’Ivoire. Then came civil war.

Return to Abidjan

The beach at Assini

Fifteen years after we moved away, I returned to Cote d’Ivoire to see how much or how little things had changed. Despite a decade of civil war, the population had grown by 50% since the 1990s. After the war ended in 2011, another building boom began, drawing immigrants from Ghana, Mali, and Burkina Faso to Abidjan in search of work.

On a visit to our old neighborhood, I took a taxi up Rue des Jardins which was packed with cars and pedestrians. Like the rest of the city, the residential area looked less green than it had when we lived there after many trees had been removed to make room for new offices and shops.

Doris, Gladys, and Ousmane

I was able to meet up with our former housekeeper and guards who were still working hard to send money home to their families in their countries of origin—Togo and Burkina. They had carried on with their lives and jobs during a decade of civil war in Cote d’Ivoire.

Gladys’ Girls with Terry

It was heartwarming to hear that treatment was now available for anyone who tested positive for HIV, and that antiretroviral medications allowed people to live normal lives without developing AIDS.

The U.S. Government has spent billions of dollars to provide testing, counseling, and treatment for people infected with HIV in African countries. As a result, over half of the people living with HIV in Cote d’Ivoire were receiving treatment.

The other good news was that the African Development Bank (ADB)—which had pulled up stakes and left Abidjan during the civil war, taking thousands of professionals with it—had returned to Cote d’Ivoire and brought new infusions of investment, brain power, and jobs for local staff.

I was delighted to see that the International School my children had attended in the 1990s had reopened on its former campus after serving as a base for U.N. peacekeepers during the war.

Seeing Angie

I also met up with my friend Angie who had lived near us in Abidjan with her husband in the 1990s. Our children used to play together on Sundays at Assini Beach where Angie and her husband owned a paillote.

On my return fifteen years later, I spent a week in Assini with Angie who had also moved away before the coup that led to civil war. Angie had worked as a nurse in Congo, Rwanda, Liberia and Cote d’Ivoire for twenty-plus years. 

Immediately after the civil war ended in C.I., Angie started raising funds in Geneva (where she lives) and Brussels (where she’s from) to rebuild a primary school in the village of Assouinde, which is next to Assini.

Angie at the Assini School

Within five years, she’d renovated the main school buildings and had flush toilets and a new water system installed. She’d also raised enough money to build a preschool, a clinic, and teacher housing on school grounds. As a result, enrollment at the village school had jumped from less than 100 students in 2011 to 400-plus by 2015.

Angie in Assini

I got to tour the school with Angie and see the fruits of her labors. Through her I met dozens of villagers, including the village chief. We were invited to the home of the local imam whose baby Angie had delivered when no doctor or midwife could be found. She was the guest of honor at the baby's baptism and celebration dinner.

Angie & Assini friends

It wasn't the type of vacation one would expect on a trip to the beach, filled as it was with meetings and events in a small west African village. Yet I enjoyed the warm air and sunny skies, as well as meeting people from all walks of life. It turned out to be rich cultural experience and a rare chance to reconnect with people in C.I. thanks to Angie.