I’d heard that the West African sunsets are ones of the most stunning in the world, and I wasn’t disappointed. In the city of Abidjan, or ‘Babi’ as the locals affectionately call it, the skies are private and eternal. When the night closed in, I would watch the streets grow longer and soak in the sounds of life, suddenly so close to me.
I had the chance to spend some time in a village up north of Abidjan. Langoussou, a Baoulé village of no more than a dozen households, is nested in the shrublands and lives from the harvest of cocoa, the brown gold which flows mightily through the veins of the country. The uncle of a friend in Abidjan invited me to his home there, where I would help out in the surrounding plantations. During that time, I took the opportunity to adapt to a new rhythm of life, marked by long days of work and evening skies setting down gloriously onto its people.
The writings and photographs I was able take back from my time in Ivory Coast hopefully encompass a certain beauty which I didn’t expect to find, and yet never felt so familiar.
‘The wind outside brushes sand through the front door and bends the light in our direction, giving a religious feel to the room. Now through his eyes I could see a youth I’d forgotten, buried in the long shadows of time.
There I was, I thought, looking at the boy so dramatically tied to this strange place - and watching him now felt like watching my own dream from a distance.
He had seemed so familiar, but the whole time I had only been watching myself.
There I was. Not quite a stranger, almost someone I always knew.’
