Abidjan

Abidjan is a city of merchants. By rough estimate, at least half of the four million inhabitants spend all of their time hawking wares. They do so with incredible persistence: all over the city they sit or stand in the tropical heat for hours, holding out in the black automobile exhaust. In the middle of the busiest intersection they wave colourful flip-flops or little packs of pocket tissues. They sit behind tiny street-side tables and sell peanuts in old bottles or bananas. These tenacious salespeople fascinate me; I prefer to buy from them than in the supermarket. Yet the most astonishing of them is a man named Andoubou.

I meet him at lunchtime in a restaurant on the Rue du Canal. Three of us are eating rice with pistachio sauce when Andoubou walks over. He must have been on his feet a long time, for he is wearing a suit that is damp with sweat. The old man’s face is covered with gray beard stubble. From his black leather bag, Andoubou pulls out a dark-coloured wooden penis of considerable size and begins to rub at it over the set table. I am speechless.

The old man mumbles that he has just the right thing if you want a huge erection and to make love for hours on end. His bag contains large amounts of a brown powder. “Just a spoonful in your food is enough,” murmurs Andoubou, pointing at our pistachio sauce. To me, the wonder drug smells like cat food. I ask what it’s made of. “It comes from Nigeria” is all Andoubou will reveal or all he can reveal. His French vocabulary is not very formidable, quite in contrast to the marketing tool with which he continues on his way, sweating profusely in the service of manliness.

His form of advertising is not exactly appetizing, but it is effective. It’s the only way he can gain a valuable asset in this turbulent city full of competitors: the attention of possible buyers.

Can peddlers like Andoubou from Treichville make a living with their businesses? I imagine that it’s more survival than a secure living. They themselves buy only what’s necessary; eat one meal a day. However, the successful ones climb the social ladder; open their own shops and one day they are the bosses. This is the dream that keeps them going.

I can just see it: one day, old Andoubou will be sitting in his own glittering shopping centre. He’s made it – his own empire. His employees travel in great swarms through the restaurants of Abidjan, through all of western Africa, where everywhere the men stand in line to purchase Andoubou’s brown magic powder. What a show.

And yet it’s only a dream.