In my previous blog, “Return to West Africa,” I talked about a Peace Corps requirement that I work on a summer project when school was out during the break in the school year.
I discussed how I went to Danané in the upper west area of the Ivory Coast and talked with the agricultural chief of the area, the Sous-Prefect, and Mr. Louis Gomet about my proposal to do a village garden in one of their villages.
After Mr. Gomet selected the village “Déahouépleu,” we promptly went to the village and proposed the villagers do a village garden.
After listening to us and discussing the suggested garden, they agreed. We looked at several proposed sites and finally selected one for the garden. Then I left and planned to return after school finished in June.
In this picture is my friend Bertin with me
When the school year ended in June 1967, it was time to go to “Déahouépleu” and begin my summer project. Déahouépleu is pronounced, “Day-a-who-way-plew.”
I will talk about life and adventure in my village in two parts.
Here is the first part
On Wednesday, July 19, 1967, I left Gagnoa in my Deux Chevaux Camionette to go to my summer project near Danané.
I became convinced that I would have too much baggage to carry and that it would be quite impractical to change bush taxis and mille kilos two or three times, each time transferring my baggage and other things I needed.
If I arrived late, for example, in Man (pronounced Ma) and was too late to catch the taxi to Danané, I might have to spend the night at the gare (station) quite possibly in the rain, which would have complicated the situation even more.
This doesn’t even mention the question about how to travel from Danané to my village Déahouépleu itself. I felt it was totally impractical. My mobility would have been eliminated. As it was, I filled my Deux Chevaux with tools, seeds, chemical fertilizer, books, a lamp, a camping stove, a few pots and pans, clothes, and two cots.
While working in the school gardens in the Gagnoa area, I made friends with Blédé Bertin, one of the responsible teachers in my gardens. He asked to accompany me to my summer project since he was apparently off work during the summer. I agreed to have him join me as long as he wished.
Gary and Bertin
He and I drove through Duékoué on our trip north and stopped to eat lunch. Subsequently, we drove on to Guiglo.
Guiglo was a small western town with one B.P. gas station, an abandoned Texaco station, and one Agip (an Italian gas company). I saw one well-stocked general store and a few concession stands during my short stay.
Then we continued about forty kilometers to Toulépleu, a large village located near the border with Liberia. To my great surprise, we saw Gabriel Téhé Manh, Gerard’s chief assistant in Gagnoa.
He had finished his course to become a “Conductor of Agriculture.” He told us he ranked second in his class. At the time of our visit, he awaited word when he could leave for Belgium to continue his studies.
Gabriel invited us into his nearby village Zéaglo to meet the Chef du canton (canton chief). His actual village of birth, Douandrou, was razed (torn down), but I didn’t find out why it happened. We arrived in the middle of a marriage ceremony.
As we approached, we saw a man talking to a group of villagers somewhat distant from him. Then we saw a woman who appeared to be the mother of the bride talking to a smaller group closer to her.
She spoke, I was told, about the obligations of marriage, things that one was supposed to do. The chief invited us to sit, which we did. Shortly thereafter, Gabriel suggested we go to his friend’s house, where he wanted to serve us some refreshments. He served us some beer, which hit the spot.
I took some pictures of Gabriel and had some taken of Gabriel and me. After we finished our refreshments, we left the village to go to Toulépleu. Our visit only took about forty-five minutes.
Our Work in Toulépleu
We arrived in Toulépleu about 6.00 p.m. and found our way to the police station. We met Kehi Victor, to whom I was referred to buy some masks that I had ordered. Before going anywhere else, I greeted Victor, the Commissaire de police (Police Commissar).
Victor was dressed in a colorful uniform that consisted of a red beret, golden epaulets, and a tan shirt and slacks. He was the only uniformed Ivorian I had seen dressed up like that. He was very sharp looking.
Then, Victor sent a young man with us to show us to the village Quaroo where we were to find Mr. André Poinbwin, who would lead us to “Old Man Quallé,” the owner of the masks. Actually, we needed to go to another nearby village Ziouébly, where we met the old man named Quallé (pronounced Kal-lay) sitting in a chair.
We shook hands with him. After a while, he invited us into his house and brought out eight masks, five spoons, a handle, and a statue. He began by asking for 3,000 francs CFA for one mask. Some young men crowded into the Old Man’s house to watch us and to support him. Finally, they agreed to accept 4,000 francs CFA for three masks.
In addition, I chose another mask, the statue, and two spoons for 3,000 francs CFA. My total cost amounted to about $28 in American money.
This Picture Shows the House Bertin and I Lived in During Our Stay in the Village
After completing the commercial transaction, Bertin and I began to ask Old Man Quallé questions about the purchased items.
He replied the large spoons were ceremonial, along with the special serving dish (which I did not purchase) with a place for rice and another place for a sauce. These ceremonies, he said, were friendship ceremonies when occasionally they killed a cow to eat.
Quallé classified the masks into two groups, male and female. They used the male masks mainly in friendship ceremonies, while they employed the female masks for weddings, births, and deaths.
When we arrived back in Toulépleu, we decided to visit Mr. Gilbert Guidy, the Primary School Inspector in Gagnoa, who happened to take his vacation at that time in his home village, Toulépleu.
He had a large five-bedroom house with one shower and bathroom. We talked for a while. Then, they served us some cooked fish, to which we contributed some bread. Shortly thereafter, we went to bed in a bedroom he provided us. In the morning, after giving us some hot or warm water to get washed up, he served us coffee and bread for breakfast. Then we toured the village and even visited the old and new schools of Toulépleu village. Mr. Guidy, the son of the late chef de canton, excitedly told us about constructing a new six-class school constructed in cement instead of mud.
In principle, Mr. Guidy would become the next chef de canton, but he indicated that he would refuse the position because he hated being under the control of the Sous-Prefect. So the villagers would be obligated to select another chef at random. After we finished the tour, he was obliged to leave us for some meetings with village elders.
So we said goodbye
After we left Toulépleu, Bertin and I continued to Danané and arrived about 1:00 p.m. on July 21, two days after we left Gagnoa. We went directly to the Sous-Prefect’s residence. We arrived in town at a bad time because it was right in the middle of a women’s association visit from Man to their counterparts in Danané. Drinks. Dinner.
Then we waited and waited for the Sous-Prefect to come to his office or to inform us what to do. When we arrived, he boldly told us he would accompany us to the village. That would be wonderful if he would do that. By evening, I visited his house again, and he agreed I could stay at the administrative campement.
This Picture Shows the Communal Shower House
The next day, we waited again. I guess my presence pressed him too much, which was also complicated by the death of a functionary that apparently required the Sous-Prefect’s attention. He told me I could go to the village on my own.
I felt crushed. What good would that do? Why should the villagers be interested in their own development if the Sous-Prefect himself was not interested? I felt frustrated. In the late morning, I asked Mr. Louis Gomet, the Secretary-General of the PDCI, to accompany me to the village. When he hesitated, I asked him to go in the afternoon. He agreed. Finally, he came, and we left for the village.
When we got there, we met a young man who was the chef du village (village chief), Dohoua Lambert. At first, I doubted he was actually the chef du village because I couldn’t believe that a village would choose such a young man instead of an older man as their chief.
Here is Dohoua Lambert, the Village Chief, and his Family
After we arrived in Déahouépleu, the village, Bertin and I were basically assigned to a cement house with a cement floor (instead of a mud house like most of the houses in the village). It was owned by a villager named Anatole. His house had three sections. One side was for Anatole and his family. The other side was given to Bertin and me. Our side measured about six feet wide and eight feet long, just wide enough for my cot and the second cot for Bertin, with about a foot wide space between us.
The biggest room in the house was the center room, where we could sit at a table or gather. To wash dishes, the village chief sent his young daughter (about eleven years old) to help me. She also helped in other ways, such as with cooking, washing clothes, fetching water, heating the water, and carrying it to a separate shower room. While I showered, she waited nearby to watch in case anyone else might accidentally walk in on me.
Saturday, Sunday, and Monday evenings, the chef du groupe (group chief) Zongo Paul and chef du village (village chief) Dohoua Lambert came to visit me. In the mornings, I drank bangui (palm wine) with Paul, the chef du groupe, before going to work. After several days, he started to tu-toi me, which was an excellent sign. Paul was a very, very nice man.
Formerly, he was the chef du village until he was elected the chef du groupe, or, in other words, the chief of seven villages in 1957, ten years earlier. When I arrived in the village, Zongo Paul was not only the chef du groupe, but he was also the secretaire de centre secondaire (secondary center secretary) of the village Déahouépleu in the Blossé canton in the Danané Sous-Prefecture. I always enjoyed his company.
In this picture, Group Chief Zongo Paul is sitting on the right.
The village garden work began Monday morning with eight or ten villagers, including the Village Chief and the Delegate to the PDCI, and at least one notable. Gradually, the number of villagers increased to about fifty villagers by 10:00 a.m. In an hour, they had cleared the garden site of all trees and bushes.
And by 1:00 p.m., they had cleared the land. As I saw it, this constituted a good day’s work. Before returning to the village, Lambert, the village chief, asked me to thank every villager for their work, which I gladly did. It was impressive to see even the Chief work and show a good example.
The second day was not so good. Work began very, very slowly. About eight people worked the ground to break the foundations of old round houses. It was an agonizing process. About 10:00 a.m. I returned to the village to see the group chief. On the way, I met the PDCI delegate, Yomi Maurice, who invited me to drink some bangui, which we enjoyed at my house.
Then I accompanied him to the group chief’s house. While they discussed the garden in Yacouba (their native dialect), I merely gazed about. I saw the group chief become angry. Soon after, we three returned to the garden. There, the chief angrily talked to the villagers present.
Finally, they decided the best way to proceed would be to divide the garden site into sections for different families. In this way, every family would be responsible for a portion. It would be easy to spot the delinquent families and note their names for Mr. Gomet to handle.
The Village Garden After a Lot of Hard Work.
After this, the village chief’s family started to put up a fence around the garden while the Delegate’s family started to work the ground.
Now the work progressed faster. Nevertheless, the second day’s work was less productive than the first day’s work. Tuesday night, it rained thoroughly but not too badly.
Wednesday morning, I found out, was market day. So everybody waited for market day to finish before we could work in the garden.
Maurice, the PDCI Delegate, arrived to drink bangui with Bertin and me. It was my fifth and sixth glass since I had arrived. Now, I knew that Wednesday morning was market day, a time for me to rest and wait for the afternoon. Thursday, Bertin and I walked seven kilometers to Danané to make our needed purchases.
I felt I should not use the Deux Chevaux because it was really designated for the school gardens, not my summer project. Shortly after we arrived in Danané, it started to rain, or rather, to drizzle heavily. We waited until it stopped before returning to the village.
On Friday, things started slowly again. Finally, I heard from Village Chief Lambert that one of his brothers had a son who died the morning before. So Lambert went to express his sorrow to his brother. I felt it would be proper for me to express my condolences, which they would appreciate.
Along with Bertin, we walked to the small campement on the road to Danané. There, after greeting them good morning, I expressed my condolences to the father. He said he was very grateful for my gesture since, as he said, few would make the trip from the village to see him. So I was glad I made my gesture.
Eventually, our work began in the garden. They completed the fence to enclose the garden. Now, any animals would be hindered from entering the village garden. After I started measuring where the planches should be, I encountered a space problem.
The villagers had divided the garden site into two unequal portions, one for four families and the other for eight families. When I measured, some planches cut across the demarcation line. Village Chief Lambert suggested that each respective group of families would take care of its proper half of the planches.
Since I wanted the families to take care of the entire planches within their area of responsibility, I disagreed. I recommended that each family work on an equal number of planches, equally measured. But the Village Chief wisely urged respect for the demarcation line because each family was responsible for its particular section, and the gardening project would proceed more quickly.
Finally, I agreed. Then I measured those planches that traversed across the demarcation line and cut the planches, which then measured about seven meters each instead of ten meters.
After we settled that issue, I measured about twenty-six planches, after which Bertin finished measuring the planches with my occasional assistance. We ended up measuring about fifty-six planches.
The families of Anatole, our landlord, and a new mustached friend Mabéa Gabriel worked very hard to complete four planches and then cover them with palm branches and leaves. Another family in the village chief’s section also finished making four planches. At the end of that day, I felt really tired. We ended our work day at 5:00 p.m.
As soon as dinner was ready, we enjoyed our meal of avocado, rice, a sauce of gombo (okra), tomatoes, canned sardines, corn, and pineapples. Following dinner, Group Chief Paul, Village Chief Lambert, Delegate Maurice, and nine chefs de famille (family chiefs) came to our house at our invitation to chat and drink bangui.
They explained to me they selected a chef de famille to fulfill the necessary legal obligations with respect to the Ivorian government, for example, to the Sous-Prefect. They frequently chose a family chief to a certain extent for his youth and for his ability to speak French. This second reason motivated the choice of such a young village chief, about thirty years old.
The qualities of youth and ability to speak French facilitated participating in government functions and communicating better.
However, my impression was the chef de famille was frequently not the real leader of the family, which is to say, the one who enjoyed the actual authority and respect of the family. The genuine leader was more concerned officially with internal village affairs, I thought.
To introduce myself, I spoke a few words of greeting in Yacouba, the local dialect. Next, I asked for their names and wrote them down. Then the questions started. Family Chief Bleu Kean David began by commenting that since the villagers already had their sauces, “Why should they improve their diets?” Sadly, I did not record my response, but it would be relatively easy to surmise my answer.
The second question was a bombshell! If a villager refused to work in the garden, what would I do? This question made me a little leery. Bertin offered to help me out. He renounced the use of force and asserted we were there to persuade only. I repeated that I renounced the use of force. If I could not persuade them, we would not force them.
Evidently, this answer delighted them. Tokpa Bei Victor, Family Chief and President of the Youth, advised his fraternal brothers that I must never use force and that the issue must concern only the villagers.
Subsequently, Family Chief Oukoua Gbéada expressed his contentment with the work and project. Next, Family Chief Kouanouo Lain Tiéffin expressed his approval and recalled a prediction by President Houphouet-Boigny that the Africans would live side by side with the whites. Following some advice from Paul and Lambert, we finished talking. This gathering, drinking bangui, and discussion proved to be a big boost for our garden project.
That made me very happy about the project’s prospects. On Saturday, work again began slowly. Before going to work, Family Chief Oukoua entered to drink bangui with Bertin and me. He offered his best wishes, which was his subtle way of expressing his support.
The villagers finished thirty-four planches, including one nursery and three planches of beans, gombo, and Baselle spinach for the families of Idoueu Yoh Anatole (our landlord) and Gba Mabéa Gabriel. For the family of Oukoua Gbéada, I helped plant string beans of Parakou, gombo from Odienné, and green Amarante spinach. These were different varieties that I carried with me from the Gagnoa Agricultural Station. I was quite pleased with our work. I was excited that we were actually starting to plant our seeds.
Here Family Chief Anatole and Another Family Chief Check the Nursery
Sunday came quickly, it seemed. Bertin and I walked to Danane for our purchases but didn’t have much to purchase. Before leaving, we said hello to Paul, the Group Chief. After chatting for a while, we left. Later, we went to the campement to see Gilbert Oulay. When we discovered he wasn’t there, we decided to wait for him. Soon, he returned—with the Sous-
Prefect handsomely dressed in a body-length, yellow pagne with a shirt to match. They went into Oulay’s private living quarters and closed the door behind them. We waited and waited. Finally, they came out. To my surprise, Oulay left with the Sous-Prefect. But before he left, he evidently bought us some drinks. I say, “evidently” because he neglected to invite us to drink or to say anything to us about the drinks he provided. He did say he was so occupied with the preparation for the Independence Day celebration that he could not visit Déahouépleu until after the seventh of August (the Ivory Coast’s Independence Day), a little over a week away. So that was that.
On Monday, the usual slow start occurred again. But, to my joy, we saw some very new faces in the garden. Two families especially. They made about ten or eleven planches between them. One family belonged to the Group Chief, perhaps embarrassed by their previous absence. After their work, Paul angrily criticized their neglect of the gardening. However, many families did not come to the garden, but instead went to their fields. These families included Gabriel’s and Anatole’s. I hoped they would come the next day. As I saw it, my challenge had just started—to persuade the families to come and do their gardening and maintain their planches. Watering became the most important challenge. The villagers seemed to want to plant but then forget to maintain their garden.
Another problem surfaced. It was an attempt by the Village Chief’s family to plant seeds on the same planche with two different cultures. In other words, two different plants that are incompatible on the same planche. This resulted from a lack of supervision. I tried several times to ask Bertin to help them, but he wandered off to chat with friends. It was difficult for me because I could not speak Yacouba, and most villagers did not speak French.
It was pretty clear to me that the villagers seem to know well how to make planches and how to plant beans and okra too. But I was unsure if they really understood the concept of a pépinière. All in all, it was really great the villagers accomplished so much in the first week. I was so proud of them. From Monday to Monday, they finished making forty-three planches, and planting three pépinières plus planting twelve planches. I was thinking that Peace Corps needed to assign a Peace Corps Volunteer to Déahouépleu to carry on my work. The villagers were simply amazing.
The villagers were very generous to Bertin and me. For example, one family chief presented us with two eggs and a pineapple. The day before, our landlord, Anatole, gave us a pineapple. Villagers often brought us bangui to drink. I felt they were very friendly and generous people. One particular evening, Paul, the Chef du groupe, and Lambert, the Chef du village, among others, visited us. That led to an embarrassment for us in the sense that, while we thoroughly enjoyed their visits, we found it difficult to visit others as much as we wanted. What a pleasant difficulty to have.
The next day, a brother of the Chef du groupe gave me a chicken, while Gabriel gave us a liter of bangui. Shortly after lunch, a Chef de famille arrived at the house. It was Oukoua Gbéada, a short, thin man. His opulent gift was a huge string of bananas and a chicken. I was just amazed at their generosity.
As a result, I had four chickens, counting the one I bought and the three gifts. I felt like if this kept up, I would have enough chickens to begin my own chicken farm.
About this time, August 5, Bertin left Déahouépleu to see the Independence Day celebration in Daloa, the center of the national festival that year. After the celebration, he planned to go to Abidjan to investigate the possibility of getting a scholarship. He expected to return to the village in two weeks.
In the evening, I had the pleasure of witnessing children and young adults performing traditional dances to the beat of two drums. The young girls, about six or seven years old, appeared to dance the best and most spectacularly.
They performed more than ten different step combinations. Their dances appeared somewhat acrobatic. While the girls danced together in a circle, the young men likewise danced in a circle but with entirely distinct steps. The guys appeared quieter but nevertheless were always very rhythmic.