5. The Paris of Africa

After three weeks, I have become familiar with the cafeteria's revolving lunch menu of beef skewers, fried chicken, pork chops and grilled fish, followed by the dinner offerings of my neighbourhood's dozens of Lebanese restaurants. The cuisine is decent but monotonous; I crave a homecooked meal. While my living standards have slipped sufficiently to render my spartan accommodation palatable, if not hospitable, I feel the pressing need to find an apartment in order to prepare my own tomato sauce.

The desire to have a kitchen becomes overwhelming when I see what is on offer at the local grocery store: seven varieties of prosciutto, four types of mortadella, real maple syrup, infinite quantities of cheese (even gorgonzola), grilled peppers, live lobsters. I limit myself to purchasing peanuts, milk biscuits and grapefruit juice.

Abidjan has been called the "Paris of Africa" and I am beginning to learn why. The grocery store is attached to a mall, small by North American standards but which includes a well-equipped sporting goods retailer and, shockingly, Cartier. The neighbourhood I am staying in is dense with restaurants, bars and clubs that are popular, expensive and difficult to avoid. Cigarette consumption rivals the Parisian stereotype. Renaults line the streets.

There are, nonetheless, certain peculiarities that set Abidjan distinctly apart from Paris: restaurant patios are enclosed in metal cages; roads are frequently blocked by police checkpoints. But our caged dinner is lightened by a karaoke guitarist who knows every song we can think of in every language we speak, and the checkpoints are easily navigated with an identity badge which, I come to realize, bears a certain practical resemblance to Monopoly's "get out of jail free" card.

The ease with which anything can be obtained makes the transition easier, as does the knowledge that everybody I know is in a situation similar to mine. Abidjan is a non-family duty station; we all arrive alone and, sooner or later, question what possessed us to move here. We seek familiarity in each other and fill our evenings with a frenzied social life. This network is at once comforting and disconcerting. It isolates those less curious from the local culture, makes it challenging for the more adventurous to experience it fully.

I get my snippet of Abidjanian culture in Treichville, an agglomeration of street vendors, stalls and stores that spans several blocks. There is a large covered market stocked with fruits and vegetables, crafts and paintings. In a dark, concrete-enclosed area cages of live poultry are stacked for sale, the overpowering smell waking childhood memories of fetching eggs from my nonna's chicken coop. While bargaining for shoes, I realize that many of the vendors are Ghanaian. Along the street, outside a small hardware stand, a group of men are huddled around a television, their tools awaiting the next customer. They are watching a soccer program. It is being broadcast live from Paris.