4.2. THE CHOICE OF A BACKWATER

TO EMPHASIZE SUCH CHANGE I WENT TO A HINTERLAND 

An evolution would necessarily be part of wider transformation.

So when the University of Abidjan offered lodging and the support of the Minister of the Interior in exchange for three months of teaching, I was happy to accept.

After consulting the Abidjan archives during the three months of teaching, I chose Djimini, a region on the forest fringe, and took a bus to Dabakala. Except for the much smaller center of Darhala, it was the area's only town.

Adapted from the Google map already shown.

Adapted from Britannica

There were no hotels

 and I expected to stay at a "rest house..." 

that harbored two or three male travelers and a prostitute, who wore giant earrings and a long red dress. I left my bag with her and wearing a large hat to protect from the sun, walked two miles along the empty, dusty road until I came to a long, modern ranch house that in that forgotten place resembled a palace.  

A servant answered my knock. I said I would like to see the sous-préfet (the regional government head). "He's sleeping," the servant said. "I'll wait," I answered, "Please don't wake him up." 

But he did.

A tall, very dark man wearing a colorful wax toga entered. He yawned and rubbed his eyes because he had just woken up, or from surprise. Occasionally French "co-opérants" (government specialists) travelled through the region, but white women, never.

I was just as surprised, and said that I had told the servant not to wake him and was very, very sorry that he had. As is clear from my confrontation with the Dean, I was not always diplomatic. But my embarrassment was real. For once, I said the right thing. 

I explained that I had come to do research on the region's history, that I hoped he would help me, and handed him the letter from the Minister. He looked at it, looked at me again, and said, "I will do so. You may stay with me and my family for as long as you like."

I stayed twice for six weeks and remember his beautiful, fiery wife, their two "legitimate" little boys and his 13 children from other mothers, who on returning from school would sit, perfectly behaved, around a large table doing their homework. 

In particular I remember Ernest Texier's help. He had elderly men come from their villages to tell me of the past, arranged for me to meet a paralyzed chief in his village and had a group of elders take time away from their fields for me to question them.

He also brought me a document from the archives.

 I will come back to it.

*    *    *

Next,

4.3.

Cycles of growth, violence and new authority