Author Archives: Lionel Stanbrook

Ahem There are no second hand markets in Abidjan: no Petticoat Lanes or Portobello Roads. There are no marches aux puces and no charity shops. There are no municipal dechetteries or council dumps, unless you count the random rubbish piles scurried only by rats because the rubbish, such as it is, has no use whatever. […]

Ahem As Europe falls into yellow leafswirl, brown mulch and bright red bonfires, search-lit by horizon sunbeams and long-man shadows, so by contrast the weather in Abidjan continued to be mostly cloudy, brooding, uncertain – sometimes bursting into waves of rain, and sometimes throwing down scorching days which drain me of vim within five minutes […]

Ahem The curse of Shango, Yoruba God of thunder and lightning, is invoked against the Jeep Corporation for indirectly selling me (in separate continents and two separate decades) two of the most financially ruinous, unsupported and unreliable cars I have ever driven. Joined on this fearful oath is Orange, which asserts that the fault preventing […]

Ahem A family from France are staying for a few weeks. They introduced a cheerful, bustling and friendly family background noise of argument, proposition, enquiry and discussion into my previously lamb-silent abode and are defraying the rent. I am therefore temporarily living the life of a co-locataire, which means unexpected chaos in the kitchen and […]

Ahem The process of moving into my new home, a villa in a half-gated lane (see photo) close to the Rue des Jardins, was quickly completed, thanks to Mohamed having done most of the heavy lifting while I was away on holiday. Two Ramadan-related public holidays made my first week back easier than expected, and […]

Ahem After the strong and positive family emotions around my brother Clive’s funeral, I had a grim return to Abidjan, where uncertainties at work were worrisome. Also, the rainy season had started with a sense of overdue vengeance, as if to catch up on lost time. Thunderstorms, lightning and torrential rain competed under a heaving, […]

Ahem To be honest, my brother Clive and I were too far apart in age to be all that close while I was growing up. I was born just after he had started boarding school in Oxford, and our parents were living and working in Nigeria. We never really “played” much together that I can […]

Ahem I am growing very wary of the word “smart”. Never dependable or stable, the word is too often used pejoratively. “Smart” was paired in my youth with “Alec”, “pants”, “arse” and “bugger” and was rarely used without irony even when the intended meaning was to be clever (in other words, too clever). Also, any […]

Ahem Every morning and every evening over a million straw-coloured fruit bats make the flipflop-flapping journey between Abidjan’s various luscious green, forested and tree-studded districts and the central business district, the eponymous Plateau, half of which is a disintegrating collection of concrete boxes spotted by lines of unhealthy trees, the other half a well-appointed Presidential […]

Ahem To secure approval from the family, a box packed with whisky, rum, gin, champagne and fine wine was a pre-requisite. Also, a dozen lengths of the fabrics used to make traditional clothes (the ubiquitous plagnes), a fat wallet of folding money and a few other ceremonial bits and pieces, all prescribed in a neatly […]