Arriving at 4.30am in the morning at any airport does not fill me with joy.
Arriving at an airport that is fiercely protected by 100's of French troops following a war that finished a few months earlier, worried me.
Arriving at an airport at 4.30am, in a country that's just ended a war, with a 12yr old girl in tow, terrified me!
We got there. We got off the plane and walked down the stairs towards immigration and a man comes up to me wanting a handshake saying our names - WTF?!?!?! Suddenly the lack of sleep didn't seem to come into play, the fact that I looked a complete sight, probably something resembling a martian with my hair trying to look like something from the 70's really didn't worry me. What the hell was going on???
I had made a few calls prior to leaving; I'd decided that seeing as we were arriving early on a Saturday morning there wasn't much point staying in Abidjan, it would make far more sense to stay out of town on the beach. I picked Bassam, a town 40mins away on the beach used by a lot of people from Abidjan at the weekend to escape the city. I found a cheap hotel; Marvin Hotel and spent days trying to track down it's telephone number. Finally I rang and got hold of a guy who worked (note the past tense on that - he's been sacked since for stealing) there called Olivier. Olivier was full of promises to pick us up from the airport. However, on the phone from France, I got the feeling Olivier was one of Africa's many touts and asked several times to speak to the BOSS! Finally I got hold of the boss, who wasn't M. Kone but M. Marvin. He agreed to pick us up from the airport and get us to Bassam, which is a feat in itself as Abidjan has a curfew from 10pm and getting out of Abidjan is impossible by any form of transport.
So, this hand belonged to Marvin. Who introduced himself, I was confused, worried & concerned for Dani who hadn't slept all that much on the flight despite using my shoulder, stomach & arm as a pillow, keeping me awake in the process! We all made our way to the immigration booth, got our bags and wandered through the crowds of taxi touts (although some were sleeping on the floor). The airport is magnificent, I was expecting another Dakar/Dar Es Salaam/Nairobi etc affair, complete madness in a concrete box, Abidjan is very plush in comparison!
Marvin steered us outside to a waiting taxi. The fact that he had managed to get to the airport meant that he had got through the police barrage before 10pm, he was expecting our flight at 2am, it was now approaching 5am - but he looked a lot better than we felt without sleep! We hopped into the taxi, our codeword was exchanged which meant that Dani was feeling OK about the situation and the taxi drove us a few kilometres to the police barrage. Jumping out we got our luggage and walked about a kilometre to the end of the police barrage (soldiers fast asleep) listening to the early morning prayer call from a nearby mosque, the sea at the shoreline a few metres away and coping with the temperature which must have been in the high 20's whilst wearing clothes for the cold of France and the relative temperate climes of Casablanca.
On the other side of the police barrage, he'd parked his car. Luckily it was still there, we climbed in and were told that the hotel was full but not to worry, we'd be staying at his house! Twenty minutes later we were in Bassam and at his house. Lovely place and Dani suddenly woke up when she saw the pool, we sat down, had a drink a short chat and went to bed; we had struck lucky ... it had all passed without a hiccup and Marvin was proving to be very kind to us both.
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