At 7 in the morning the high rises of Plateau were slowly replaced by one-story cement houses with corrugated steel roofing as we left Abidjan. Every few kilometers we passed another signed that told us how far away we were from Yamoussoukro. 250km, 241km, 215km…
“I can’t explain it,” Okou replied when I asked him why Yamoussoukro, the home village of Félix Houphouët-Boigny (FHB), the Cote d’Ivoire’s first president after independence, was the official capital of the country. “Everything is in Abidjan, it’s true, but when you see Yamoussoukro you’ll understand why it has to be the political capital.” 150km, 127km, 90km…
Houphouët-Boigny is described by Ivoirians today as a visionary, someone who truly made the Cote d’Ivoire the economic and political superstar that it is today. After independence in 1960, he did take on powerful economic reforms that turned his country into the hub for French banks and enterprises that wanted to remain in Francophone Africa. His program of close economic ties with France (dubbed the Françafrique) and his agricultural policies made rubber tree farmers in the North and cocoa farmers throughout the country become major players in international primary sector markets. But FHB had a megalomaniac streak to him that was paired with his incredible attention to detail. In the 1970s he began the construction of his pet project, the city of the future, Yamoussoukro.
We passed the second government toll booth on the highway, the last one before we got to the capital. The roads were pretty smooth up until now, as the pavement started to get warped as if it undulated. 40km, 12km, 3km…
In the 1970s, the city would have been one of the only ones if not the only one of its kind. Expansive boulevards eight lanes across (four for each direction), the Foundation that housed enormous conference rooms and auditoriums that would play host to some of West Africa’s major peace deals, the Hotel Président, and his crowning achievement, the largest Basilica in the world (a title the monument still holds).
Although now, 40 years after Houphouët-Boigny constructed his city of the future, time has taken it’s ugly toll on the once grandiose structures. The roads unfortunately have huge potholes, requiring you to swerve two or three lanes over to avoid them. No companies, governments, or even Ivorian institutions moved their head quarters to the new capital. Miles and miles of wide highways stretch on with nothing but empty savannah flanking them.
The Basilica is the first thing you see from miles away before you even reach the town’s entrance. Designed to be a replica of the St. Peter’s basilica in Rome, the whole thing almost seems like a mirage in the middle of nowhere Cote d’Ivoire. Columns stretch for hundreds of feet above you, stained glass shoots up to the heavens, and speakers are imbedded in into the altar’s structure. The inside can hold 18,000 people, but the outside standing area could hold 150,000. In only three years of construction Houphouët-Boigny made his hometown of grass huts become the center of Catholicism for West Africa… so he hoped. The pictures I’m posting along with this don’t do the building justice. It is truly one of those things you need to see in real life to truly believe. The sheer immensity of it all is astounding, coupled with the fact that there aren’t any other buildings more than 5 stories tall for hundreds of miles in any direction.
We stopped at a nice open-air maquis for lunch and moved onto La Fondation Félix Houphouët Boigny pour la Recherche de la Paix. Not necessarily anything to see, the place is empty, taking tours only on request. Impressively, this building played host to the brokering of some of West Africa’s most famous peace deals. The pictures show the size of the conference rooms and auditoriums that can seat hundreds, and in some cases up to 2,000, people. After FHB died, they stopped construction on the building and left some meeting rooms uncompleted. The building is only used on an as needed basis to receive dignitaries.
We also stopped by the Polytechnic University in Yamoussoukro, which houses the Cote d’Ivoire’s main engineering and business schools (avoiding potholes on an 8 line high way on which we were the only vehicle). The photo attached in regards to the university is of the school’s pool. The school’s architecture, unsurprisingly, oozes with 70s charm. However, it doesn’t show its age like the other parts of the city do.
We ended by trying to get into the Presidential Palace, where Félix Houphouët Boigny lived during his presidency. Walls 15 feet high surround the entire compound, shielding it off from outside lookers. Inside his home and gardens sit on hectares of property, and on one edge guarded by a moat with live alligators in it (if this doesn’t tip off that he had a slight edge to him, I’m not sure what else will). Apparently you can only get into the palace if you’re accompanied by a member of the Ministry of Tourism or have gotten approval from said ministry in advance.
On our way back home, as signs counted down the number of kilometers left until we reached Abidjan, I realized that the did help my understand why they’ve kept Yamoussoukro the official political capital. A “social crisis”, the term Ivoirians use to describe their civil war that lasted nearly twelve years, and decades of economic stagnation since the 1980’s has put down a people that see themselves as the head of West Africa. Though they still rightly have this title in both an economic and political sense, they do have a right to hold onto their memory. Although it is easy to mock Ivoirians who still assert that Yamoussoukro is the city of the future, it is necessary to look past the obvious dictatorial tendencies of their first president. The Ivoirians are entitled to their collective memory and shared history.
Though hard to compare, Washington DC can be interpreted as our Yamoussoukro. A city that was excruciatingly planned with wide boulevards, with grand monuments dedicated to our former political leaders, that doesn’t necessarily have the economic and cultural capacities as New York City and Los Angeles. Though the US and Cote d’Ivoire have had vastly different outcomes, we’ve based our capital cities very much in a similarly rooted mentality. We both use these cities to house our country’s history and collective memory, both are home to some of our nation’s most recognizable buildings (White House and the Basilica), they aren’t as populated nor as popular as the more major cities of the country, and both have old 70s architecture. If you remove the implied significance of each city, DC and Yamoussoukro really aren’t all too different…
Yes, Yamoussoukro doesn’t have much going on and is truly only worth a day trip. But you won’t be able to understand the Cote d’Ivoire until you visit and understand why Yamoussoukro is the capital of the economic and political stronghold of West Africa.
Photos:
1. Me and Okou on the upper level of the Basilica
2. View from the roof of the open air standing space, underscoring how nothing else is around for miles
3. Me on the roof with the dome in the background
4. View from the upper level looking down at the altar and 18,000 seats
5. The Basilica of Our Lady of Peace, Yamoussoukro
6. The pool at the Polytechnic University
7. Okou’s girlfriend Eve sitting in one of the grand conference rooms in La Fondation
8. Auditorium in La Fondation that holds 2,000
9. Me posing with a portait of FHB
