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Guédyo was the village where Rocheline was born. It's also known as Ottawa - the explanation being (as far as I could understand it) that the village was founded by two separate groups of families (one from Soubré district, the other from Gagnoa), hence marriages are allowed between theses two groups who then become brothers-in-law, which in Bété is 'Ottowi', and so they changed this to Ottawa so that it would have the same name as the Canadian town. The Canadian ambassador had supposedly visited the village, filmed it, etc.

Welcome To Ottawa - Population 300

Ajcairns
2005-11-04 20:53:21

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about 30,000 FCFA (about £30!) a month. If this sounds very little, then consider the poor domestics who are paid a mere 8000 FCFA (for cleaning, looking after children, etc. in white or well off black people's homes).

It seems like a dated, far-fetched, colonising kind of fantasy, but there are Europeans doing just that, living in splendid villas in nice areas of Abidjan or San Pedro, and driving around in big 4x4 luxury jeeps.

You could say that these people are plantation owning, slave-driving, exploiters, closing their eyes to the basic standards of living of their workers and neighbours. But most of us are guilty of this same exploitation but from further away - in our comfortable Western homes, drinking coffee, eating pineapples or bananas, and putting our money in banks. Anyway I decided not to become a palm-tree plantation owner (and to return to a comfortable, if stressful and un-contented existence in Europe).

In many ways, people in Guédyo (or other Ivorian villages) are much the same as you or me, but as John Travolta says in "Pulp Fiction" - "It's those little differences ...". For example, one day an uncle of Rocheline's caught a small blue bird with a red beak in one of his traps, so he broke its wings and gave it to his children to play with; to Europeans, with our societies for the protection of animals, this seems barbaric and cruel; to an Ivorian it's an act of kindness, like giving a toy to his kids (let's face it, he couldn't afford to buy them shoes, let alone toys - any toys you see, apart from the odd football, are home-made e.g. wooden cars made from bamboo, draughts games made from a sheet of paper for the board and some pieces of wood for the pieces).

They believe in witches and witchcraft. I talked to a guy who was in the village for a day or so, and our conversation as we sat under the trees in Mathieu's courtyard went something like this:

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