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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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like peanuts, or home-made toffee and cakes from kids (not to mention the omnipresent sachets of water and juice). One little girl wrapped up the peanuts in pages ripped out from an old school jotter.

The men's match was in a village about 10 km away against a team from 'Sud de Palmes' (the palm oil factory). To get there the team piled into the (open air) back of a lorry. The supporters went in specially arranged vans - and they were basically packed with people - 10 in the back, 6 on the roof, and the usual 2 in the front beside the driver (Rocheline and I were privileged to get the front seats). There was a good atmosphere on the way, with girls singing and clapping (the same on the way back despite not winning). Guédyo lost 2-1, although the other team really only won because of their excellent goal-keeper who stopped practically everything (including a penalty-kick). Aside from the match itself, it was kind of a party atmosphere - young girls nicely dressed, coiffed and made-up flirting away with the men (who'd had a few drinks - the supporters, that is).

In both these matches I was treated like a bit of a celebrity - Jaquelin got me a chair to sit on (most people were standing), young kids came in groups to look at me - plus people, including the team, got us to take their photographs. In Ivory Coast, people (especially kids) like getting their photograph taken, even though they will probably never see the photograph. In Yamoussoukro, a group of kids came up to us and asked us to take their photograph; Rocheline explained to them that they wouldn't be able to see the photo (since it wasn't a polaroid, plus we weren't going to send it to them later), so they settled for a few hundred francs instead.

One day we decided to head off to Sud de Palmes to visit the factory where they extract the oil from the grains which are cut from palm trees. We (Rocheline and I, accompanied by Jaquelin, ...