"Oui, my name is Jennifer"
Plus: How to go on a beach vacation in Africa, along the Ivory Coast
Dear Reader,
I was wearing workout clothes and carrying a small backpack when I approached the front gate of a wealthy housing development here in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, Africa.
A guard dressed in yellow stopped me.
“Madame?” he asked, and then said something to me in French that I assumed was, “What are you doing here?”
I said, “Gymnasium?” in a French accent, hoping that might be the right word for gym in French.
He looked at me, clearly not understanding.
I pulled out my phone, and showed him the class that I was registered for, a Pilates class with Dorothee starting in fifteen minutes.
My friend, who was in the 8:00 a.m. class, suggested I register for the 9:00 a.m. class and then we would meet at La Patisserie after for coffee and co-working.
“You turn left?” I asked her at the coffee shop before she started walking to her class.
‘‘And then left,” she confirmed.
“Okay,” I said, trying to imagine what the place looked like the last time we were there.
But I had forgotten enough that I was confused by the time I got there.
“My friend Amber?” I said to the guard in English and he gestured at me to place a phone call.
I showed him my phone again where the data lines would be, and said, “No data” and shrugged.
After miming stretching and other movements and both of us failing to comprehend each other he walked over to another guard in the gated area, they spoke for a few minutes, and then he came back to me with a question.
“Jennifer?” he asked.
My name is not Jennifer, but that is a very common American name with women in my generation.
Much more common than Janelle, and so I looked at him and tried to guess whether saying yes would get me past the gate and into the Pilates class on time.
I thought that maybe my friend had told them to expect me and they must have misheard her and thought my name was Jennifer instead of Janelle.
In the moment, I decided yes, I should say I’m Jennifer, so I nodded, and another guard started walking with me down the street of the housing development and past the gym where my class was starting in a few minutes.
I trotted along, getting ahead of him at one point, confusing a large building ahead for where I was supposed to be going.
The guard stopped to talk to someone, gestured for me to wait, and then when he caught up to me he took a sudden left turn and lead me into a two-story condo, and up a flight of stairs toward a closed door.
Suddenly, I realized that saying “Jennifer” might have been the wrong choice.
I thought, “Oh no,” and had this vision of being interrogated in a strange African room by a guard without my passport and no French skills and no working phone and decided to immediately turn around and go back down the stairs.
“Jennifer?” he queried.
“Not Jennifer,” I said firmly. “Non Jennifer,” I said and walked back outside where another guard was waiting for me.
Later, I was telling a new American friend who lives in the housing development this story and she said they were probably speaking into a walkie talkie to each other saying in French, “We have a Jennifer on the loose. Repeat, a Jennifer on the loose!”
The guards surrounded me and conferred until I showed the new one my Pilates booking reservation on my phone and he rolled his eyes and looked at the other one and said, “Spa.”
The guard who thought I was Jennifer repeated, “Spa!” and looked at me, clearly annoyed, and then gestured for me to follow him.
We wound our way through a kids playground to the building that was right next to the front gate and he delivered me to the front desk to sign in and pay for the class.
This isn’t Portugal, I thought, where many, if not most Portuguese also know English, and you can get by in many situations without being fluent in Portuguese.
But my French is much worse than even my beginner Portuguese.
“Merci” comes out sounding like, “Mercy” and my answer to “Ça va bien” which is “Are you fine?” sounds like I replied, “savons” which is “soap” instead of “fine.”
On our drive to the beach together this weekend my friend’s daughters tried to teach me some basic French phrases, which more or less resulted in everyone laughing at me because I sounded like I was a southern American trying to learn French.
When we arrived at the resort in Assinie-Mafia, about a 90 minute drive from Abidjan, there was a woman from Minnesota at the bar, who introduced herself after hearing our attempts to check-in and offered to help translate.
Fortunately, we had a 10-year-old and a 14-year-old with us more than willing to translate for our group of 5 “girls” as we checked in and took a boat across a lagoon to our lodging with a beach side view of the Atlantic ocean.
In Assinie-Mafia a lagoon empties into the Atlantic, which, for those of you who are familiar is similar to where I was living in Portugal (we lived near the Obidos lagoon, which empties into the Atlantic).
We crossed the lagoon by boat several times a day, for meals and pool side time, and took a group nap the next day after we mistakenly all took our malaria prevention pill at breakfast instead of dinner and then felt a wave of medication-related nausea and tiredness wash over us all at once.
The water here is safe to drink, I hear, but I am sticking with filtered and bottled water and no ice just to be on the safe side.
I purchased travel health insurance from World Nomads that includes emergency evacuation but I don’t want to need it or use it.
Each day, I get out the mosquito repellant with Deet in it and spray my skin and try not to think of the long-term health consequences.
Mostly, I tried not to think at all while I was in Assinie-Mafia.
We walked the beach, watching the waves break in front of us while the girls played, taking photos and digging toes and fingers into sand to build castles.
For lunch, we drove in 4-wheel-drive on red-clay roads through small villages and large puddles to get to a surf club while chickens ran to get out of our way and a small group of pigs and piglets snuffled their way through branches and leaves.
Curious, we stopped to see a new business and learned they were opening a grocery store, laundromat, and property management service for owners and heard their story.
One of the owners used to live in San Diego, where Lilly lives now.
The food here has been mostly what you would find in America - burgers, chicken, pizza, and fries. Some pastas and steaks.
To be honest, because of food allergies, I haven’t really explored truly local foods yet.
Except … on the way back we stopped to drink real coconut juice, hacked open from a peeled coconut with a machete by a woman working at a roadside stand, who gave us each a small opening at the top of the coconut top to sip through.
It was a good exfoliant for Jennifer’s lips, I thought, watching the beach slide away and the city reappear.
Love,
Janelle
P.S. Thanks for staying with me as I venture new places.
It’s so good to have you with me.
Couldn’t do it without you.
Love all of your comments!
P.P.S. Need to catch up on what’s going on here and have a good laugh?
Wow what an adventure!
Fabulous!💃🏻😍