2006.06.05: June 5, 2006: Headlines: COS - Ivory Coast: Writing - Ivory Coast: Humor: New Yorker: Tony D'Souza writes: Ivory Coast, 2000

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Tony D'Souza writes: Ivory Coast, 2000

Tony D'Souza writes: Ivory Coast, 2000

"I was in Abidjan in 2000, shortly after General Robert Guei’s bloodless Christmas Eve coup, which eventually helped to usher in the bloodshed of the past six years in Ivory Coast. At the time, there was a small contingent of United States Marines in the city—the U.S. Embassy Guard. They were housed in a spacious apartment in a downtown high-rise in the Plateau district. I was in my first year with the Peace Corps, and whenever I was granted a break from my posting in the bush I’d travel to the city, to a Peace Corps-run hostel that was always crowded with volunteers. Now and again, eager to spend time with the white women among us, the marines would invite us over. They were well provisioned: alcohol, air-conditioning, and all the latest magazines, CDs, and DVDs. When they called, we’d round up a couple of cabfuls of the willing, and then happily dig into the marines’ top-shelf goods. The women needed little coercing—they enjoyed the Snickers bars, People magazines, and Bacardi as much as anybody."

Tony D'Souza writes: Ivory Coast, 2000

IVORY COAST, 2000
by TONY D’SOUZA
Issue of 2006-06-12
Posted 2006-06-05

[Excerpt]

I was in Abidjan in 2000, shortly after General Robert Guei’s bloodless Christmas Eve coup, which eventually helped to usher in the bloodshed of the past six years in Ivory Coast. At the time, there was a small contingent of United States Marines in the city—the U.S. Embassy Guard. They were housed in a spacious apartment in a downtown high-rise in the Plateau district. I was in my first year with the Peace Corps, and whenever I was granted a break from my posting in the bush I’d travel to the city, to a Peace Corps-run hostel that was always crowded with volunteers. Now and again, eager to spend time with the white women among us, the marines would invite us over. They were well provisioned: alcohol, air-conditioning, and all the latest magazines, CDs, and DVDs. When they called, we’d round up a couple of cabfuls of the willing, and then happily dig into the marines’ top-shelf goods. The women needed little coercing—they enjoyed the Snickers bars, People magazines, and Bacardi as much as anybody.

The marines’ apartment—leather couches, tiled bathrooms, and a big-screen TV—was spotless, and they ferried between it and the Embassy in black armored S.U.V.s. They lived a life so sheltered and insular that they could have been anywhere. At the Embassy, they spent their shifts behind bulletproof glass, using an intercom to command visitors to present their papers through a narrow slot. They left the confines of partition and machine only on Sundays, when they would jog together through the leafy and exclusive Riviera district, to the delight of the few gardeners and shoeshine boys allowed in. Even then, they kept a tight phalanx: large, well-muscled white men rising and falling in sonorous unison in brand-new combat boots.

The marines also maintained a shelf of bottles at the Grand Bleu, a small night club in Deux Plateaux, with velvet couches, a cozy parquet dance floor, and a house stable of the finest prostitutes in West Africa. It was a de-facto social club for the white invested male—C.I.A. and Mossad agents, American timber and rubber men, Embassy functionaries, tenured teachers from the International School—and a definite no-go for unwashed Peace Corps volunteers. But, one night, that’s where we went—Albert and I. Albert was a fellow-volunteer, and famous among us for once having walked across the border into Mali to try to buy a camel. At the Grand Bleu, we shook cigarettes out of the mangled packs in the breast pockets of our crumpled shirts, and ordered neat whiskeys. Then we rolled our shoulders and sipped those whiskeys like two cowboys in Manhattan. All around us, conversation stopped just long enough to let us know we’d been noticed. Then we were ignored.

The marines were there, doing shots of Grey Goose, and they were animated and loud. We pieced together from their conversation that they had been invited to train some Ivorian commandos in sharpshooting at the military range, and that the Ivorians had closed their eyes as they shot, their bullets raising puffs of dirt from the turf.

“Can you believe these people?” one of the marines said, laughing, and shook his head. “They closed their fucking eyes.”

Albert and I leaned back against the bar to watch the women on the dance floor. They all wore long braids and hoop earrings, and were shuffling their feet as though half asleep. No one was dancing with them, so, after another whiskey, we went out to them. We held the girls close. Soon, we were kissing them. Then the club’s bouncers put us into headlocks with such force that we could feel ourselves beginning to pass out, and tossed us onto the street. We didn’t go to the Grand Bleu again.

A few weeks later, a story about the marines began to circulate. One night, they were watching a new DVD together—my guess is porn, but who knows—when the doorbell rang. The marines were not alarmed, because they had African security-service guards screening visitors down in the lobby. So one of the marines set down his bottle of beer on the glass coffee table and went to answer it. At the door was a gang of African bandits with AK-47s.

The marines jumped up from the couch and put up their hands, and, for whatever reason, the bandits made them strip down to their briefs. The bandits went into the marines’ closets, got out their uniforms, put them on, and began to sing and dance. Then they stubbed out their cigarettes on the floor, stuffed their pockets with liquor bottles and DVDs, and left. They didn’t steal anything major—just sang and danced in the uniforms while the marines held their balls and shivered.


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Story Source: New Yorker

This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Ivory Coast; Writing - Ivory Coast; Humor

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