None of the five days I spent in this dirty, smelly city in French Cote d'Ivoire could be described as vaguely enjoyable. Everything seemed to require a struggle, mostly because no one wanted or could communicate with me in English and ridiculed my feeble attempts to use the little French I could remember from high school. Even the television offered French channels exclusively, not even ubiquitous CNN! None of the English language newspapers found in other foreign capitals were anywhere available in this forgotten French outpost.

While there were plenty of cafes, few looked up to my now somewhat more accommodating standards of hygiene. Of course there were no American fast food places like Mac Donald's or Burger King in this Anglo-phobic part of the world either. People on the street, while not always hostile, certainly were not outgoing and friendly to my eye. One exception occurred in the elevator at my hotel. One evening a well dressed man riding up with me turned and solemnly asked: "American?" When I indicated agreement his sad expression followed by softly spoken French words I could not understand made it perfectly clear the depth of his sympathy for the suffering Americans. As he spoke his eyes glistened with emotion and his right hand touched his heart; gesture which needed no interpretation. I am sure he must have been looking for some American with whom to share his compassion for all these days since the 9/11 disaster. I am grateful he chose me to be that person.

The infrastructure in the center of the city is more or less First World, but once you get ten blocks or so from the center the quality of sanitation deteriorates noticeably. The stench of rotting fruits and vegetables piled in every other alley from the day's street markets, occasionally whiffs of human urine from the very common public peeing by males (I can now easily differentiate between the human and animal varieties!), frequent waves of raw sewage odors from open drainage channels overwhelm your senses unexpectedly.

Smokers in public places are arrogant, smoking with impunity in front of ¨No Fumar¨ signs. My requests for compliance were twice rebuked with one guy giving me a good tongue lashing in French. I still see quite a bit of unselfconscious male crotch grabbing on public streets, sometimes escalating into an orgy of vigorous fondling! No one pays any attention to such antics at all.

Want a pedicure? Sit right down here on the curb for the works. You're next! No waiting. Coconut sellers prepare their product by deftly removing the hard shell from half the nut leaving the white meat exposed and looking like a snow cone. Oranges offered for immediate consumption have had the outer bitter portion of the rind carefully shaved off leaving the fruit now enclosed in the light yellow pulpy inner portion of the rind.

Peace,
Fred L Bellomy