By James Copnall, BBC Correspondent, Ivory Coast, 2 November 2004

In October last year, French radio correspondent Jean Helene was killed outside Abidjan’s main police station, shot from close range by a police sergeant.

With Ivory Coast still cut in half, after a rebel movement seized control of the north a year earlier, and feelings running high against the foreign media, many journalists took Helene’s death as a signal to leave.

By the time I showed up in Abidjan six months later, the foreign press corps had shrunk to ten.

I arrived at the same time as BBC Afrique’s correspondent Valerie Bony returned from an attachment in Bush House. We found a country still shaking from the repression of a banned opposition demonstration in Abidjan.

The government put the death toll at 36, the opposition spoke of more than 500.

Within a week of our arrival, French-Canadian journalist Guy Andre Kieffer was kidnapped. He’s still missing, and few expect him to be found. Suspects close to President Laurent Gbagbo have been interviewed.

This city rocks

For many people, the foreign media bears a responsibility for the crisis. Journalists are routinely accused of pro-rebel bias. Several times in my first few weeks here I heard Gbagbo supporters scream that I would be the next to be killed.

When things get stressful, it helps that the team – Joachim (office manager), Mohammed (BBC Afrique’s sports correspondent), Valerie and I – all get on well.

It would be wrong to characterise living in Abidjan as something to struggle through: the city rocks.

It has a serious claim to be the capital of music in west Africa, but is most famous for the maquis. This is a small restaurant, often just a few plastic chairs under a straw roof, of which there are thousands all over Abidjan.

Meals include chicken with alloco (fried plantain), kedegeno (a tomato sauce), and fish. Agouti (a kind of rat) is also popular, as is biche, which looks distressingly like Bambi.

A Jamaican lilt

An old joke goes that the country used to be famous for its wildlife until it all got eaten.

The maquis invariably have loud music pumping and the city is known for its nightlife. A personal favourite is Jamaica City, a reggae bar in which customers and staff, even those who speak only French, try to speak English with a Jamaican lilt.

Abidjan is blessed with the sea and a meandering lagoon, and its streets are lined with palm trees. The infrastructures are the best in the sub-region.

Ivory Coast is the world’s leading cocoa producer and has dragged in workers from all over the region. When things go wrong here, people in Mali, Burkina Faso, Liberia and Guinea feel the pinch. Ivory Coast matters.

I couldn’t ask for a more interesting and challenging job.

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