White Spot On Inside Of Lip

Morocco Ivory Coast: chronicle of a village

In village, the women are not been idle ...

the village, women have not remained idle ... In 2003, Louise was selected two days in jail Logoualé because his father was a teacher of the REIT retirement. With her family, she then took the road Abidjan, where she worked tirelessly. She is now back, happy to return with new skills. She learned to make charcoal, at Trinley unusual, and will get his chicken farm on the side of Abidjan. Louise has kept his optimism and courage that she has to work that characterizes so many African women.

Gisele has changed, she gave up her life before, with its leisurely walks around the village, interspersed with periods in the city for work disorder, like many other young girls. The village also accepted, but many of them are now dead AIDS. Gisele has retained a capacity for resourcefulness and survival making it a clever shopping, carrying snails or red oil in one direction, moving up from second-hand clothes in the other. She still has her infectious laugh, his mischievous winks.

Eloise worked at the health center. A Man in 2002, she saw the ads of MSF and she immediately applied. She spent four years with MSF Holland Danane, and she returned with computer skills that are valuable. Odette responsible for a Catholic NGO, the identification of children and the identification of malnutrition. She continues always this weekly activity: nicely dressed, she moved every Friday at the health center with its notebooks, the scale and tape measure.

But many large families have become miserable. Three of them are displaced from the area Gueré near where they lived for over twenty years their fields and homes were burned, for them it will never go back. Men have become laborers in the camps and they were making room in the courts.

In general, the concern is against the precariousness of everyday life that affects the villagers. The elections are scheduled for 2008, no one still believes, but the comments are appeased. Something has changed, each feels that the crisis was a turning point, people know now what it's like war. Nobody wants it.

; Ivory Coast: chronicle of a village after the war

A dirt road stretches tan in the lush forest and hospitable, dotted with settlements. Hill School overlooks the entrance to a large clearing. Trinley Diapleu and form a village of over one thousand inhabitants, and the two hamlets face along the trail and look into one.

But the big tree that seemed to protect it, and under which the women settled down to prepare and sell their products, was cut last year for the bodybuilder track, and the few passing trucks travel at this too quickly. Further, the forest surrounds the trail back to the next village.

People are poor but employed a fertile land and manage to feed their families. Many lived in assisting their children become "managers" (those who work in Abidjan), but many of them died of AIDS, and the economic crisis and the war have weakened the links .

While many have electrified their homes, few have enough to replace the bulbs

Almost all the villagers are Yacouba, an ethnic group that covers a wide area of western Ivory Coast, and straddles the eastern Liberia. They depend on their crops (monocultures of coffee and cocoa, whose prices have collapsed in the 1990s) they are trying to diversify now in need of self-sufficiency and survival.

Christian churches have proliferated in this animist village twenty years ago, but cults are secretive. The three small shops are run by families Dioula, Muslim traders who are found throughout West Africa. A laptop connected to a small antenna, in lieu of telephone booth and the place is bustling. The village was electrified in 1991, when three street lights along the runway, but now, while most have their homes electrified, although few have enough to replace the bulbs and the electricity was cut off for nine months 2007.

The school did not work in 2003 and 2004, college students, enrolled in Man, had to come back. Many more are left, fouls means. Now the school activity resumed on the hill. Some classrooms have no walls are sheltered by a roof of palm leaves, but the teacher that I met standing in front of the blackboard. "Tenderness, promise ..." The children repeat after him and seem to apply. I still feel the same dizziness as learning to read and write in a language you do not understand? Few succeed.

In autumn 2002, then in 2003, Man, and the region Logoualé, came under the control of rebels from the north, Allied forces from the West (General Guey, who took power in late December 1999, a Yacouba, had just been assassinated), but their descent towards the south and access to the Sea (San Pedro) was stopped by the Licorne force and loyalists.

men of the same family involved in opposing camps

Soon, the village men, among them young, enlisted in the New Forces, while others leave the village to take refuge in a loyalist area. Men of the same family found themselves in opposing camps. The long-time supporters of the FPI (Progressive Socialist opponents the party of Houphouet Boigny), are those who have been threatened, suddenly identified as spies in the pay of new president Ghagbo.

poisonous atmosphere, favoring obscure jealousy, carrying hatreds, fears and accusations among neighbors, between cousins. But most villagers attended frightened and powerless to these upheavals, and fled into the bush when armed rebels neared the village. The force was on their side. Cheap food and intimidation often targeted were the rule, but the rebels who had sought to Trinley Diapleu also new recruits. Marc, 17 years in 2003, said:
"When they arrived, they hid, and one day I asked myself" why not me? 'They had cars, guns, there was a youth with them, I knew ... I was ashamed to be always afraid, when one morning I left the village without saying and I went to the rebel camp '.

They were numerous, more than fifty, to be like him. Those who were educated and spoke French well were patrol leaders or brigade. Leon became the bodyguard of one of leaders of the region and it is also one of the few boys still mobilized, pending encasernement and payments promised to demobilize. Victor, himself, thought he had to commit to protect the village and the health center, and because he loves adventures .

These boys, I have known children or teenagers, went to war to break with fear, with boredom and lack of means. No nostalgia in their stories: traumatic memories for Mark who was almost executed for killing a woman accidentally, in placing his gun on the ground. He thought from afar and could not stand having to patrol in an area where everyone knew him. The shame had invaded again, his name was spoiled in the village. One morning he woke up, he tore the card he had received and returned on foot to the village to sit next to her grandmother.

Victor guard buried images of mass graves and prefers to remember his patrol peace Gueré scoured the villages to reassure residents, hidden in the bush. A few months earlier, trucks rebels were leaving the area, loaded with refrigerators, televisions and assorted furniture. The villagers have almost all been slaughtered, after having poisoned, they say, the rebel group that was stationed in their village.

The Liberian example, a foil salutary

In this area, the abuses perpetrated by both sides, there is fear 'libérianisation' the Ivorian conflict. But fortunately they did not last. Bangolo region is now located in the heart of the confidence zone.

Leon is probably the one who was most involved in violence. Still a soldier, he comes home on leave. It seems sad and tired, and wants to return to the village with his wife and baby. It was he who in 2004 told me:
'You know, that's war! We do not bury the dead and those that must run, you look him in the eye and it turns ... especially not '

now, and he is happy, the war is over, his head war, promoted to chief of the region, became very rich, but soldiers like him are not paid. This is the tax that feeds the roadblocks that remains of the rebel army force. Leon does not draw no more pride in his rebel status. He remained calm and nice boy that we knew, but something died in her eyes.

All agree on their hopes for peace, they have no hatred or revenge. In fact, they were afraid of war, and in this regard, Liberians seem to have served as a foil salutary
'Becoming like that, no, it was not possible! It was crazy, especially children, could not be with them, they were shouting in English and shot between our legs. "

And to mention the inhumane atrocities, who were horrified. Ivorian rebels did not limit recruitment to more than sixteen years, and many children were committed to their sides, but they held secondary functions and not involved in the fighting.

Back to normal lives have changed but

Soon, in 2004, the New Forces have turned against the Liberian factions in favor of peace negotiations, managing to drive them out of the country. And once the secure area, the new border drawn, volunteer soldiers are almost all gone home and all the children with them. Those who remain on the roadblocks are often very young (16/17 years), but they are not stoned and not mistreat anyone.