Fifi Go-Goes.

“Yes, the bus will be leaving soon, very soon mama!” Maybe there’s a gleam in his eye, a hint – something I miss through the relentless heat. I’m too busy trying to determine whether or not my foggy Anglophone brain has come close to translating the rapid-fire French correctly. “Quickly mama! Vit! Vit!”

My eyes widen and, slightly panicked, I scan the market place before hurrying towards a young vendor across the street. I need to move if I am to grab refreshments for the journey – by all accounts it was to be a long one, the roads questionable.

“D-leau-d-leau-d-leau” – the brightly clad girl’s chant turns over and over in my skull as she plucks a plastic water sachet, icy and dripping, from the large metal bowl atop her head. We had decided to make a weekend of it, head north from Abidjan in a rickety minibus and see the famed sights of Côte d’Ivoire’s comparatively small capital – namely the Basilica of our Lady of Peace, a magnificent monolith rising over the African savannah. I pay the 100 francs and squash one of the chilled bags against my forehead, ever grateful for any chance to soothe sweat-soaked skin.

Back near the bus my then boyfriend, now husband, a local, seems far less harried. I watch a smile creep onto his face as a pair of giggling girls skip past him, all skinny arms and legs and clicking braids woven thick with cowrie shells. The girls stop and grin shyly when I offer to take their photo, then laugh hysterically on seeing their image played back on the grimy camera screen. It’s Harmattan season, and the winds from the Sahara have coughed a dusty haze over the city.

“Apparently the bus was about to leave, lucky we got here in time!” I say naively, watching the girls run off into the sea of ragged plastic umbrellas. “Mmhmm.” Yves murmurs, unmoved by this assertion.

We pass time singing and snapping photos – a mother nursing twins, one on each knee; countless cringe-worthy selfies; a boy taking a kip in a wheelbarrow; an infant tied to her mother’s back with a colourful pagne wrapper, chewing too enthusiastically on the handbag nestled close to her chubby face. There’s a certain amount of hustle and indeed bustle, yet it’s reluctant, wary of the heat, thick, cumbersome.

It will be another 4 1/2 hours before our glorified maxi-taxi, packed to the hilt and piled high with assorted luggage, lists out of Adjamé market place, bound for Yamoussoukro – the capital village. Now though, we wait, wading through the molasses of mid-afternoon.