My Ivorian friend looked at me concerned when I said I had walked through Gobelet on the way to Church one Sunday.
"Weren't you nervous?" he asked "that's a really rough area," he added, looking concerned.
I like it. "Goblet" translates as the cup, from French, and this peri-urban community lives in a sort of sunken ravine between two more affluent suburbs of Abidjan. The way the houses are built gives a staggered effect that reminds me (not that I have been there) of the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. Families move on layers above other families, oblivious of what is going on above and below, like a doll's house, and each of the dwellings is proudly maintained with painted murals reminding observers to "Trust God" or "Stop Ebola".
The area has a vibrance and a pulse that's enchanting and mesmerising and that I regret I will never fully understand.
But the area is not safe. Every year during the rainy season, there are mudslides, causing chaos, injury and death. The local Government decided that relocation was essential in 2012, and in awarded families a relocation package of 150,000 XOF (about US$300) per family.
Since then, there have been several attempts to move the inhabitants, one in the middle of last year, which was completely blocked by protestors. But last week, bulldozers arrives and made an estimated 1000 people homeless.
Although I confess that I do not know the complexities of this resettlement exercise, and that the work I do, often means that people do have to get moved for their safety and economic progress, it is so heartbreaking to see families standing on the roadside with all of their worldly goods.
It's the children, so fragile, who have just survived two back-to-back civil wars, standing speechless as the only life they have ever know, is piled into the back of a pick-up truck.
I don't know what the solution is. I just wanted to say something.
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