What Makes a City Go 'Round

Tightly packed bullet trains in Kyoto, iPod-entranced New Yorkers crowding subway cars, Copenhagen bikers patiently waiting at a bicycle traffic light, solitary SUV drivers bumper-to-bumper on DC's beltway.

How people get around tells you a lot about a culture. After almost three weeks here, I'm still trying to get a handle on Abidjan's culture and transportation. I am partly to blame, since the iPhone/googlemaps/gps troika has caused my sense of direction to decay. But, Abidjan is complicated.

The city's layout is not what I, with all my biases, would consider successful urban planning or efficient market real estate imperatives. Instead, Abidjan is a behemoth unlike western big cities. There is no central downtown that gradual fades to a more and more sparsely populated periphery. Instead, Abidjan has multiple hubs that are quite far from one another, with empty lots, banana fields and slums (bidonvilles) strewn in between.

The transport too does not reflect sustained planning or private investment that often yields an underground system or decent bus system.

In Peace Corps lingo, the complex network that has evolved to meet the needs of the city's almost 4 million people is "high context" (on a bored night last summer in Togo I perused an old Peace Corp manual). It requires a knowledge of all the working parts and doesn't give you a safety net of low-context clues like crazy things called signs and maps. It is opaque and not too well suited for the tourist or dilletante. No bus maps, no fare meters, no stops.

Yet, what has emerged in the vacuum is not haphazard or disorganized; it has a rhyme and reason that I just need(ed) to figure out.

First there are the red taxis. These fit the standard taxi rubric, well sans meters, radios, windows and (somtimes) doors that work. Get in, tell them where you want to go and negotiate a fare. The fate of this negotiation rests on your ability to convince the driver how close the destination is ("ehh c'est pas loin...") versus his ability to play-up the severity of traffic ("mais il y a beaucoup d'embouteillages"). The learning curve isn't too tough here, I usually ask someone nearby how much a fare should cost and argue around that.

Then there are the yellow taxis (yes... like the Joni Mitchell song, except small). These cute little toyotas have fixed routes and are communal. Flag one down and hop in. While they cost about 1/4 as much as red taxis, there's a much steeper learning curve. The routes are only slighty mysterious: there are tons of different lines, but they largely follow major roads. The rates on the other hand are quite the enigma. Trips range from 150 to 350 CFA (33-66 cents), but somehow the drivers all know what you owe based on where you got on and got off. It's incredible how they all have internal meters for all the passengers, and they all work out the same price.

I use a less scientific method to figure out the rate: I give them a 500 CFA coin and see what kind of change I get.

One fascinating note about these is that they are 1) never over-filled like lots of African communal transit and 2) the front passenger must always wear the seatbelt. Initially I was surprised when the driver made sure I put a seatbelt on (for one I was shocked it even worked!) but it turns out these oddities are not for comfort or safety. Rather the driver is trying to reduce his risk of being extorted by a police office looking for an excuse to extract a bribe. The same thing I do by carrying around my passport!

Then there are Gbakas, large vans that seat 17 that remind me of the minibuses in South Africa. While I haven't had a chance to explore Gbakas, they are usually for longer trips to and from the outlying areas. They are pretty awesome as these white vehicles have become canvases for self-expression. Nike logos, American and Ivoirian flags, Koran and Bible quotes are all elegantly painted on these decaying vehicles. Pretty neat!

Finally, there are the large, dilapidated city buses. These come rarely and when you do see them they are often broken down by the side fo the road. On the plus side, they are dirt cheap. There aren't any of these in my neck of the woods so I haven't had the pleasure yet.

This system isn't for the faint of heart. Like the culture of this nation, there isn't a whole lot of planning, its not pretty and polished and is not immediately accessible to people outside the culture. But it works, and has evolved over the years into a pretty effective system given the economic and political constraints. Plus, if you ask, people are eager to help you figure it out.

Throughout the world, there are many different ways to get from point A to point B.

These journeys tell us as much about the world as where these folks are trying to go.