Home > Work > Interesting Times: Writings from a Turbulent Decade
1 " shakedowns and restrictive new laws. Ivorians from the north, who tend to share family names and the Muslim faith with immigrants from Mali, Guinea, and Burkina Faso, came in for similar treatment. If a single word can be said to have started a war, ivoirité started Ivory Coast’s. Cool B’s father "
― George Packer , Interesting Times: Writings from a Turbulent Decade
2 " end of the class he stood in the doorway to block the Frenchman’s exit. “You’re going around the world showing people pictures of how to use condoms?” Cool B asked mockingly. “I’ll show you what to do.” He snatched away the man’s prospectus and, reading from the text, improvised an anti-AIDS rap on the spot in the manner of LL Cool J. The Frenchman was impressed. Within a couple of days, he had arranged for Cool B to record the rap at a downtown nightclub, and the song made him a momentary celebrity among Abidjan youth. It also began his long association with white people—among them Petra, his girlfriend, who eventually went back to Germany, and Éliane de Latour, a French filmmaker who employed him for a while as a researcher on a feature about Abidjan youth. Cool B keeps pictures of them on his wall, and he tries to figure out why, in spite of these connections, he remains stuck in Koumassi. He spends his ample free time and his limited funds at a local Internet café, surfing international dating sites and chat rooms where people he knows have found marriage opportunities that got them out of Africa. Or he visits "
