By the end of 2004, Côte d’Ivoire’s civil war had cooled to a simmer, but the country remained split, with a rebel-held north and a government-held south. What do these divisions mean to people on the move, late for christenings, doctor’s appointments, and dinners with friends? In an essay that will be published in the forthcoming issue of Transition, Siddhartha Mitter recalls a slow road trip to Korhogo:

The filling station was no longer a filling station. The pumps had been removed, but the plaza remained, and so did the fluorescent lights, which now bathed in their tepid glow a low-slung cement building and, to either side, a clutch of white-sided vans parked tidily in a row, some with passengers sleeping on board. It wasn’t clear where one might go to get fuel, but the larger question was whether we could leave at all. At the checkpoint at the entrance of town, the rebel soldiers told us the roads were closed for the night, and that our van should park with the others and proceed at first light. Because of the innumerable checkpoints it had taken five hours instead of the usual three to get from Bouaké to this place, Niakara, where the road to Korhogo branched off from the main highway that ran north toward Mali. […]

Prior to the issue’s release, read Siddhartha’s full piece here.

Photo credit: Camille Millerand.

Further Reading

Coming home

In 1991, acclaimed South African artist Helen Sebidi’s artworks were presumed stolen in Sweden. Three decades later, a caretaker at the residential college where they disappeared found them in a ceiling cupboard, still in their original packaging.

Imaginary homelands

A new biography of former apartheid homeland leader Lucas Mangope struggles to do more than arrange the actions of its subject into a neat chronology.

Business as usual?

This month, Algeria quietly held its second election since Abdelaziz Bouteflika was ousted in 2019. On the podcast, we ask what Abdelmadjid Tebboune’s second term means for the country.

The complexities of solidarity

Assassinated in 1978, Henri Curiel was a Jewish Egyptian Marxist whose likely killers include fascist French-Algerian colons, the apartheid South African Bureau of State Security, and the Abu Nidal Organization.

From Naija to Abidjan

One country is Anglophone, and the other is Francophone. Still, there are between 1 to 4 million people of Nigerian descent living in Côte d’Ivoire today.

De Naïja à Abidjan

Un pays est anglophone et l’autre est francophone. Quoi qu’il en soit, entre 1 et 4 millions de personnes d’origine nigériane vivent aujourd’hui en Côte d’Ivoire.