The Bright Continent

After four months of disastrous stubbornness, Laurent Gbagbo, the loser of a December presidential election in the Ivory Coast, is said to be negotiating with the United Nations to leave the country he’s since helped to destroy. The presumptive victory by elected president Alassane Outtara is the opposite of sweet relief; thousands have been killed and thousands more displaced by the ordeal, which culminated in firefights across the country in which forces for both sides of the conflict may have killed unarmed civilians.

The New York Times today runs an op-ed describing the view from the commercial capital of Abidjan. The writer is a novelist, not a freedom fighter or political risk strategist. She is a mother and a citizen of the internet, and of a neighborhood that itself disagrees about who is the rightful leader of their country. In spite of this, and in parallel to the late, disappointing and violent conclusion to the conflict, community persists.

By the end of our meeting, we had decided that in case of an attack on our building, we would give the alarm by beating on our pots and pans. We also set hours for taking out the trash and going out to look for food when it was possible.

The days are long because, obviously, we are confined to our homes by the gunfire. When the shooting is heavy, I yell at everyone to lie flat in the hallway. My little granddaughter is terrified. Some of my neighbors have bullets in their walls.

I am on my computer all day and well into the night talking to friends around the world by Skype and trying to find out scraps of information about what’s going on in my country. We depend on news from Paris, New York, Stockholm, because state television tells us only propaganda and lies. Fortunately, a new, pro-Ouattara station has sprung up to tell us what the president-elect is doing.

My son bursts into my bedroom. One of his friends needs the telephone number of a doctor; a woman is giving birth, but nobody can get out to help her. I send messages to friends to get me the number of the Red Cross. My friend Kim in Paris finds it (thank you, Internet).

Despite the unqualified tragedy of Gbagbo’s long tantrum (read Beth Dickinson in Foreign Policy for more sorry synthesis), this story holds refreshing lessons. It’s another reminder that behind every orgy of graphic, dispiriting images of Africa on television, there are people, living. Ivoiriens are adopting pots and pans, high and low, old and new technologies and connections, in pursuit of a civic culture beyond the chaos outside their windows.

It’s fair to say that none of what has just transpired in Cote D’Ivoire would have happened without the reactionary will of a deposed strongman. That is to say politics, grievance, history, hierarchy—Africa 1.0. This response, however anecdotal, has been enabled by community, compassion, and connectivity—the best of Africa 2.0. It will be needed in the days ahead.