Surviving SIAO, part 1

All of West Africa is at the SIAO. No, I mean everyone. All of them. I imagine all the empty villages across the continent, tumbleweeds rolling by. The street outside the venue has been closed off, or is supposed to be. In Africa, there are always exceptions.

Men, women, children and packs of carousing teenagers are everywhere. It is like a very subdued riot. Vendors move through the crowd selling hats, t-shirts, and, for some reason I can’t figure out, socks. A man puts a wooden snake on my shoulder, having failed to learn the first rule of business: Do not scare the customers.

We weave our way through this menagerie for 10 minutes before realizing that there is, within the chaos, a line. And it is a long line.

“Are we supposed to be in that?” I ask Ghislain, who has taken on the responsibility of shepherding the five of us through this mess. He is hung over and is clearly wondering if there is possibly a worse place to be with a headache.

“No,” he says instinctively. But then he stops and actually considers the lengthy queue. “Shit,” he says, which manages to sound all the more pathetic with his French accent. It’s altogether conclusive to me that if he weren’t such a stand-up guy, he would’ve abandoned us then and there. “Have fun. I’m out of here.”

Instead, he says, “I will check. Wait.” And he moves up the long line and out of view.

While he’s gone, two small girls appear out of the crush of people and without a word each takes my hand. They are eight or nine maybe, and smiling.

“Bon jour,” I say. They giggle, look at each other and tighten their grip on my hand. It’s not an uncommon occurrence in Africa and so I don’t think much of it. We stand there like that for a few minutes, me feeling vaguely like Brad Pitt.

Ghislain returns a few moments later and seeing the girls spits something at them in French and waves them away. They disappear back into the crowd.

“They are robbers,” he explains, shaking his head and making a pinched face that illustrates his distaste.

We see that Ghislain has brought a man back with him. As it conveniently turns out, this man has tickets to sell, asking 600 CFA (about US$1.20) for the 500 CFA ticket. We conclude that paying an extra .20 cents would be OK.

Feeling buoyant at having dodged the line, we move confidently through the sea of black faces, nearly all of which take great interest in our presence. Ghislain, ever the caretaker, worries after us like a mother hen at its string of aimless chicks.

The entrance to the venue is still some distance farther on. And we try to get a glimpse into the forecourt of the venue. We start to devise an attack strategy for seeing the various exhibit halls.

Then we see the ticketholders line.

(Picture: A couple of vendors selling, well, I don’t know what. Note that the spots in the image are not on the lens; they are reflections from the flash hitting all the dust in the air.)