THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN CONNECTION : Finding ‘links to the souls of our ancestors’ on a cultural pilgrimage to West Africa

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast — Air Afrique Flight 95 soars directly from New York to West Africa, crossing 4,300 miles of Atlantic Ocean and 500 years of excruciating history. The route brings African exchange students home from studies in the United States, carries bankers to international debt conferences, shuttles hotel magnates to far-flung properties. But Flight 95 also delivers pilgrims, and last month it brought a rare and remarkable assembly of them.

Ahneva Ahneva is a Los Angeles fashion designer. Larry Spruill is a minister and American history teacher from Mt. Vernon, N.Y. Mary Ann Collins, raised in Pacoima and South-Central Los Angeles, is a Texas-based flight attendant (who found her way to town at a discount on another airline). Dexter Wansel is a composer and musical arranger from Philadelphia. They are all black Americans, a sampling of the more than 500 who were drawn to Ivory Coast’s largest city by an American-organized tour and celebration of African heritage known as Culturefest 1992. The two-week price for most of them was $2,100-$2,500, lunches and dinners excluded. The program, billed as the first of its kind, included performances, classes and informal gatherings, all aimed at the idea of building connections between Africa and African-Americans.

From the beginning, it was complicated. Seeking roots and cultural resonance, the Americans found coconut trees and skyscrapers, trash fires and rich fabrics, French voices and Vietnamese restaurants. Taxicabs dashed around the edges of a placid lagoon while sewage collected at its edges and the fishermen silently paddled on the calm water. Beaming children scampered along filthy urban avenues. And somewhere in nearly every scene, a burden-bearing woman strode along a roadside, laundry and groceries balanced atop her head.

“It’s like going to meet relatives you’ve never met,” said Mary Ann Collins.

And like some family reunions, the occasion wasn’t what everyone expected. Some things happened late, some didn’t happen at all, and almost nothing came off exactly as planned. But before a week was over, there were flashing blades at a tribal initiation, perplexed frowns beneath a brilliant basilica dome and joyous choruses under the coconut fronds.

“Africa is a stretch of the imagination,” wrote Gerri Anderson of Stamford, Conn., in her diary after eight days on the continent. “It’s the final link to the souls of our ancestors, and it is a spiritual awakening.”

Black Americans have been making journeys of rediscovery for generations, from the founders of Liberia in the early 19th Century to author Alex Haley in the 1960s and ‘70s. Few African-American families, however, are able to trace their roots with the specificity that Haley described in “Roots.” Most have to settle for a staggering historical generality: Ten million or more slaves were shipped by Europeans to North America, South America and the Caribbean in the 15th to 19th centuries, and the vast majority of them came from West Africa.

So, while wildlife-seekers chase the lions, tigers and elephants of Kenya to the east or Zimbabwe to the south, the African-American cultural pilgrims aim for the continent’s west coast. In Gambia lies the village of Juffure, where Haley described the birth of Kunta Kinte in 1750. Off the coast of Senegal stands Goree Island, said to have served as a slave-ship loading dock for three centuries, now home to a museum. On the coast of English-speaking Ghana, visitors follow the footsteps of slaves through the 500-year-old halls of Portuguese-built Elmina Castle.

Ivory Coast (Cote d’Ivoire in French), southeast of Senegal and west of Ghana, was never a regular slavers’ stop. But French colonists seized control of the New Mexico-sized area in the 19th Century and used forced labor to build a wealthy plantation economy. With rich soil, miles of beaches and 60 ethnic groups under French domination and language, Ivory Coast emerged as a continental crossroads. That status remains after 32 years of independence, and the Ivory Coast’s population of 12 million is estimated to include 2.4 million migrants from other West African nations. On this ground, a black American inevitably stands among distant kin.

The Culturefest headquarters was the Hotel Ivoire, a giant complex with lagoon frontage, a 24th-floor restaurant and one of the few ice rinks on the African continent. Owned by the government and operated by Inter-Continental Hotels, the place towers over Abidjan’s most affluent neighborhood, Cocody, and for 30 years has stood as a symbol of Western wealth.

Seated on the Ivoire patio on Aug. 17, several dozen Americans looked out upon their first African night: poolside drummers; distant city lights; a starless, smoggy sky and a delay. They were tired and hungry, but protocol dictated that dinner wait until the arrival of the Ivorian Minister of Culture.

“There’s an adjustment period,” Selma Edwards, a New York tour operator and principal organizer of the festival, had warned. The Americans, she said, “have to adjust to what they imagined to be the reality of the country. It takes people two to three days to get mellow, because they get caught up in things going wrong.”

Alongside the pool, the drummers edged up their tempo and a line of dancers appeared. Dexter Wansel took a seat at one of the patio tables and was introduced to Diana Rivers, an Abidjan resident with an American accent.

Rivers had come to Africa several years before, having attended Dorsey High School in Los Angeles, and concluded that “in the United States, there are two strikes against you. You’re black and you’re a woman.” For three years, Rivers has been teaching English in Abidjan.

Wansel listened and looked out at the pool, the well-stocked buffet tables and the thousands of city lights.

“If you want to find Africa,” he asked, “how do you do it?”

“You have to go to the markets,” Rivers said, “and you have to have someone take you to a village.”

Over by the pool, a pair of fast-stepping men in white T-shirts urged Ahneva Ahneva to the dance floor. Torn between participation and observation, she shimmied beneath a coconut tree, snapping pictures wildly with her automatic camera.

The evening rolled from there. The Minister of Culture finally appeared and charmed the crowd with a brief address. The mayor of Cocody, Theodore Mel, grabbed a microphone and sang with the band until the culture minister grinned and buried her head in her hands. And just when the evening’s energy seemed expended, visiting American gospel star Marvin Winans stepped up to join in a song of praise.

“He’s wonderful,” sang Winans. “He’s marvelous. He’s powerful.” The snare drum rattled, the electric guitar jangled and Winans’ rich voice echoed off the lagoon waters. The Americans had arrived.

Resemblances and riddles reigned. At the festival fashion show, the work of the African designers looked vaguely American; the American designs of Ahneva Ahneva and Therez Fleetwood looked African. On an Abidjan street corner, a dark woman in traditional robe and headwear looked like a lifelong Ivorian, but was in fact a vacationing nurse from New York. The English-speaking man in the tailored blue suit--the one several Americans pegged as an Eddie Murphy look-alike--was Mayor Mel of Cocody.

In Treichville Market, an entrepreneurial riot of color, scent and sound that stands at the center of Abidjan’s working-class commercial life, fast-talking merchants welcomed their “brothers and sisters” and pledged special prices. One peddler chased New York fashion designer Jon Haggins for half an hour, calling out “Uncle Jim!” as his quarry squeezed between stalls full of fish and fruit, jumbo snails and fine Ghanaian kente cloth.

“I see my family and friends in so many faces,” said Deborah Hyde-Jackson, a 43-year-old first-time visitor who had come from the San Fernando Valley with her husband, insurance executive James Jackson.

But when it came to uncertain identities, Hyde-Jackson delivered one of the greatest astonishments of all. On the night of the fashion show, she agreed to take a guest turn on the modeling ramp and stepped up in a white hat and gown and cape, gleaming with traditional African colors and shapes.

Bathed in spotlights, cape unfurled, face impassive, Hyde-Jackson looked like someone’s queen. In fact, the master of ceremonies informed the crowd of stunned Americans and Africans, she is one of two black female board-certified brain surgeons in the United States. Her gown was by Ahneva Ahneva.

“We are amazed at the creativity of African-Americans,” said Sanogo Abdoul-Bakary, a reporter for the Abidjan newspaper Ivoir’Soir, over a bottle of Mamba beer later that evening. “Even though black people have problems in the United States, we admire them. We concentrate on the positive.”

While the Ivorians appraised the Americans, the Americans were investigating Abidjan, a city with French boulevards, American billboards and an enduring pattern of village life in its back streets. Just a few hundred yards from the Hotel Ivoire’s property, in fact, an Ebrie Lagoon fishing village persists, its residents still paddling canoes and relying on their fishing nets for much of their sustenance.

But around such villages has risen one of Africa’s most cosmopolitan cities. While President Felix Houphouet-Boigny’s hometown of Yamoussoukro is the nominal capital of Ivory Coast, Abidjan is the engine that runs the country. The population, which swelled during the growth of the coffee and cocoa industries in the 1960s, ‘70s and early ‘80s and kept on swelling after those markets crashed in 1986, is estimated at 2.7 million.

Thousands of those residents labor in skyscrapers, navigate the busy streets of the downtown Plateau area, and indulge their appetites at restaurants and food stalls in the bustling Treichville district. Those establishments line the streets and clutter the sidewalks, with lean chicken and ungutted fish slowly blackening above street-level coals.

“It’s like a vacation from racism,” said Mary Beth Mitchell, a Denver gift-shop operator on her fifth trip to Africa. “The people are just black and tall and regal and beautiful.”

“I don’t like squalor,” complained Mrs. Bernard Walker, a retired Detroit court reporter and first-time visitor. “I don’t like deprivation. And the women are the slaves over here. They’re doing all the hard work and carrying all the babies.”

Crime was another concern. In April, the U.S. State Department warned travelers to “be aware of increasing crime” in Abidjan, particularly thefts. Over the next five months, Ivorian police fatally shot more than 40 suspected criminals in the streets. The American visitors were not particularly comforted to learn of this, but though more than 500 of them passed through Abidjan in connection with the Culturefest, organizers said, no robberies or thefts were reported.

One day early in the week, Ivorian tour guide Clement Pauleroux took a busload of Americans to the working-class neighborhood of Adjame and had the driver pause at a spectacularly busy intersection.

“This,” pronounced Pauleroux, “is the real Africa.”

Beyond him, on a gently sloping hill, stretched an infinity of wooden shacks, bright fabrics and children in motion. Vendors offered grain sacks and plastic buckets and coconuts and bananas. On their heads, women carried clothespins, combs, peanuts, telephone directories, dish towels and tins of corned beef. The Americans, just a few moments removed from their tidy, spacious hotel, nodded and blinked, overwhelmed.

At the Banco River, they watched hundreds of immigrants from Burkina Faso earn their living waist-deep in water, scrubbing clothes all day long.

Twenty-five miles up the coast at Grand Bassam, they strolled beneath coconut trees along white-sand beaches, lazy restaurants and craft shops lying nearby along the tranquil road, the Atlantic beginning at their feet.

“This is how I see Africa,” said Jon Haggins.

On the stoop of one craft shop, a neighborhood girl sat with deep blue fabric wrapped atop her head, and deep green mangoes in a bowl beside her. Larry Spruill, the teacher from Mt. Vernon, approached with his elaborate camera outfit. By gestures he explained that he would make a Polaroid picture for her while she sat.

As she posed, he snapped the picture. Then, while the girl waited and he held a corner of the developing image between his teeth, Spruill went to work with his more sophisticated equipment.

Instead of intruding to appropriate an image that the Africans will never see, Spruill explained, “I trade a picture for a picture . . . In Treichville, the word goes all the way across the market in minutes.”

Spruill, a circumspect man with a Ph.D. in history, a thick beard and regal bearing, has been traveling to Africa twice yearly for almost a decade. His wife and son were immediately identifiable as Americans, but he moved with such quiet confidence that he seemed to pass for Senegalese among Ivorians, for Ghanaian among Senegalese, for Ivorian among Ghanaians.

Seventeen shutter-clicks later, Spruill, draped in 20th-Century technology, stepped back and watched as the African girl balanced the mangoes atop her headdress, rose--and bumped her head on the thatched roof.

In a graceful fraction of a second, before a single fruit could fall, she adjusted her posture, steadied the bowl and loped across the yard.

“Still didn’t dump them!” marveled Spruill.

The bus ride to Yamoussoukro took more than three hours each way, and led through a flat expanse of unvaried jungle. It was a long haul, especially near the end of a demanding trip. But it was necessary.

Yamoussoukro is the birthplace of Felix Houphouet-Boigny, the only president Ivory Coast has ever had, and it is where the president--a Catholic in a nation 60% animist and 20% Muslim--resolved to build an unparalleled gift to his church.

The Basilica Notre Dame de la Paix, visible for miles in all directions, was built by 2,000 workers in just three years. It and the 130 acres it presides over were presented by Houphouet-Boigny to the Vatican in 1989 and consecrated by Pope John Paul II the following year.

The basilica dome rises more than 500 feet, higher than the building that inspired it, St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. It seats 7,000 worshipers in dark wooden pews humbled beneath massive expanses of imported stone and stained glass. Ivorian tour guides decline to estimate its cost; Time magazine recently guessed $175 million.

For many, the basilica stands as the most spectacular example of modern misgovernment in all of Africa. For the church officials who drafted the literature available at the concession stand, it is “one African’s way of speaking to everyone about God.”

“This is beautiful. Breathtaking,” whispered Edith Bly Jenkins, a New York elementary school principal, making a stab at politeness.

“Disgraceful,” said Yvonne Roberts, another educator, from Detroit.

“Yes,” Jenkins agreed immediately. “And those people less than a mile away . . .”

“I’m trying to get in touch with how I feel,” said Edna Wilson of Little Rock, Ark., peering up at the gleaming stained glass. “Do I feel spiritual? I’m going to reserve judgment until the priest comes.”

Then the priest--a white man from France--came and told the Americans that detailed information about the basilica was available in printed form, for about $1.50. Three priests live on site, he said.

“How involved are you in community service?” one of the Americans asked.

“No,” said the priest, whose English was halting. “This is like an embassy of the Vatican. It’s not a parish church.”

It was a long, quiet bus ride home. After a while, Larry Spruill did some thinking out loud.

“Depending on what happens in the next 100 years, with the country’s large Moslem population and this place being so far inland,” he said, “the basilica could end up another Machu Picchu.”

Soon it was Saturday, the last full day of the trip for many, and the Americans were comparing connections.

On a morning boat tour of Ebrie Lagoon, Long Island video producer Aurora Workman had ducked into a thatched hut to share a sip of home-brewed cane liquor with a wizened patriarch. Three shots later, she emerged with a grin, climbed back onto the boat and fell asleep.

Lisa Robinson, Esther Grant, Deborah Womack, Dana Powell, Curtis Brown and Mark Q. Murray--collectively known as the Gospel Showcase of New York--had shared a stage with the 135-voice choir of the Church of St. Joan of Arc of Treichville.

Deborah Hyde-Jackson, the brain surgeon, had announced plans to buy Ivorian property. “I want to own a piece of African soil,” she declared.

Gerri Anderson had set aside a day for market-going, and brought along a sweat shirt, jeans, shoes and six bags of Avon beauty products. When the bartering was done, she had three custom-tailored two-piece suits.

“The level of creativity!” said Anderson. “I have never in my life seen so much creativity.”

Dexter Wansel couldn’t say much. Bad luck and bad attitude had been dogging him all week; he played one show with seven dead keys on his piano. He hadn’t spent much time outside the hotel, let alone searching for a real village.

But that afternoon, less than 24 hours before the flight home, an unannounced tour possibility materialized in the hotel lobby. Led by local sources of Selma Edwards, half a dozen Americans in hired cars rumbled off the main highway, climbed five miles of dirt road and rolled into a remote village on the day of a rare initiation.

This was no scene of mud huts and rural purity--one village man of means had champagne to offer in crystal flutes--but it was traditional. Drums pounded. At the center of a crowd, men danced and brandished knives and hatchets. Adolescent boys danced with them, risking a slashing to demonstrate their courage and manhood. Elders in elaborate regalia and watched.

Larry Spruill shot eight rolls of film and almost got slashed by a hatchet. Dexter Wansel strolled away from the crowd, listened to the drums, watched some canoes on the water . . . and had a moment.

“It all came together,” he said later. “I found my Africa.”

That night, a dozen Americans celebrated their last African night in a fashionable bar a few miles from the hotel. Many Mambas were ordered. Group pictures were taken. Aurora Workman recited Langston Hughes to an English-hungry Ivorian schoolteacher. Sanogo Abdoul-Bakary, the Ivoir’Soir reporter, collected numbers to call on his next visit to the United States. And the singers from the Gospel Showcase of New York, bowing to repeated requests, set aside their Orangina sodas and rose to put their voices together one more time.

With coconut trees silhouetted against the sky overhead, a patio full of Ivorians glancing their way and African pop music jangling in the background, they quietly offered a brief song of praise.

“You’re Easy to Love,” it began. The harmonies weren’t perfect, but for the moment they were close enough.

GUIDEBOOK

Connecting With African Culture

Getting there: Several U.S. airlines offer routes to Abidjan via connections through other airlines in Europe, but only Air Afrique flies directly from New York to Abidjan. Two to three times a week, Air Afrique flies from JFK, usually with a stopover in Dakar, Senegal. Air fares begin at $1,450 for a round-trip coach ticket.

Visas are not necessary for U.S. citizens in the Ivory Coast. Local currency is the CFA franc, a unit tied to the exchange rate of the French franc and used by several African nations that once were French colonies. Leave your passport in the hotel safe, carry a photocopy of it at all times, and expect at some point to be stopped by roadside soldiers, who will ask to see your documents.

African-American cultural tours: Most of those who attended the 1992 Culturefest combined a week in Ivory Coast with another week of travel in Ghana, Benin, Nigeria or Togo. Festival organizers say they’re planning a 1993 edition in Abidjan, Aug. 8-22. More information is available through Selco International (1650 Broadway, Suite 608, New York 10019; 800-348-7200, fax 212-977-4248). One of the largest tour operators specializing in African culture--and one of the oldest black-owned tour operators in the country--is the 37-year-old Henderson Travel Service (1522 U St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20009; 800-327-3209 or 202-387-6611, fax 202-387-2484). In Southern California, 6-year-old Kola Nut Travel and Tours (110 S. La Brea Blvd., Suite 120, Inglewood 90301; 310-674-0291, fax 310-674-0661) also organizes cultural African trips.

Where to stay: At the 750-room Hotel Ivoire Inter-Continental (Boulevard de la Corniche, Cocody; from the U.S., phone 011-225-441-045, fax 440-050), the most luxurious place in town, double rooms run about $170 a night. Others: the nearby Golf Hotel (Boulevard Lagunaire, La Riviera; tel. 431-044, fax 430-544), about $130 per double; the Tiama (Boulevard la Republique; tel. 210-822), about $130 per double; the Novotel (Avenue General de Gaulle; tel. 320-457, fax 332-636), about $115 for a city view, $130 for a lagoon view.

Staying healthy: Ivory Coast is tropical and humid; insect repellent is advised. Avoid tap water and ice. Ivorian officials require that American tourists have evidence of yellow fever vaccination, and doctors recommend anti-malaria pills. Depending on the traveler and the itinerary, doctors may suggest vaccinations against hepatitis and typhoid fever. Citing the presence of AIDS and uncertain blood supplies in Africa, officials at the federal Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta urge travelers to avoid blood transfusions if possible.

Where to eat: Abidjan teems with restaurants, from informal African maquis to cloth-napkin establishments specializing in French or Vietnamese food. West African cuisine runs to chicken and fish, usually accompanied by attieke (a couscous-like staple made from grated cassava). One local specialty is kedjenou , in which chicken, carrots, sweet potatoes and other vegetables are steamed in their own juices in a sealed pot. Vatican (Ancien Marche, Marcory; tel. 357-114) seats diners on an upstairs patio above bustling street life; main dishes run $8-$12. Le Christophoro (Cocody; tel. 445-153) serves chicken and fish ($7-$20) under a thatched roof. Highly recommended: Chez Mamie (Cite Arras, Treichville Rue 38; tel. 243-296), with a tranquil indoor setting and a wide variety of African main dishes priced from $7.75 (roasted chicken) to $26 (lobster). For a drink among Abidjan’s young and elite, there’s the stylish Maquis Mov’ Day (Rue des Papayers, Cocody).

For more information: For general information on the Ivory Coast, contact the Ivory Coast Tourist Bureau, 2424 Massachusetts Ave. NW, Washington, D.C. 20008, (202) 797-0344. Mailings can take several weeks. (Note: On Saturday, Oct. 3, Ghanaian Minister of Trade and Tourism Dan Abodakpi will head a public presentation in Los Angeles by a delegation of tourism officials. The free event, aimed at encouraging American tourism to Ghana and elsewhere in West Africa, is scheduled to run 10 a.m.-1 p.m. at the California Afro-American Museum in Exposition Park.)