Yesterday was a day to remember, to be certain. Not only was it the first day I was able to leave the hotel, but I met with the most important person I will probably ever meet in my life. As I explained in the last entry, our delegation was set to meet with the president of the Ivorian president’s political party. However, not only did we meet with the party president, but pretty much the entire senior leadership of the party. In the United States, we could never have dreamed of meeting with the House Majority leader let alone the DNC chairman.
Six of us went to the meeting. Amy, Murtala and I were the “representatives” from USAID and we had three local partners who set up the meeting. It was unsettling to drive through Treichville, which is a somewhat dodgy area of the city, and pull past a bunch of fruit stands to a seemingly ramshackle building with several guards holding AK-47s. At that point I was thinking, “What have I gotten myself into?” Once we walked through a small courtyard, we got passed off from person to person until we got to the information minister’s office and sat waiting for them to finish preparations for the meeting. The information minister was very…smarmy. He reminded me of a caricature of a typical bureaucrat—very nicely dressed and very smug. He had the air of someone who could open doors for you if he wanted.
We sat in the information minister’s office for a while and the Ivoirians made small talk as I tried to not panic. I was panicking because I was in charge of asking questions to the President. Normally, I probably would have asked Murtala or one of the Ivoirians to ask the questions because they are obviously much better at French than me. But because the meeting was specifically set-up to meet with the Americans, I had to step-up. After about 20 minutes, the minister left to check on the preparations. In that time, the director of the West African Network for Peacebuilding (WANEP) in Cote d’Ivoire went over the questions that Amy, Murtala and I had prepared and made some changes. The WANEP people also went over ways in which I could prevent myself from offending the president. With the changes in questions and the discussion of how to be respectful, I was internally panicking about not causing an international incident. Granted, the probability of me causing an international incident was slim to none, but I am naturally a “yes” person and a people pleaser, so I wanted to be sure that I offended no one.
When we finally went to meet with the political delegation, it was a circus. The entire senior leadership of the party was there including several camera people and reporters. They were basically using us for a publicity stunt. The next hour of questioning was surreal. I got through the questions and the political delegation was moderately patronizing, but we got the answers that we wanted. In retrospect, I am incredibly proud of myself that I was able to sit at a table and ask questions to one of the most powerful men in all of the Côte d’Ivoire. It probably helped that I was asking the questions in French. By only having prepared certain questions and phrases, I could not get myself into trouble by running at the mouth—I did not have the words to do so. After the interview was over, the press (most likely reporters from the political party) took pictures of the entire group and interviewed the president about our interview. I will check the websites to see if there is video of me standing next to him. Today we will be meeting with the main opposition party. Hopefully, I'll get to update on that later.
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