Here's the thing: if you really want to experience the most important football tournament in Africa, you get away from the stadiums when games are being played.
If you really want to understand what hosting this thing means to a country, you go where the people go. You find a maquis on the side of the road, pull up a plastic chair and order some fish from the grill. You drink cold lager and join the debate. Should Serge Aurier really be starting for Ivory Coast? You huddle in front of a television you can barely see because of a crack across the screen in Abobo and you hope you don't miss anything. You stare at a peeling wall in Yopougon and you hope the projector beaming images from Ebimpe doesn't pack in.
Abidjan has layers and it's very important to remember this. Abobo? That's near the bottom of the social ladder. Yopougon? A bit higher. Cocody, with its private villas, sprawling gardens, and beautiful young people drinking cocktails? That's right at the top. Marcory is somewhere in between and in some ways, this makes it the most interesting right now because life is changing so fast and it explains where parts of the country are heading.
Zone 4 developed its reputation because it was home to Abidjan's sex trade. The red light district is there at street level, but if you look up in the sky, you can see apartment blocks where there are penthouses with strobe lighting. One of its residents says it's now as easy to eat from a Texas Grill or shop for bedding at a strip mall as it is to get a massage. Poverty and wealth exist on the same street and you genuinely don't know what you are going to get when you turn around the corner.
There is an emerging middle class in Ivory Coast. Three hours before the country's defeat to
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