Today's main errand was taking my new friend to the airport to pick up her boyfriend. From what I had gathered, they had met online - she's Ivorian, he's French and since then he had come to visit her thrice. I woke up at 10:30am to a delicious breakfast of mashed bananas and fish. After that I read a bit then we escorted the Aussie couchsurfer who was living with us to get a taxi. He was off to Yamoussoukro to see the largest basilica in the world - that is located in the middle of nowhere in Ivory Coast..More to follow on that in a few months, when I actually got there.
African time prevails throughout the continent. Esther (my couchsurfing host and I) left our place at 1pm or so to meet Raissa (who we were taking to the airport to meet her beau.) We were to meet somewhere around 1:30pm - 2 hours later she arrived dressed to the nines. Thankfully we got to kill the time waiting for her, having some food and drinks. We also ran a few random errands including going to Western Union to pick up some cash that Esther's boyfriend in France had sent her. In my time in Abidjan I realized that quite a few women had a benefactor in France who ensured they had rent, new phones, new clothes etc. At Western Union, the girl behind the counter sold us some lipsticks.
We finally got to the airport and waited a bit more for Raissa's boyfriend. When he finally arrived I noted that they had an age difference, but he seemed like a nice person. They were both clearly smitten and it was cute to watch. They could not keep their hands off each other. We had to take his trolley to give them some time to kiss and whisper sweet somethings to each other at the airport. After this we went to an icecream place where they continued to kiss each other endlessly. Finally the management at the place came and told them that if they did not stop with the PDA, we would get kicked out. The place was Lebanese owned and they felt that their behavior was offensive to their more conservative customers. I must say this was the first time I have almost been kicked out of an icecream joint. I felt badass, in a 15 year old type of way. We soon left the establishment as the two just could not stop eating face:-)
We went to Raissa's for dinner. She had made a feast - I pigged out on everything, except the escargots...I had already realized two nights before that eating snails was not my thing. We had salad, couscous, lamb etc. Esther and I finally went back home and slept by 10pm.