Mysterious mask festival
A lucky happenstance in Ivory Coast - just don't ask us to explain what was going on
IVORY COAST / CÔTE D’IVOIRE
Alongside its relative modernity and booming economy we’d read that Ivory Coast has retained a wealth of traditional culture in its society, such as festivals, rituals and masked dances. We really wanted to see some of that – but it’s easier said than done to find out about, and then actually coincide with, something.
We just sort of hoped for the best. A bit like someone landing in England and randomly driving about hoping to bump into some Morris dancers (which, by the way, we never saw in all the years we lived there).
Then luck wandered our way in the shape of a French guy who’s married to an Ivorian woman and spends much of his time here. While we were camping in the town of Man (more of which later - I’ve skipped ahead to this event, because it deserves a joyful post of its own), Fabien came to chat. He said some of his in-laws lived in the nearby village of Déoulé and that it has a very special annual mask festival.
‘If you can stay a bit longer here ‘til the weekend, it’s really worth seeing,’ he said.
It was an incredibly lucky opportunity. We decided to hang back and do it.
Fabien couldn’t make it himself, but we assured him we’d talk to the village chief when we arrived to make sure we could get permission to stay somewhere nearby with Ivy.
Off we went. It can be quite nervy just rocking up to a village and announcing yourself. Not scary nervy; I suppose I mean potentially socially awkward. Two white people in an unignorable truck, rolling noisily into town. You just know you’re going to attract loads of attention.
We paused on arrival as we couldn’t pass under the festival banner at the village entrance without risking ripping it to pieces. Which wouldn’t have been an ideal start. Within seconds, someone came to ask what we needed. We were taken on foot to the chief’s house and sat with him and several others on his veranda to explain our presence.
We were the first tourists to ever come to the festival, he said.
Could we stay for a night, maybe two?
‘Yes, and you must camp right here outside my house’, he insisted. Smack bang in the middle of everything.
We returned to get Ivy and just then, completely unexpectedly, the festivities started a day earlier than we’d been told. A crowd appeared from nowhere and Ivy was surrounded by excited people. It was a surreal moment.
We managed to squeeze around the side of the festival banner. As soon as we parked at the chief’s house, we were taken to the official ‘committee’ line-up to shake hands with everyone and pose for local media. It was too frenetic to remember to take our own photos. Our presence was causing quite a stir. People were constantly coming up to say hello and shake hands, and shouting ‘les blancs!’ (‘whites!’). It was friendly, often drunken and boisterous, baffling, funny, and sometimes overwhelming.
We ended up staying for two nights. It’s difficult to explain what the festival was truly about because, despite speaking French, communication was often tricky. Most explanations were incomprehensible to us due to the accent and/or the incoherent information being given!
What we did glean was that the festival has been running for at least 300 years. And what we do know about masks is that they hold huge significance in this culture, relating variously to ancestral worship, spiritual beliefs, nature and the land, life events and rites of passage.
Eventually we went against all our journalistic instincts, decided to give up asking the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ and just soaked up the madness unquestioningly. It was quite liberating actually.
With that in mind, this is a post that’s going to be heavy on photos and videos, and lighter on facts.














We were eating from the many street food stalls. On night two we went for some ‘interesting’ looking pork. He completely coated it in cayenne powder, wrapped it in newspaper and handed it over.
A friend asked recently whether we ever have stomach problems, what with all this random street food. Unbelieveably, until then neither of us had been ill at all during our eight months in Africa. At 3am, I woke up with an inferno in my guts. Anyone who does this sort of travelling will know that this kind of thing happening while staying in a public place is the highest-ranking nightmare.
It might be TMI but our own toilet was almost critically full and, in any case, is never used for #2. In this region especially, there just aren’t the facilities to be dealing with a full-blown chemical toilet situation, so we only pee in it.
Given that we’d attracted so much attention already, the idea of trying to anonymously scurry through the whole village to reach the bush out the other side was too much to bear. But there was nothing else for it. I woke Jeremy (which he took pretty well, under the circs) and we did the speed-walk of shame, hoping the parties had all ended for the night and no one would yell ‘les blancs!!’ as we passed. We tried to discretely find a spot where I wouldn’t be disturbed/bitten by a snake/eaten alive by insects. Not a great experience, but probably still ranks higher than a Glastonbury portaloo.
Thankfully I wasn’t actually unwell (perhaps my body didn’t appreciate me consuming my own weight in cayenne pepper) and woke feeling more or less fine the next day. We made a donation to the village, via the chief, and took our leave amid their pleas to stay for the rest of the festival weekend.
It had been wonderful and fascinating; a once-in-a-lifetime chance. But we were happy to leave them to it, return to some peace and quiet, and make some progress towards Abidjan for our final visa quest of this chapter of the journey.
Wow, wow wow! What an incredible experience, such an amazing festival to stumble on, those early morning mask dances looked quite sinister. A brilliant story told though and note to self, avoid anything covered in cayenne pepper in the future, it's disguising something!
How cool was this! What an experience and a coincidence! Looked pretty intense, though. ;) So I fully understand why one day was enough. ;)