Welcome to drogbascountry.com. I’ve been meaning to start writing here for a few months now, but things have been busy with Ivory Coast’s brief conflict for control of the presidency. This personal blog will chart what happens next and hopefully give an insight into life in a place that few people have heard of outside the country’s most famous footballer. Posts here will no doubt be diverse, perhaps not always interesting to every reader, and sometimes personal, but my overall aim is to give a deep insight into life here in a place I now call home.
US journalist Philip Gourevitch once wrote “When you arrive somewhere foreign, you notice everything. When you live there a while and it ceases to become foreign you stop noticing things that you still should notice as a reporter. Going in and out is a safeguard against this.” While this has some truth, I think there is also a huge amount to be be gained by going and staying. Like my Swiss mum in England, long after I get my Ivorian passport and my Ivorian children grow up, I will be a foreigner here. But my hope for myself, and what I hope to communicate in this blog, is a deeper understanding of how things work and what Ivory Coast is like, than could be gained by just passing through on a road to somewhere else. I’ve never liked the phrase ‘going native’ sometimes applied to journalists (my day job) who “stay too long”.
As a final note, I should say that this blog has nothing directly to do with Didier Drogba (or indeed any organisation I happen to work for). As the title suggests, this is about Drogba’s country, Ivory Coast. Enjoy reading.