Assinie-Mafia

The Aby lagoon and the sandbar in front of it were the territory of N'zima and Éhotilé communities, lagoon peoples who fished, made salt and traded along the coast towards the Gold Coast. Assinie was one of the first points on this shore to draw Europeans: French ships traded here from the 17th century, and French missionaries settled briefly at Assinie in 1687, one of the earliest French attempts at a foothold in what became Côte d'Ivoire. Nothing lasting came of it, and the coast returned to lagoon trade for the best part of two centuries.

France came back in the 19th century, signing treaties with local rulers in the 1840s and building its colony from the shore inland. Assinie lay east of the new capital at Grand-Bassam and kept a trading post of its own — it was still the colony's third port in 1907 — before its commerce passed to Grand-Bassam, then Bingerville and finally Abidjan. The sandbar's usefulness was in what it lacked: no deep-water harbour, no industry, no road worth the name.

That changed after independence, as Abidjan grew into a metropolis an easy drive away. From the 1960s and 1970s villas, clubs and hotels appeared along the strip, and Assinie became the seaside of the Ivorian capital and of the expatriate community, familiar in France as the setting of the 1978 comedy Les Bronzés, filmed here. Tourism collapsed during the crises of the 2000s and returned with the peace that followed; Assinie-Mafia now lives largely from weekend visitors, alongside the fishing and farming it always had.

The strip has two lives that sit side by side. One is the resort coast: Abidjan families and expatriates arriving on Friday evening, jet skis on the lagoon, music at the beach bars, and a Sunday exodus back to the city. The other is the lagoon world of the N'zima and Éhotilé villages, where fishing is organised by family and lineage, chiefs and elders settle disputes, and the lagoon has its own observances and forbidden places, including islands treated as sacred ground.

Festivals follow the N'zima calendar of the wider Sud-Comoé coast, of which the Abissa at Grand-Bassam is the best known, and family celebrations bring people back from Abidjan and abroad. Christianity is dominant, with Catholic and evangelical churches in every village, alongside a Muslim minority among traders and workers from the north and from neighbouring countries.

Manners are those of the coast and easily missed by weekend visitors: greet before asking, address the oldest person present first, and treat boats, nets and drying fish as private property. Dress is relaxed on the sand and conservative away from it. Prices for boats, guides and watersports are negotiated openly and politely, and agreeing them beforehand avoids the disputes that sour many visits.

Assinie-Mafia is a sub-prefecture of about 17,000 people at the 2014 census, spread between the sandbar and the mainland, and its population swells at weekends and holidays when Abidjan arrives. Most residents live on the mainland side or in the lagoon villages rather than along the hotel strip, which is largely second homes and businesses.

Work divides between fishing, farming and tourism. Pirogues go out on the lagoon and through the passes to the sea, and the catch is sold fresh, smoked or fried; coconut, oil palm and rubber plantations stand behind the villages; and the hotels, restaurants, boat operators and watersports businesses employ a large share of the young people, with staff commuting in from Adiaké and further inland.

The rhythm is weekly rather than daily. Friday brings traffic, deliveries and full kitchens; Monday empties the strip. The local pressures are coastal erosion and the shifting of the lagoon passes, waste and water supply along a crowded sandbar, and the seasonality of work, which leaves many households with little income through the long rains.

Seafood is the point. Fish from the lagoon and the ocean — capitaine, carp, tilapia, barracuda, sole — is grilled whole over wood and served with attiéké, the fermented cassava couscous of the lagoon coast, and a raw dressing of onion, tomato and chilli. Prawns, lagoon crabs and lobster are grilled the same way or cooked into sauce, and smoked fish from the villages flavours stews and rice.

Behind the beach the cooking is that of the Sud-Comoé generally. Foutou, pounded plantain and cassava, is eaten with sauce graine made from palm nuts or with the aubergine-based sauce claire; kedjenou, chicken sealed in a pot with peppers and tomato, appears at celebrations; and alloco, fried ripe plantain with a chilli- onion relish, is the standby snack from mid-afternoon. Garba, attiéké with fried tuna, is the cheap everyday plate on the mainland side.

Drinks are bangui, the palm wine tapped from the groves along the strip, and the koutoukou distilled from it, gnamakoudji ginger juice, bissap from hibiscus, coconut water cut open on the spot, and cold local lager. Pineapples, bananas and mangoes come from the farms inland and are sold along the road in from Adiaké.