Grand-Bassam

The N'zima and Abouré were established around this stretch of lagoon and shore long before Europeans settled, trading fish, salt and palm oil along the coast towards the Gold Coast. French traders had a foothold here from the 1840s, and when France declared the colony of Côte d'Ivoire in 1893 it made Grand-Bassam its first capital. A port for the export of timber, palm oil and rubber grew on the sandbar, and the colonial town was laid out in the pattern that survives: a commercial quarter of trading houses, an administrative quarter around the governor's palace, and a residential zone, with the African village of Moossou across the water.

The town's time as capital was short. A devastating outbreak of yellow fever in 1899 led the colonial administration to transfer to the higher ground of Bingerville, and the town's seven years as capital ended in 1900. Trade kept Grand-Bassam alive for another generation, but when the Vridi Canal gave Abidjan a deep-water port in 1951 the wharf here lost its purpose, and much of the quarter was left to the sea air.

Decay preserved what money would have replaced. The colonial quarter was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2012 for its colonial architecture and town planning and for standing beside a traditional Nzema village, and restoration has been slow and partial since. In March 2016 gunmen attacked beach hotels here, and security at the resorts has been tighter since. The town has kept its place as the nearest seaside escape for Abidjan, and as the home of the Abissa.

Grand-Bassam belongs to the N'zima, an Akan people whose territory runs east into Ghana, and their calendar governs the town's best-known event. The Abissa, held in late October and November, is a week of drumming, masquerade and dancing that closes the old year, and it carries an unusual licence: families use the gathering to speak plainly to the king and the notables about how the community is being run. The chieftaincy at Moossou presides, and families return from Abidjan and abroad for it.

The town has also become a place where Ivorian artists and craftspeople work. The old commercial buildings along the shore hold studios, galleries and workshops, and stalls sell carved masks, batik, baskets and jewellery to weekend visitors. Grand-Bassam is remembered too as the place where, in December 1949, women who had walked from Abidjan marched on the jail where anticolonial leaders were held without trial, an episode that became a landmark of the independence campaign.

Everyday manners are those of the coast: long greetings, deference to elders and to the chieftaincy, and a Sunday rhythm shaped by both churches and the beach. Christianity is dominant among the N'zima and Abouré, alongside older observances tied to the lagoon and the sea, and the migrant communities who work in the town bring Islam and the Dioula of the markets.

The sub-prefecture counted about 125,000 people at the 2021 census, most of them on the north side of the lagoon rather than in the heritage quarter, which has few permanent residents. Fishing, the market, craft work and tourism carry the local economy, along with commuting: the coastal road makes Grand-Bassam close enough to Abidjan for daily travel, and new housing has spread along it.

Weekends set the town's pace. Abidjan arrives on Saturday morning and leaves on Sunday evening, filling the beach maquis, the craft stalls and the hotels and then emptying them again. Midweek the historic quarter is very quiet, with school groups and the occasional tour the only activity among the shuttered facades.

The constant local issues are coastal erosion, which is eating into the sandbar and threatening buildings near the shore, the slow and expensive business of restoring listed properties, drainage and rubbish on the lagoon side, and the seasonal nature of work in a town that depends on visitors.

The sea is the kitchen. Whole fish — carp, tilapia, capitaine, barracuda — are split and grilled over wood, then covered with raw onion, tomato and chilli and served with attiéké, the fermented cassava couscous made in the villages around the lagoon. Prawns and lagoon crabs are grilled the same way or cooked into sauce, and smoked fish from the lagoon villages goes into stews inland.

Away from the beach, the food is that of the lagoon coast generally. Alloco, plantain fried in palm oil with a hot onion relish, is sold from evening grills; garba, attiéké with chunks of fried tuna, is the cheap everyday plate; and foutou of pounded plantain and cassava is eaten with sauce graine, made from palm nuts, or the aubergine-based sauce claire. Kedjenou, chicken or guinea fowl sealed in a pot with peppers and tomato, appears at celebrations.

Drinks are bangui, the fresh palm wine tapped from the groves behind the beach, koutoukou distilled from it, gnamakoudji ginger juice, bissap from hibiscus and cold local lager. Roadside stands sell pineapples, bananas and coconuts from the farms inland, and vendors walk the beach with fruit and chilled water.