Man

Man sits in the mountains of the Dan, or Yacouba, people, who lived in small independent village communities without kings, governed by lineage elders and by the mask societies that settled disputes and initiated the young. Local tradition traces the town's name to Gbê, a Dan patriarch of Gbêpleu, and to his sacrifice at the end of the nineteenth century. Kola nuts, iron and cloth moved through the hills along trade paths linking the forest to the savanna long before any European arrived.

The French reached the western mountains late, and the region was among the last brought under colonial administration. Man was established as a colonial post and the administrative centre for the mountain country that gives the town its nickname, the town of eighteen mountains. Coffee, cocoa and kola were planted on the slopes, a road was pushed through from the east, and the town grew as the market for a scattered rural population.

After independence Man became the regional capital of the west, gaining schools, a hospital, an airfield and a hotel trade that drew visitors to the waterfalls and the mask villages. The conflict that split the country from 2002 left Man on the northern side of the dividing line, administered by the movement that became the Forces Nouvelles, and the west suffered heavily again during the post-election crisis of 2010 and 2011, with violence and large-scale displacement across the region. Since reunification Man has regained its role as the administrative and commercial centre of the highlands, with a university and new road building, and its visitor trade has slowly returned.

The Dan are among the best-known mask peoples of West Africa, and around Man the mask is not an object but a spirit with a name, a voice and a history. Different masks judge disputes, guard the initiation of boys in the sacred forest, announce funerals, entertain at festivals or enforce the peace, and each belongs to a lineage that alone may bring it out. The region's mask festivals gather performers from many villages, and the stilt dancers, who dance on poles several metres high in costumes of raffia and cloth, are the most photographed of them.

Village life in the hills keeps other old crafts: weaving, carving, ironwork and the liana bridges strung across rivers in villages around Man and Danané, which are renewed by hand and are the object of their own rituals. Wè, or Guéré, communities live to the south and east and share much of this mask culture.

Religion in the town is mixed. Christian churches and mosques stand near each other, Dioula-speaking traders from the north run much of the market, and traditional practice continues alongside both. Manners are formal: greet before asking anything, defer to elders, use the right hand, and expect an introduction through a local person to be the key to almost everything in the villages.

About 240,000 people lived in Man at the 2021 census, making it the main town of the western mountains and the seat of both the Montagnes District and the Tonkpi Region. Its population is mainly Dan, or Yacouba, with Wobé, Toura and Dioula-speaking communities and long-settled migrants from Guinea, Mali and Burkina Faso; students at the Université de Man and the technical schools add to it in term time.

The economy is farming and trade. Coffee, cocoa, kola, rice, cassava and rubber come in from the surrounding hills to the market and the buying stores, and the town supplies the villages in return with fuel, tools, cloth and building materials. Administration, schools, the hospital and transport employ much of the rest, and iron ore deposits in the mountains have long attracted mining interest.

Days begin early and cool, with the mist still on the peaks; the market is at its busiest in the morning, the afternoon is slow, and the evening belongs to the maquis and the football pitches. Water supply, the state of the rural roads, jobs for young people and the long work of reconciliation after the conflicts are the issues that dominate local conversation.

Rice is the base here, not yam. Mountain rice grown on the slopes is eaten at most meals with thick sauces: sauce graine made from boiled palm nuts, sauce arachide of groundnut paste, okra sauces that pull into threads, and dark, rich sauces of pounded leaves cooked with palm oil and smoked fish. Cassava and plantain fill out the table, and foutou, the pounded dough eaten by hand, appears as often as it does further east.

Forest ingredients give the cooking its character: palm oil pressed in the villages, smoked river fish, snails, peppers, and the kola nuts that are chewed and offered to guests rather than cooked. Grilled food is the evening standard — poisson braisé, whole fish scored and spiced over charcoal, or chicken, served with attiéké, the fermented cassava couscous, or alloco, plantain fried until dark, with a relish of chilli, onion and tomato. Kedjenou, slow-cooked in a sealed pot, is the dish brought out for guests.

Palm wine, called bangui, is tapped in the surrounding villages and drunk fresh; ginger juice, bissap from hibiscus flowers and Ivorian beer are the other common drinks, alongside strong sweet coffee from beans grown on the same hills.