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Bateguedea:

This village is located on the road from Daloa toward Man. Like so many villages, its inhabitants number in the several hundred. We first visited Bateguedea in 2005 and have been stopping by every year since then.


One of the houses clustered around the town square, which is dominated by an old well. The water that they draw is at least 40 feet down.



Left, Augustin Seri Nekpato, standing halfway between his wife's rice field and his cocoa grove.  Middle, Marguerite Kipre, Nekpato's wife. She's coming back from a day spent in the rice field. Right, Ouedrago, a Burkinabe (from Burkina Faso) who is working for Nekpato in order to earn the money for a farm of his own. He's buying some of Nekpato's land.



Aspects of everyday life. Left, washing a baby village style. Middle, a typical village "restaurant", called a maquis in Cote d'Ivoire and a chop house in Ghana. Right, the village shower. You stand on flat rocks that are surrounded by pebbles and you pour a half bucket of water over yourself, suds up, and then pour another half bucket over yourself.



A campement (hamlet) near Bateguedea. Left, the hard-packed mud with a cement surface used for drying cocoa beans. Middle, a resident of the campement. Right, Djabate Chaka, who lives in the campement.



Children of Bateguedea.



Aspects of cocoa growing. Left, a handful of fresh cocoa beans. They are coated with the mucilagenous material that tastes like the flesh of a cherimoya. Beans that are fresh from the pod are alive and can be replanted. Middle, one of the killers of the cocoa tree--termites. Right, damage caused by myrids. These tiny bugs live in the foliage above the pods. Organically, they are controlled by squirting water at the lower leaves, dislodging the nests of these bugs.



Other people of Bateguedea. Left, Karim Bandre. A Muslim, he's the only pisteur in Bateguedea. A pisteur is one of the middlemen who drives his pick-up or small truck directly to the village and negotiates with the farmers. Karim owns several houses and cars. Middle, a very young mother with her child or sister carrying the younger child. Right, a charming young lad.



Left, rice growing. Rice is seeded in the swampy areas of the former rainforests. Typically, a farmer builds a mound of dirt and constructs a little roof at the top so he can sit under the roof and shoot birds with a slingshot (middle.) Right, another view of a rice field. Sometimes the trees are left standing, as shown.



Left, a most unusual spider. Is this an example of insect mimicry? If so, what insect? Right, a Robusta coffee tree. Robusta coffee beans end up as Nescafe. When freshly roasted and ground, the coffee made from Robusta beans can be quite good.