Alfonso Navarro Táppero
(The Fanicos)Doing the Laundry in Adjamé
We are "dumped" in the middle of a highway in Adjamé neighborhood, located north of Abidjan flourishing in authentic culture and economic center of the Ivory Coast. The 4x4 did not break down but simply ran out of fuel. As it would be a while before they come to our aid we decided to pull off the road and explore the surroundings. We are in a suburb, a former fishing village that has been swallowed up by the brutal Abidjan growth. Poverty and misery is constant in these marginal areas, so much so that the inhabitants of these disadvantaged áreas engage in trades as strange as that carried out by the so-called fanicos.
These poor people are engaged in washing rich people´s clothes by hand, in one of the branches of the river. They use old tires filled with sand where they rub them and then pile up the mountains of freshly washed clothes. From a safe distance, as we do not want to inconvenience anyone, we watch hundreds of people, with half their body submerged in the river water, put all their effort into the difficult task of washing clothes of others in exchange for a miserable wage. It is undoubtedly the bitter side of progress ....
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