Aya de Yopougon

It's my favourite bande déssinée. Yopougon is a middle-class neighbourhood of Abidjan, the capital of Côte d'Ivoire. Marguerite Abouet (author) and Clément Oubrerie (cartoonist), have created a universe full of humanity and joie de vivre.

Aya is the central character. She's serious, engaged, intelligent, gracious. A bit like the cricket in Disney's Pinocchio, she's everybody's conscience in Yopougon. "Give a little whistle, give a little whistle..."

It's hard to remain insensible to the characters, their problems, their dreams, their hopes and their achievements. Yopougon seems miles away from my corner in Brussels, but yet I feel it so close, dêh! It's a wonderful way to learn more about Africa and to realise, if need be, that wherever there's people, our love, our hatred, our happiness, our sadness, our blood, are really the same. Cliché? Well, it doesn't make it less true, does it?

I found the BD by chance. I was coming home some time ago and passed by the BD shop in rue vanderkindere. I had never been inside it in all these years of living here. I looked at the cover of tome number 1 and was transfixed. This looked good, my goodness! A real story, with credible characters, in Africa. Not about wars and famine, but about the daily lives of people I could identify with. The drawing was good too. Full of nerve, and colour, and humour. So I bought the whole 4 volumes and came home. I devoured them.

Today, I bought the fifth one in a BD shop in Boulevard Anspach, that happens to be open on Sundays, and the anticipation in the tram coming home was just so nice to feel. To sit on the sofa and open one more tome of Aya de Yopougon and travel far, and feel so close to home.