Adorn stylist, Andrew Williams, recently took off to Africa for two weeks. He packed his bags, got his shots, and said goodbye to his friends and family. Excited to go somewhere completely different from anything he has ever known, he departed to Cote D'Ivoire. Now he has returned, and sat down to share some of his gained insight.
I think one of the most meaningful things for me was realizing that all of humanity is prone to this ‘grass is always greener on the other side’ myth. To see how I idealize Africa, and then when I got there, to see how they idealize America - and all the ways that we imagine other places to be more magical than where we are.
What did you imagine Africa was going to be like?
Well, I’d been to Africa once before so I had a pretty realistic idea, but I still have a tendency to idealize other places and ancient cultures and so I sort of go there like dreaming of something from the past. And that’s not what you get. What you get is, like, something from the present, and it’s not what it used to be it’s what it is now. So, I think I kind of want it to be what it used to be and then I get there and it’s not, and that might kind of feel like a disappointment, but then, like, I kind of realize it’s not a disappointment and that it’s actually more magical that way. All the magic that I imagined is there, just not in the way that I expected to find it.
What was the most challenging part for you?
Besides the language barrier, which makes everything three times as hard, I think the most challenging thing was just trying to adjust my mind and even more so my body to the way of life over there, because it’s so rough and so different. Just to get used to breathing copious amounts of pollution and dealing with a such a different lifestyle; trying to sleep, and trying to eat, and sort of like the visceral reality of being in such a hardcore place. Also, everyone is so desperate, and they think I’m rich because I’m American, so everyone is constantly expecting a handout, which I can’t afford- that was the most difficult thing of all; facing the desperation and not being equipped to make a difference.
What was the food like?
It was almost always the same thing everyday for lunch and dinner - it was a variation of the same thing. It’s always this, like, spicy, red sauce and some kind of meat in it; fish, ox, or goat. You eat it with your hands and everybody eats together with their hands and you just mash it up with some rice or attieke (ah-check-ae) which is ground up casava root that they cook and make it into something you would think was a grain like couscous, or quinua - if you didn’t know it was actually a root vegetable. You, like, mash it up in your hands with the meat and sauce and get really messy and shove it in your mouth.
As a picky-eater, did you enjoy it?
A lot of the time I enjoyed it, but I had such a wide range of quality and freshness so when it was good quality and it was fresh it was really damn good, but it was weird to adjust to eating with my hands and sharing the food with everyone and, like, lots of people would just sit down with me and eat my food, and they wouldn’t ask, and they wouldn’t thank me, and they would just like... That was one of the hardest things to adjust to was this weird, unspoken rule that you share everything especially your food. Just the fact that it seemed to be expected that every time I ate, five people were going to sit down and eat my food with me with their hands. Sharing saliva with everyone every time I wanted to eat was a really interesting experience and sometimes it was really frustrating, but it was part of the value of the whole cultural immersion [laughs].
What did you see there that inspired you?
There was a lot of incredible fashion. Their style is super bangin’, their hair is super fly, and their clothes are super fly. Weaves are really big over there. Weaves for women just totally dominate and there’s different kinds of weaves. There’s, like, big, long absurdly unrealistic weaves that weigh 10 pounds and, more popular, there are these really tight weaves that you almost wouldn’t realize it’s a weave until you realize that their hair couldn’t possibly look like that because its so straight. What they do is, they take this fake hair in multi-colors like red, green, and black, and they braid it into these insanely beautiful ornate braids that go halfway down their back. You can’t even tell it’s fake hair until you stop to think about it for a second.
Traditional fashion is still really strong and it’s gorgeous, beautifully patterned handmade clothes. I got to sit in a hut with these guys who were making the stuff traditionally and they, I don’t know why they do it, I guess it softens the cloth or something, but they take the cloth and stretch it over half of a smooth log and they take these giant wooden hammers and one person sits on either side and it’s like their playing drums. They smash it back and forth making a rhythm and they move the cloth the whole time so that they’re smashing every inch of the fabric really hard. They do that to every single piece of traditional cloth. The traditional fabrics and dresses are ridiculously gorgeous - the traditional hair is stellar. I got to go to a few traditional ceremonies with traditional music where one woman will always be the master of ceremonies. She’ll sing the whole time and a lot of the community will come out in traditional dress and they all sit around and the traditional musicians are playing djembe and other drums. She’ll be singing and she’ll start singing about a person who’s there and she’ll be singing, “This person is a beautiful person, she just had a baby and she’s a strong member of our community,” and then while she’s going around and singing people are giving her small amounts of money. She’s gathering all this money and then she takes it and she gives it to that person she’s singing about.
I think that in the sense of the human experience and your experience as an individual - everyone wants the same things and everyone struggles with the same things. I tried to go to the most ridiculously out of the way, unknown place I possibly could in the whole world and still I find that I feel the same and everybody is the same. I think that my imaginary idea of some exotic place and exotic people and all these exotic things is kind of made up and no matter where you go in the world, it’s always the same narrative. I sort of resign myself to that and there’s kind of an interesting peace in that resignation and sort of a strange beauty. So it ended up being more of an enlightening experience in accepting myself and my life and the world and the way it is, as opposed to going to some wildly different place where I feel way different and everything is different.
I think another interesting thing that I found myself thinking about a lot over there - again, I have these ideas that so many of the really difficult things to face in the world and in life like abject poverty and disease and inequality, all the things that their dealing with over there - I always want to blame those on evil people and I want it to be this like simple black and white narrative of evil people did evil things and now stuff is messed up, but going over there really forces me to accept that it’s really not that simple and the difficulty of the way that things are is more complicated than that, and you can’t just easily point the blame at colonialism or exploitation. I kind of had to accept that this is the reality that people have created for themselves. And that the responsibility is much more widespread and harder to pin down. I always try to make it into this narrative of something that is so simple as bad people did bad stuff, but we do this to ourselves and that’s something I found myself thinking about a lot over there. So all of these heavy thoughts are actually inspiring to me, I’ve gained an interesting sort of clarity from this journey, though not necessarily the sort I was looking for.
What did you imagine Africa was going to be like?
Well, I’d been to Africa once before so I had a pretty realistic idea, but I still have a tendency to idealize other places and ancient cultures and so I sort of go there like dreaming of something from the past. And that’s not what you get. What you get is, like, something from the present, and it’s not what it used to be it’s what it is now. So, I think I kind of want it to be what it used to be and then I get there and it’s not, and that might kind of feel like a disappointment, but then, like, I kind of realize it’s not a disappointment and that it’s actually more magical that way. All the magic that I imagined is there, just not in the way that I expected to find it.
What was the most challenging part for you?
Besides the language barrier, which makes everything three times as hard, I think the most challenging thing was just trying to adjust my mind and even more so my body to the way of life over there, because it’s so rough and so different. Just to get used to breathing copious amounts of pollution and dealing with a such a different lifestyle; trying to sleep, and trying to eat, and sort of like the visceral reality of being in such a hardcore place. Also, everyone is so desperate, and they think I’m rich because I’m American, so everyone is constantly expecting a handout, which I can’t afford- that was the most difficult thing of all; facing the desperation and not being equipped to make a difference.
What was the food like?
It was almost always the same thing everyday for lunch and dinner - it was a variation of the same thing. It’s always this, like, spicy, red sauce and some kind of meat in it; fish, ox, or goat. You eat it with your hands and everybody eats together with their hands and you just mash it up with some rice or attieke (ah-check-ae) which is ground up casava root that they cook and make it into something you would think was a grain like couscous, or quinua - if you didn’t know it was actually a root vegetable. You, like, mash it up in your hands with the meat and sauce and get really messy and shove it in your mouth.
As a picky-eater, did you enjoy it?
A lot of the time I enjoyed it, but I had such a wide range of quality and freshness so when it was good quality and it was fresh it was really damn good, but it was weird to adjust to eating with my hands and sharing the food with everyone and, like, lots of people would just sit down with me and eat my food, and they wouldn’t ask, and they wouldn’t thank me, and they would just like... That was one of the hardest things to adjust to was this weird, unspoken rule that you share everything especially your food. Just the fact that it seemed to be expected that every time I ate, five people were going to sit down and eat my food with me with their hands. Sharing saliva with everyone every time I wanted to eat was a really interesting experience and sometimes it was really frustrating, but it was part of the value of the whole cultural immersion [laughs].
What did you see there that inspired you?
There was a lot of incredible fashion. Their style is super bangin’, their hair is super fly, and their clothes are super fly. Weaves are really big over there. Weaves for women just totally dominate and there’s different kinds of weaves. There’s, like, big, long absurdly unrealistic weaves that weigh 10 pounds and, more popular, there are these really tight weaves that you almost wouldn’t realize it’s a weave until you realize that their hair couldn’t possibly look like that because its so straight. What they do is, they take this fake hair in multi-colors like red, green, and black, and they braid it into these insanely beautiful ornate braids that go halfway down their back. You can’t even tell it’s fake hair until you stop to think about it for a second.
Traditional fashion is still really strong and it’s gorgeous, beautifully patterned handmade clothes. I got to sit in a hut with these guys who were making the stuff traditionally and they, I don’t know why they do it, I guess it softens the cloth or something, but they take the cloth and stretch it over half of a smooth log and they take these giant wooden hammers and one person sits on either side and it’s like their playing drums. They smash it back and forth making a rhythm and they move the cloth the whole time so that they’re smashing every inch of the fabric really hard. They do that to every single piece of traditional cloth. The traditional fabrics and dresses are ridiculously gorgeous - the traditional hair is stellar. I got to go to a few traditional ceremonies with traditional music where one woman will always be the master of ceremonies. She’ll sing the whole time and a lot of the community will come out in traditional dress and they all sit around and the traditional musicians are playing djembe and other drums. She’ll be singing and she’ll start singing about a person who’s there and she’ll be singing, “This person is a beautiful person, she just had a baby and she’s a strong member of our community,” and then while she’s going around and singing people are giving her small amounts of money. She’s gathering all this money and then she takes it and she gives it to that person she’s singing about.
I think that in the sense of the human experience and your experience as an individual - everyone wants the same things and everyone struggles with the same things. I tried to go to the most ridiculously out of the way, unknown place I possibly could in the whole world and still I find that I feel the same and everybody is the same. I think that my imaginary idea of some exotic place and exotic people and all these exotic things is kind of made up and no matter where you go in the world, it’s always the same narrative. I sort of resign myself to that and there’s kind of an interesting peace in that resignation and sort of a strange beauty. So it ended up being more of an enlightening experience in accepting myself and my life and the world and the way it is, as opposed to going to some wildly different place where I feel way different and everything is different.
I think another interesting thing that I found myself thinking about a lot over there - again, I have these ideas that so many of the really difficult things to face in the world and in life like abject poverty and disease and inequality, all the things that their dealing with over there - I always want to blame those on evil people and I want it to be this like simple black and white narrative of evil people did evil things and now stuff is messed up, but going over there really forces me to accept that it’s really not that simple and the difficulty of the way that things are is more complicated than that, and you can’t just easily point the blame at colonialism or exploitation. I kind of had to accept that this is the reality that people have created for themselves. And that the responsibility is much more widespread and harder to pin down. I always try to make it into this narrative of something that is so simple as bad people did bad stuff, but we do this to ourselves and that’s something I found myself thinking about a lot over there. So all of these heavy thoughts are actually inspiring to me, I’ve gained an interesting sort of clarity from this journey, though not necessarily the sort I was looking for.
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