Word: houphouet
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Kennedy was obviously not in a retiring mood, and proved it during his White House reception for Ivory Coast President Félix Houphouet-Boigny and his stunning wife, Marie-Thérèse. There, Kennedy mixed politics, protocol and humor. Seated between Mme. Houphouet-Boigny and Mme. Ernest Boka, wife of the Ivory Coast Supreme Court Chief Justice, he regaled both women in his Boston-accented French. He even inquired about the designer of Mme. Houphouet-Boigny's dress; informed that it was by Balmain, Kennedy observed that this would disappoint Dior...
What makes Houphouet-Boigny's beliefs important is his position as undisputed boss of the strongest, fastest growing and most influential of all the nations in Africa's former French Community, a fragmented empire that dominates the continent's huge western shoulder...
Abidjan's prosperity, and Houphouet-Boigny's success, were largely made in France. The sprawling Renault auto assembly plant on Abidjan's outskirts is one reminder of the large amount of private French capital flooding into Ivory Coast; the heavily laden coffee craft steaming out of Abidjan's harbor symbolize the preferential trade agreements that Paris renews year after year. France hands out $50 million in annual subsidies and other aid to help keep the little republic solvent-and pro-French. But Houphouet-Boigny needs little wooing, for he has been in love with France...
...Flirtation. Ivory Coast's leader got his start as a country doctor in the backwoods. His contact with village chiefs and the unhappy masses gave Houphouet (he later added Boigny, which means "battering ram" in his native Baoule tongue) an itch for politics; in the 19405 he formed Ivory Coast's first political party, later organized nationalist politicians in all French West Africa territories into one large political group, the Rassemblement Democratique Africain. For a time. Houphouet-Boigny's RDA was allied with the French Communists, but eventually he dropped his Red friends; bv then...
Throughout the fiery '50s. when nationalism swept West Africa. Houphouet never abandoned his effort to bring about unity among the emerging black states under French guidance. When at last Charles de Gaulle's African Community crumbled. Houphouet was eloquently distressed: "I found myself waiting in front of the cathedral with the wilted flowers of the federation in my arms." Today he remains a friend of De Gaulle's; sometimes, referring to his hero's country home, he will call his own modest house in the village of Yamoussoukro "Colom-bey-les-Deux-Eglises." Houphouet-Boigny...