Compagnon! journal d’un noussi en guerre : 2002-2011

written by Karel Arnaut and Marcus Mausiah Garvey

Compagnon ! Journal d’un noussi en guerre: 2002-2011 raconte la vie tant intime que professionnelle de Garvey dont une partie importante s’est déroulée pendant ‘les années d’instabilité’ en Côte d’Ivoire. Pendant cette période Garvey a joué un rôle substantiel dans l’histoire d’un groupement d’autodéfense appelé flgo-Abidjan. Après le dénouement de la crise politico-militaire d’avril 2011, Garvey résume sa vie diffi cile de déception, de précarité et de ténacité ; tout en Nouchi, le patois qu’il cultive autant dans cette autobiographie que dans sa vie citadine quotidienne : « Ce que moi je peux retenir, c’est que mon Noussiya s‘est dédja sur les ways des babatchês qui nous gèrent, c’est tous des soyés, gammer pour se faire djêh, toujours djêh, seulement djêh, uniquement djêh. Mais on n’a pas douffé dans vos gnamôgôya, on peut continuer à ripopo. »

In Compagnon ! Journal d’un noussi en guerre: 2002-2011 Garvey tells the story of intimate and professional life in Côte d’Ivoire during a decade of civil war. During that period Garvey played an important role in the paramilitary group FLGO-Abidjan, part of the militarised wing of the so-called patriotic movement who supported President Laurent Gbagbo. Compagnon! is the outcome of the collaboration of Marcus Mausiah Garvey and the anthropologist Karel Arnaut which began in 2009 when Garvey showed Karel his autobiography-in-progress. Since that day both became companions in a long, challenging but often intensely creative and reflective literary project which led, among other things, to this book.

Karel Arnaut

Karel Arnaut is associate professor and research coordinator at IMMRC at the University of Leuven (KULeuven, Belgium). He did research on social movements of youngsters and union organisations among students. Another book by Karel Arnaut, Writing along the margins: literacy, mobility and precarity in a West African city (Multilingual Matters) presents 90 pages of extracts from Compagnon ! translated in English, annotated, and accompanied by an interpretive essay.

Marcus Mausiah Garvey

Marcus Mausiah Garvey is the literary and military pseudonym of Digbo Foua Mathias who has been spending most of his life in Yopougon, a popular quarter of Abidjan, the capital of Côte d’Ivoire. At the age of 27 Garvey joined the Front for the Liberation of the Great West (FLGO). After the demise of the FLGO and the denouement of the violent political crisis in April 2011, Garvey continued his precarious civilian life in the company of his small family.