Word: yamoussoukro
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...formed by 128 massive Doric columns that reach out from the porch to envelop a 7.4-acre plaza paved with granite and marble. Has St. Peter's Basilica been magically transported from Rome to the heart of Africa? No, this is the Basilica of Our Lady of Peace in Yamoussoukro, the administrative capital of the Ivory Coast...
...basilica's dome, which reaches 525 ft. above the ground, makes it the tallest church in all Christendom -- about 100 ft. higher than St. Peter's, its inspiration -- but Our Lady of Peace will accommodate 2,000 fewer worshipers than St. Peter's. The Yamoussoukro basilica is the dazzling centerpiece of a building boom launched by President Felix Houphouet-Boigny to carve a modern capital out of the rain forest, 135 miles from the coast and the urban center of Abidjan, the former capital...
...West Africa, where I had never been; I wanted to be in a former French territory in Africa; and I wanted to be in an African country which, in the mess of black Africa, was generally held to be a political and economic success." The Crocodiles of Yamoussoukro displays his idiosyncratic methods of assessing a strange place: serendipitous encounters with local people, from college professors to taxi drivers; intuitive pursuits of whatever his Western intellect perceives as bizarre. Naipaul is most unsettled by a visit to Yamoussoukro, a stupefying modern city being constructed in the remote jungle around the tribal...
...General Odumegwu Ojukwu, leader of the ill-fated Biafran secession, is living in the isolated Ivory Coast bush town of Yamoussoukro. His stay in the Ivory Coast, however, is tenuous. He has already been ordered to leave the country once, for breaking the terms of sanctuary by granting a press interview, but the order was quietly suspended...
...story that emerged last week, Ojukwu was flown out of Uli to Abidjan, capital of the Ivory Coast. At the Abidjan airport, he transferred to an executive jet belonging to Ivory Coast President Felix Houphouet-Boigny and was flown 250 miles to the President's summer palace at Yamoussoukro, which is guarded by a pool of crocodiles. Ojukwu had hoped to establish a government in exile, but Houphouet-Boigny coldly informed him that there were to be no government, no political activities and no statements to the press out of Yamoussoukro. Perhaps it was just as well, for Ojukwu...