It is on a narrow strip of sand between the Atlantic Ocean and the Tagba Lagoon and at the mouth of the Bandama River that the "City of Three Waters", the third colonial city of Côte d'Ivoire, also called Lahou-Kpanda or Lahou Plage, was built.Since the 1970s, the silting up of the mouth, the progressive rotting of the buildings due to the sea air, the communication problems that the presence of a ferry was not enough to solve and the depletion of fish in the waters had led the State to decide to transfer the colonial city doomed to sink to a new and more viable site, about twenty kilometers from the coast in the hinterland. This is the "new" Grand-Lahou, located about one hundred kilometers west of Abidjan, which can be accessed from the coast.At the entrance, one discovers the paved bus station, crowded with travelers and attiéké sellers, and a little further on, a statue of the Father of the Nation Félix Houphouët-Boigny, proudly displaying a hoe and a daba. Grand-Lahou is a small, dynamic, mixed-race town located in a region rich in cash crops (mainly rubber and oil palm). It is home to a large community of Appollonians (or N'Zima, the local Akan ethnic group), Didas, Burkinabè, Dioulas and a few Mauritanian merchants. It is also known as the cradle of the traditional Awossi dance, which became the Mapouka, and the birthplace of Usher Assouan (1930-2007), an Ivorian politician and personality of the African continent during the Houphouët-Boigny era. Apart from a picturesque market that is lively on Fridays and a few religious buildings (two churches, a mosque and a Harrist temple), the main interest of Grand-Lahou lies in its close surroundings. If a pilgrimage to Lahou Plage is necessary, we also note the house of the late Usher Assouan, the sacred lake, and especially the Azagny National Park and its Chimpanzee Island.

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