Gouessesso itself is the attraction — a small Yacouba village of round mud-brick huts with conical thatched roofs, scattered across gentle hillsides between rice paddies and patches of forest. Walking through the village in the early morning, when the cooking fires are lit and women head to the fields, is the best way to understand the rhythm of rural life in western Ivory Coast.
Greet people with the Yacouba 'a-ka' and offer to share a kola nut if you have one — the response is invariably warm. The paths between houses are unmarked but anyone you ask will point the way to the chief's compound, the school, or the path out into the rice paddies. Wear long trousers and decent shoes; the mud is real.