BINGERVILLE BOYS' ORPHANAGE

Architecture. The Bingerville Boys' Orphanage is housed in what was once the Governor's Palace. Built on the site of the old Adjamé cemetery, the building was delivered in 1912, after seven years of work, with frames, shutters and door frames imported from France. With its majestic double staircase and its beautiful louvered shutters, this beautiful residence presents an architecture similar to the colonial style of New Orleans, which characterizes all the governors' residences built at that time in Black Africa. An amusing detail: the central building represents an elephant, and from the balcony you can see the head with the ears, drawn by the lawn, while the double staircase represents the tusks.

History. The various colonial administrators of the Ivory Coast colony resided here until 1934, when the capital was transferred to Abidjan. The "house of 100 doors" received the first little boarders resulting from extra-marital relations of the colonists with "native" women - let's be clear, most of them resulting from colonial rapes - in 1935. If at the beginning, the institution was meant to welcome the little "bastards of the colony", rejected by both their fathers and mothers, it then took in the orphans of the Riflemen who had fallen at the front for France in order to give them an education, in recognition of the sacrifice of their fathers. Thus, in November 1953, the Foyer des Métis became the National Orphanage of Côte d'Ivoire. Between 1966 and 1967, the institution took in some of the orphans from the Biafran war, under the auspices of the Red Cross. Due to the increasing number of placements and the need to separate the girls from the boys, the girls were integrated into the National Girls Orphanage of Grand-Bassam, created in 1972, while the latter remained dedicated to boys.

The orphanage today. The beautiful colonial building houses just over 200 boarders within its walls. If most of them are father and mother orphans, there are also "partial" orphans, children who have been abandoned or whose parents cannot take care of them. While the Ivorian government provides funding, the contribution of donors, even if only in the form of visiting time, provides essential additional support that allows the children to have access to extracurricular activities such as theater, cinema, painting and outings.