Yes I stayed in the Novotel " downtown" & remember one guy walking stark naked down the street at lunch time. They were fishing from wooden canoes in the lagoon & I came home with some lovely wooden carvings of a god & .a French colonialist
I visited the old capital and bought some sand cast bronze masks direct from the foundry. I can still see the young children wire brushing the sand off.
I avoided the palm heart wine sold in cocnut halves from grubby plastic half barrels and the bar snack of live soft shell crabs threaded on a string.
It was very poor and a first introduction to sub Saharan Africa which gripped me every since.
