Interesting:See how crocodiles feed in Ivory Coast

By Topsy Oba

For visitors to Yamoussoukro, the official capital of Ivory Coast and the birth place of its first president, the crocodiles are a major attraction, especially at feeding time.

For close to four decades Dicko Toki, originally from neighbouring Mali, was in charge of feeding the sacred animals.
He knew them all by name and they responded to his call - Capitaine, Chef de Cabinet, Commandant - authoritarian names, for these were the guardians of Ivory Coast's founding father, Felix Houphouet-Boigny, who governed for 33 years and shared Dicko's nickname - Le Vieux (the old).
Le Vieux Dicko carried out his dangerous work for years but the best he could offer his family was a simple one-storey home around a crowded courtyard.

His boss, President Houphouet-Boigny lived in rather grander style. He turned his ancestral land into a vast presidential palace dubbed the Versailles of Africa.

In 1983, the small home town became the "capital in the jungle" - with a seven-storey convention centre, the world's biggest church - imagine Rome's Saint Peter's surrounded by a tropical swamp - and a world class golf course.

In 1994 President Houphouet-Boigny was buried inside the palace grounds, guarded by an artificial lake and the city's sacred crocodiles.

A good friend of mine says that on the day of Houphouet-Boigny's funeral he saw with his own eyes a man screaming "Houphouet is dead, why should I live?" before throwing himself in the lake where the crocodiles had him for dinner.

Dicko made a regular show of pulling the giant monsters by their tail”

The palace is not open to visitors, but the lake is something of a tourist attraction. At exactly five o'clock, they head to the lake in front of the imposing palace gates for feeding time - Dicko Toki's moment in the limelight.

The crocodiles - and there are at least a dozen - get around 30kg of meat a day, and other treats.
Most days visitors - often Ivorian - pay Dicko and his assistants for the privilege of watching a live chicken being thrown to the waiting reptiles. I have been there myself - microphone primed for that dying squawk and crunch of bone and feathers. The poor things rarely last more than a few seconds.

The evening feeding frenzy is at once intriguing and horrifying. The Nobel-prize-winning author V S Naipaul was captivated by the ritual, which formed a central part of his essay The Crocodiles of Yamoussoukro, published in 1984.