“This is a DC-10, next to it you have a Fokker 28, there are Boeing 737s…” Near Abidjan, between green forest and lagoon, Aziz Alibhai presents his amazing collection of shipwrecks that he hopes to one day transform into an atypical tourist attraction.
Mr. Alibhai, an affable seventy-year-old, does not like being spoken of as a “cemetery” to describe the dozens of planes scattered around his imposing compound in Songon, some thirty kilometers from Abidjan.
After the post-election crisis of 2010-2011 that killed about 3,000 people in Côte d’Ivoire, the businessman set about buying grounded planes at Abidjan airport.
“It cost me candy, but I was so excited,” he says, preferring not to “remember” the total price.
That’s how eleven cabins come to the huge site of his construction machinery rental company, which also houses the facilities of the Ivoire Académie, a third-tier Ivorian soccer club that trains young talent and whose president is Aziz Alibhai.
Eight of them are lined up on the resort’s 800-meter-long airstrip, which leads to the peaceful lagoon.
“Some planes had to be broken into two or three pieces to be able to transport them without blocking the whole road,” he recalls.
Born in Dar-es-Salam, Tanzania in the early 1950s, Aziz Alibhai arrived in Côte d’Ivoire in 1968 and never left.
With his head still full of projects, he now wants to breathe new life into these discarded devices and share his passion with curious tourists.
– “Recycler” –
“I would like to build conference rooms, a restaurant and why not luxury rooms,” he explains to AFP, describing his project in detail.
“We can easily modify, the cabins are insulated and with a minimum of air conditioning it can work very well,” he adds.
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The rain, the sun, the dust have worn away the original colors of the carcasses.
And inside the DC-10, the cockpit is frozen like it was in the 2000s.
A thick layer of dust covers the numerous buttons and a few birds have built their nests in the overhead compartments.
Inscriptions in the Greek alphabet remind us that it belonged to the short-lived Greek company Electra Airlines.
Next, a dismantled Antonov-12, a Soviet aircraft, borders a soccer field.
Aziz Alibhai envisions a terrace connecting the two parts so visitors can “have a drink” on the device.
The seats have been removed from most aircraft and are being reused to seat spectators in the grandstands of the Ivoire Académie campus.
A few first-class seats have landed on its terrace to welcome visitors for an aperitif.
“We’re very recyclers,” Aziz Alibhai laughs, listing the myriad creations based on salvaged objects — stairs made out of bulldozer armrests, sheds made out of truck chassis… — that make up the many buildings on his property.
“I would also be happy to salvage the mechanical parts that are not visible, to display them with labels, to show the most refined parts of the aircraft in a kind of museum,” the collector dreams.
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