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As an English composition and literature instructor, I practice these skills daily through dedicated time. I try to read and write, especially when I am not at work, which takes up a good chunk of my time. But apart from reading and writing, which are tied to my profession, I also practice karate. Indeed, I have for well over forty years.

I began my martial arts journey when I was 13 years old. I remember going to the movie theater with my father whenever he felt so inclined. We would watch mainly Chinese Kung Fu movies, but sometimes we watched old-time American Western movies. My father loved martial arts movies, but I am not sure if he was ready to join a martial arts school. Anyhow, when I was in the 7th grade, my father started working for an armored vehicle company that transported money from bank to bank and from banks to businesses and vice versa. At his job, one of his colleagues decided to start a Taekwondo program. I guess this was in keeping with the type of work they did, which involved carrying large sums of money within the city and across city lines. This was a potentially dangerous occupation. The small crews of two or three people per vehicle could be attacked, held up, and even killed if they resisted potential aggressors. As such, I think learning a martial art, in addition to the guns all employees carried, could provide enhanced safety. This is where my father’s truncated martial arts journey began one day in 1976 or 1977. I was a young teen then, but I was interested in what my father was learning. Whenever I was walking with him on his way to work, which usually happened, he would stop in the middle of the path and show me what he had learned: blocks, punches, strikes, etc. Soon, I was going to his job to watch the Taekwondo classes regularly. After about a month, my father decided to stop practicing. Dad was already in his 50s, and the art turned out to be a bit challenging for him. He gave me his uniform. I didn’t have to wait, as he had planned, for him to get my own at the end of the month so we could practice together. Instead, I was stepping in his stead!

Pushed to the forefront, I joined the class enthusiastically. I had been watching every class and rehearsing whatever techniques and moves I had seen the students practice in each class once I got home. So when I joined, I felt as if I had been practicing for a long time. After several weeks of classes, I became the instructor’s favorite student. The main reason, I guess, was my ability to absorb everything he taught. Often, he would say to other students, even to older ones, “Look at Etienne.” I loved going to classes for no particular reason; I just loved kicking and punching. Following up on the habit I had picked up, that of practicing at home on the days there were no classes at the dojang, I started teaching my siblings and all the boys my age who used to live in my father’s compound. In Africa, it was customary for a person living in a large city to accommodate nephews, cousins, and siblings if necessary, especially if these family members had no home of their own or were newcomers to the city. This is how I grew up with some cousins and, of course, my own siblings. So many of these cousins and siblings were learning exactly the same thing I was learning at the Taekwondo school; they didn’t have to pay for classes. They learned for free at home! But I do remember one of the boys, Pascal, who decided to join the dojang. His older sister was one of my father’s tenants, people who rented the single bedrooms he had built in the compound. Pascal was in middle school like me, and he enjoyed practicing as much as I did. Hence, we would go to the dojang to practice, and on days when there were no classes there, we would practice at home with the other boys of the compound. As you may imagine, we made good progress after only a few months in the Taekwondo program. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be long before the instructor was reassigned to another city by his employer. Our Taekwondo practice came to an abrupt stop.

I had heard about other martial arts schools, especially The Temple du Dragon, one of the most respectable schools in Bouake, the second largest city in the Ivory Coast. After our instructor left, the Taekwondo program ran for several weeks (I am guessing here because I am not sure I remember this episode accurately) under the guidance of another coworker of my father’s who was a blue belt at the time. Eventually, the program stopped altogether. This is when my search for a new school started in earnest. I remember walking the length and width of the Commerce neighborhood of Bouake, looking at different dojos. At one point, I even considered joining judo because I could not find another Taekwondo school. Then, one evening, at the Bouake market, in a large sports hall where there was a boxing school and a judo club, I discovered another program. The participants were kicking and punching, but the forms were different. The jargon used for each move was different, too. I was used to hearing up chagui for a front kick and yop chagui for a side thrust kick. In this new place, they used mae geri and yoko geri respectively. But I was curious, so I kept going back to watch. And as usual, when I got home, I would rehearse what I had seen. I had no clue what this style of martial art was called; it didn’t matter. I just remember going there in the evening, watching entire classes (about two hours or so) and rehearsing when I got back home or the following day. Eventually, as was to be expected, I told my father I wanted to join the program. On April 9th, 1980, I joined my first Shotokan karate class! Once again, like it happened with Taekwondo, I didn’t have to learn the first five forms; I had already memorized the sequences of Heian one through five. A few months later, I received my orange belt. This was the third belt in those days, yellow being the second. Beyond orange, there were tests for the green, blue, and brown belts before aspiring to test for the black belt, which typically took about four to five years to achieve. But I do not remember ever wearing a yellow belt… Just went from white to orange.

After obtaining my green belt a few months later, I began to participate in local tournaments. I don’t remember those in detail; I don’t even think I can remember a single one of them. I am guessing that I must have participated in local tournaments because I remember participating in a national championship as a green belt in 1980. I had been practicing Shotokan karate for less than a year, and here I was, on the team of our dojo. I remember sparring against one of the top Taekwondo exponents who would going on to join the national team and eventually serve as a coach several years later, winning countless international tournaments, including a successful participation in the Olympics and training world champions, including athletes from some neighboring countries. Back then, I was a skinny sixteen-year-old with several months of Shotokan under my belt and two to three years of Taekwondo practice. Of course, I lost the sparring bout. On the other hand, in the forms or kata competition, I came in fourth place behind some of the top exponents at the time. I only had several months of formal training, so ranking fourth behind Seraphin, Alain Dutausiet, and Issiaka DiBallo was a great feat for a newcomer to the arena. This performance boosted my confidence, and by the time I became a brown belt around 1982, I was a seasoned competitor, especially in the kata division. I remember winning a trophy that year and another one in May or June 1984, the day before my black belt exam. Of course, with such a performance, I was confident that I would become a black belt the next day.

Back in Bouake the next day, I proudly walked into the dojo. I didn’t have my black belt then because I had to purchase it. Actually, I am not sure if I did purchase a belt. I believe one of my instructors, Moussa, also known as Americain, gave me a black belt. That would be my first black belt for quite some time until I bought my own. My memories about this episode are a bit murky; does it even matter? So here is where things take an interesting turn. Having obtained my first degree black belt, I automatically assumed the role of assistant instructor. My instructor liked me for my dedication and diligent practice. I must say I was also very punctual and didn’t miss a class unless I was sick or something came up that prevented me from going to the dojo. Maybe a exam at school, but nothing, not even sickness, would stop me from going to the dojo. I remember forcing myself up in the midst of a malaria bout of fever and fatigue, and going to train just to relapse the very next day.

I had a very special relationship with Moussa, my sensei. In the 1980s, there was no YouTube. Video cassettes were hard to come by and expensive. But I remember that Sensei had two books by Hirokazu Kanazawa Sensei. My sensei would study the still pictures in the book; this is how passionate he was about karate. When he got to the dojo, he would call me, “Hey, little one, come here!” And we would review what he had learned on that day or maybe the day before. Maybe even several days earlier. Apart from teaching me new kata, I am sure the process helped him solidify his newly acquired kata. For my part, I absorbed everything as usual. I was equally passionate, maybe a bit more than my sensei, so I learned very fast because I knew Moussa Sensei would come back tomorrow with another kata. I had to review on my own so I wouldn’t forget the more kata piled on. I am glad I had an elephant memory when it came to memorizing kata sequences easily. It is not surprising that at one point in my career, many dojo members, especially those who joined after me, sought me out to practice kata. I remember Harouna riding his motorcycle from Dar-Es-Salam, about thirty minutes away, to my neighborhood to review kata and pay me on top of that. The more I practiced, the more passionate I became. As far as I remember, karate had become a daily activity for me in the late 1970s after I watched my first Taekwondo class at my father’s job. But maybe my passion for martial arts goes even farther back to my elementary school years. It must have been before 1975 because that year, my father retired from the military and we had to leave the barracks. The episode that comes to mind happened before we left.

As I said earlier, family members who happened to be in the same town or city helped one another in different ways, including long-term accommodation, especially when one member was well established, and the other knew nobody in the city or had nowhere else to live. My father was a military man, had a home, and even with his own children and two wives, he decided to take on a new high school student whose transfer after passing the national elementary school exam landed him in Abidjan, the capital of the Ivory Coast, a city where he had never set foot. The only person from the village was my father, so this is how he ended up living with us. To make a long story short, Kouassi, that was his name, used to get up around 5:00 AM to practice Taekwondo. Back then, it was a relatively newly introduced martial art. But my memories of the time are still vivid. He could not afford a regular uniform, so he had a pair of white pants made from an old flour bag. Back then, flour was sold in large white bags. A bag of flour could weigh about 50 kilograms, so you can imagine how big a bag may have been. Anyway, my point is that seeing Kouassi come back from practice as we kids were getting out of bed is seared in my mind. I even remember the instructor’s name, Honore. At the time, Honore was living with another military man on the first floor of the building where we lived on the third floor. I am not sure who Honore’s instructor was, but I remember him being a red belt back then. What I know is that Mast Kim Young-Tae, a Korean expert, had been in the Ivory Coast since around 1969, maybe a year earlier, and that he was teaching police and military cadets at the police academy and at the Ecole de Gendarmerie, where they trained members of that elite force that my father was a member of. One way or another, Honore had learned enough at that time to teach others. Mind you, a red belt at the time was a singular achievement. There weren’t a whole lot of Taekwondo black belts around. Maybe Zirignon Arsene was a black belt then; I wouldn’t be surprised since he was one of Master Kim’s very first students in the Ivory Coast.

So, yes, I had seen martial arts as a kid even though I was not an active participant. And then came the Chinese Kung Fu movies, and my father took me to the movies to watch them. I am not at all surprised that I became so engrossed that I had a difficult time skipping a day of practice. The same practice continued through the 1990s, but let me return to the period after attaining my first degree black belt.

From my first day in the dojo on April 9th, 1980, until I received my black belt, I trained with Moussa Sensei, who generously taught me every advanced kata, drawing on Kanazawa’s two volumes and sharing that knowledge with me, his student. I was. proud to be learning under one of the most respected instructors, even though he was a first-degree black belt at the time. I guess this is an opportunity to reflect on the value of a rank. In the early days of Shotokan karate in the Ivory Coast, our top instructor, known as the father of Shotokan in the Ivory Coast and respected by exponents of any style, was only a third-degree black belt. So with him at that rank, it was difficult for anybody else to aspire to a higher rank.