Breakfast with Togolese...

For the first time, I have stepped off Ghanaian soil and ventured into the confusing yet utterly charming borders of Francophone Africa. Crossing the border from Aflao (in Ghana), my travel companions and I were greeted with the same bustle and cocaphony we had come to know in Ghana, but with a decidedly different twang. Mototaxi drivers courted us with eloquent French, and aside from the fish and texiles that crowned the heads of women in Ghana, baguettes and snails waded above the crowded streets of Lome, the capitol of tiny Togo. We quickly settled on our accommodation for the evening, and rested in the room to the sound of French announcers enthusiastically calling a French Premier League match. Woke early the following morning, enjoyed a delicious breakfast of baguettes, chocolate pastries, and freshly squeezed orange juice. Wandered through the crowded Grand Marche in downtown Lome, periodically giving my feet a rest from the constant shuffling and manuvering by hailing a motorcycle taxi and buzzing through colorful neighborhoods and beachfront boulevards. Having no real list of tourist destinations, Lome's feature attraction is the city itself, which has a faded French charm about its ornate balconies and quite maquis (open-air cafes). After a long, hot day of wandering, we settled on a jazz club downtown, and thundered down the roads towards our destination on a squad of aging Honda motorbikes. The club was amazing, with superb African decor (masks peering out at guests, dim lighting, earthy tones, distinctly West African paintings and cloth adorning the walls) and fantastic lize music. We danced, clapped, and sang our way through one of the hottest nights I've experienced on the African continent, hypnotized by the groovy rhythms and fluttering horns of the four piece group. Late the next morning, I pulled myself out of bed and joined Jake, Patrick, and Andrew for breakfast. Andrew had decided to return to Accra that morning in order to attend a class in the afternoon, and the other two were headed toward the Ghanaian embassy to apply for a new visa for Jake (he had only purchased a single entry visa for Ghana!) so I said my goodbyes and went my own way. Walking to the beachside street, I hailed a moto taxi and sped off to the voodoo market in northeast Lome. Togo and Benin are thought to be the origin of Fetishism (voodoo), having opened the practice to the Western Hemisphere following the deportation of slaves to the Americas and Caribbean. The voodoo market was a simultaniously grim and fascinating spectical, but it certainly wasn't for the animal-lovers among us. The decomposing bodies of hundreds of animals, including chameleons, dogs, baboons, hawks, and crocs lay strewn about the various tables - a ju-ju apprentice explained the use of each. The skulls of crocodiles and elephants are buried beneath the site of a new home in order to protect the residence from evil spirits; the skull of a monkey is ground into a powder and mixed with other herbs to cure amnesia and prevent memory loss; chameleons are also ground and mixed with honey to cure impotency. At the end of my visit, I was ushered into a small side room, where I met a ju-ju priest, watched him perform weird cantations and wave a bell around nearby fetishes, and purchased a small charm which was blessed specifically for the purposes of providing me with luck and prosperity (although for some reason it hasn't brought about any unusual activity or notably wealth, perhaps because I refused the first two prices proposed by the priest?). After the bizarre potions and strange odors of the fetish market, I walked around Lome for the last time, and hired a moto to the border. I will be returning to Togo on my way to Benin the weekend after next in order to sail past floating villages, explore sleepy colonial towns, and meander along deserted beaches. Tune in for updates.

Amendments: I would also like to inform you all that I have begun volunteering my time at a local orphanage, which has been a great pleasure. I am tutoring five to eight year olds and providing a much-needed mentor to youth that are eager to discover, learn, and have fun. Among the most treasured memories of my short time spent there so far, I have to speak of one boy who seemed to keep to himself despite the activities of others. No more than eight years old, he had patiently seated himself and was diligently, yet carefully, crafting an oregami (spelling?) paper crane. When I asked him how he had crafted such a complicated figure, he gave me a children's book about a Japanese girl who learned to make oregami in her free time. In detail, he explained the story, and I could immediately tell that among his few possessions, he treasured this book most off all. His eyes lit up as he explained each chapter of the book, which he seemed to know by heart, and then flipped to the back of the book to reveal a 36 step instruction sheet that he had followed to the letter in order to create the crane! When I told the boy that I would love to one day hear him read the entire story, he extended his hand and gave me the book, saying I could have it and read it to my heart's content. Such kindness (despite owning few material items) is never forgotten.
I have also been excitedly telling others about the strange new foods I have eaten. The first is giant snails, which I tried on the tro-tro to Togo and found utterly revolting (I threw the half I hadn't managed to swallow out the open window when the kind fellow who had given me one looked aside to study something in his breifcase). The other strange animal is cat. Yes, I have tried cat. I enjoyed it. Monday was the end of Ramadan, and the head of each muslim family (there are many muslims in the Accra suberb of Medina, where the orphanage is located) ritually sacrifices a goat to celebrate the end to fasting. I s'pose these guys didn't fancy goat, because they had slit the throat of a cat and were cooking it over an open flame. When they had finished, they cut it into pieces and boiled it, claws, intestines, and head and all. I was the only one of the volunteers to take a piece (a Kenyan, a Ghanaian, a Japanese woman, and two Americans also work there) and I seemed to earn immediate respect from the locals, who appluaded my courage and shook my hand. There's nothing like travel to bring other the adventurer in someone.

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