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Published: March 12th 2009
Tamberma girl
I'd found a friend after a mini water fight whilst swimming in the river :-) This young local girl is carrying the items for sifting gold, since it is present amongst the stones of the river bank. I don't think she found any that day though! Update on the last few weeks..
It's been a while... and I've finally found the apostrophe on the French keyboard ;-) (Colin)
In the last few weeks I've done quite a lot- though perhaps not with the work here! I've been cycling around Kpalime, seeing more waterfalls and trekking-a-plenty; spotting fab things, creatures and colours in the jungle, tasting some good and some really not-so-good palm wine...
Last Friday (27th Feb) I left in the morning for Lome- the best time to get a bus anywhere is 6am here. I was squashed in between a large Togolese woman and her son for the duration; after many stops and waiting around for the bus to be full again we arrived in Lome 3 hours later; I wandered around for a bit, ate some fufu from one of the street stalls, shared some nuts with some girls from Benin on the beach then watched some English TV for a while in the German Institute (random) and met up with my French buddies from a different organisation to hit the 23 hour bus ride to Ougadougou for the FESPACO film festival. The journey was pretty smooth for Togo road standards-
The accomodation
These buildings are calles 'tata's' and in this case is the family home of our friend David. (The three tata's here are for each of his fathers wives.) except a part of the journey where the driver decided to
snip off the bottom corner of the bumper when he couldn't get past a truck containing two JCB's which was stuck in sand and a barrier to a steep cliffside drop...
The film festival was cool- Ouga was extremely impressive for a West African city- with litter-pickers and everything! I'm sure there's a lot of neglected areas outside the city and the FESPACO season also but what I seen was pretty good. My favourite film was 'When We Were Black' but it over-run so the last bit (and most important!) was cut! After a few days of enjoying the film festivities, beers and chilling, the smog, pollution, heat and repetitiveness indicated it was time for a change..
Two of us decided to hit the road (at 12 o'clock one night so left 6 hours later) and on the way back to Lome we met up with and stayed with David- a friend of a friend- who lived in Kante and is from Tamberma country.. he insisted the next day so we went and stayed in his family home in Tamberma country and so we slept on the
The bus to Kante
I didn't realise until after a while but there was actually a sheep in the bus towards the back (I'd thought the repetitive 'baa-baa' sounds were coming from the roof at first!) roof of the 'tata' under the stars in front of a huge mountain (there is no electricity or cars or machines or toilets for miles). We ate the miel fufu, drank the local beer, swam in the river (apparently the crocs only came out at night), and played with the kids; David is the oldest of eighteen as his father (the village chief) has three wives....
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Rachel
non-member comment
The pictures are great. I am loving your hair, it looks really good on you. Plus you dont have to worry about doing your hair now.xxx