Advertisement
Published: April 15th 2009
This weekend the girls and I skipped the border and spent our Easter in Togo.
For those of you who don’t know, Togo is the long, skinny francophone country to the east of Ghana. I loved Togo - the closed gutters and wider streets were a nice change, as well as scalding hot water in our shower at the Hotel Copacabana. (Haha, “Her name was Lola, she was a showgirl...”)
There are three girls in my group who speak a small bit of French, so we managed to get around well enough, and we actually happened to pick a hotel out of the guide book that was on the main road, so we were within walking distance of tons of restaurants and a staggeringly large population of expats, so we didn’t always have to depend fully on our broken French.
Speaking of food, Togolese food was such a breath of fresh air for me. They had baguettes for sale everywhere I turned and they had salami, steak and salad on every menu we encountered. We ate some pretty amazing Middle Eastern food while we were there too. In fact, at times I felt kind of like I was in the Middle East - a few of the restaurants we went to had Middle Eastern music on the radio, there were usually people smoking hookah (sheesha), and there was no shortage of chawarma to eat. It was kind of crazy.
There were also hardly any street sellers, which was strange to me. I actually kind of missed it - it’s nice to have anything you need being shoved in your face from all sides.
Since Togo borders Ghana and the boundaries have not always been very defined, most of Togo and the Volta region of Ghana share the Ewe culture and language. It’s funny though because Ghanaians speak English and Ewe and the Togolese people speak French and Ewe.
It was pretty overwhelming to travel to another African country in general, especially since I’m just getting quite accustomed to Ghana, but it made it ten times more overwhelming when I couldn’t understand any of the language either. Although I can’t seem to find anything bad to say about Togo, I’m still grateful that my first African experience is in a country that I share a common language with. It was fun to try and pick up as much French as I could in the 3 short days we were there though, and even after I crossed back to the Ghanaian side I found myself saying “merci” instead of “medaase.”
We spent all of our time in Lome, which is the capital of Togo. It’s a city of about 500,000 (or so I was told), so it is considerably smaller than Accra which, at last estimate, is rapidly growing above 2 million. Lome was definitely bustling, but much less so than Accra, and the French influence was very apparent - virtually every restaurant we either ate at or passed was open-air. It was nice to sit and eat good food and watch the swarms of motor bikes on the road.
There are no tro tros in Lome, and there are also a very limited number of taxis - mostly there are just motor-taxis. If you ask me, there is absolutely no better way to travel. The streets of Lome were considerably less congested because 25 bazillion motor bikes take up a heck of a lot less space than 25 bazillion tro tros. There were probably about 25 to 1 motorbikes to cars on the road.
Every time we needed to go anywhere we would just walk up to the curb and about 15 motorbikes would pull up. Then we would have to spend a few minutes trying to get over the language barrier and get to the right place, and then woohoo, we were on our way. I wanted to go anywhere and everywhere because they were so much fun. I bet it looked pretty hilarious to see a fleet of obruni bikes chugging down the road.
The very first bike I got on when we got to Lome just happened to be the ghetto-mobile, and I was afraid we were going lose some parts trying to keep up with everyone else, but not to worry, she held out long enough for me to get where we were going. After that, I made sure I got on one that at least looked like it still had some life left in it.
Togo in general wasn’t the cheapest place to spend the weekend. 1 thousand CFA = 2.75 Ghana cedis = about 2 US dollars… Togo = expensive.
Another interesting tidbit - Ghana is in love with Celine Dion… you hear her everywhere you go, and apparently Togo is in love with Madonna because we heard her quite a bit in the short time we were there.
Anyway, I guess I’ll start from the beginning of our crazy weekend.
On the three hour tro tro ride from Accra to the Togo border in Aflao, we just about died probably a hundred times. Apparently we were in some kind of crazy hurry… or at least the driver was.
While we were in the tro, Nicole broke out the trail mix that her mom had sent her and we passed it around. In Ghana, when you eat in public you are expected to invite anyone around you to your food (even strangers), so we told the cute little lady sitting next to us that she was invited to our trail mix. Well, I don’t think she had ever come across trail mix before because she just took the bag and set it in her lap and stared at it for about 5 minutes. It was the funniest thing. I don’t think she knew quite what to do with herself, so after a while, Margaret took the bag from her lap and told the lady to hold out her hands and she poured some in for her. The lady dumped the mix on her lap and ate it piece by piece examining each thing before eating it. I thought it was pretty cute.
After we got across the border, changed our money and proceeded to pay far too much for a taxi, we checked into the Hotel Copacabana and went in search of some lunch. After eating some amazing chawarma and humus, we went to an art village and bought a few presents and such and then went back to the hotel to take naps before our big night out on the town in Togo. I know, I know, it doesn’t sound that exciting right?
Wrong.
We ate dinner and spent a long, long time talking and people-watching on the outside terrace at this classy little Lebanese/Togolese place. The whole inside of it was painted like a giraffe. Anyway, long story short, we ended up migrating to a place recommended to us by the owner of the Lebanese restaurant and stayed out way too late at a nightclub (disco theque, as it’s called in Togo) named the Privilege - deemed the biggest nightclub in West Africa. We had a crazy, crazy time. There is nothing, I mean nothing, even remotely like that in Ghana. Who would have thought a tiny country that everyone has to Google to figure out where the heck it is would have such a crazy nightlife. Hmmm, not me.
Anyway, the next day we went to the beach just outside of the city and relaxed for a few hours. It’s a funny thing, essentially being on vacation from a vacation.
While we were at the beach we saw tons of people we had met the day before. Turns out the number of friends it has taken us about 3 months to accumulate in Ghana took us approximately 3 days to accumulate in Togo. I wonder how that works? Haha.
While lying peacefully on the beach, a random Dalmatian trotted up and plopped itself right on Romina the “dog lover’s” towel. Hahaha, she was not very pleased with that. It would not, for the life of it, get off either, so she ended up having to get up and rip her towel out from under it.
Well, after our beach day and quite the ordeal to get a taxi, we showered at the good ol’ Copacabana and we were off on the back of motorbikes in search of a place to have our Easter “family” dinner. After a mini tour of the city and a few non-existent or closed restaurants, we finally decided to eat at the super classy restaurant in the downstairs of Privilege. Well, we ended up spending way, way too much on dinner and desert, but I don’t regret it one bit. Warm bread, real cheese (non-existent in Ghana), steak, sautéed potatoes and chocolate mousse made for a pretty amazing meal.
Our waiter was really nice as well and after dinner we got a picture with him before we bid farewell.
Or so we thought.
The next morning we were outside eating breakfast, and low and behold who struts up with a bouquet of roses, but our waiter Antony from the night before. He said he had searched all of Lome that morning trying to find us, and that he would like to show us around the city before we had to leave. Kind of strange huh?
Oh, no, that’s nothin’. You just wait.
So we were planning on chartering motorbikes to give us an hour tour of the city anyway, and we didn’t quite know how to get rid of Antony, so we let him bargain for the bikes for us and be the guide and tell the drivers where to go.
Well, after about ten minutes of sightseeing on the main road, we turned off down this dirt road and started driving through the slums. I thought Antony was just trying to give us a glance at what all of Lome looks like and not just what we wanted to see, so I was thinkin’ “Wow, this is really cool.” Well, after weaving through mountains of trash and shanty towns, we pull up to this little house type thing and stopped. We all looked around at each other a little bewildered and wondered where in the world we were. Antony jumped off and led us into this little square “courtyard” surrounded by crumbling cement buildings. He grabbed us a bench, took off his shirt and shoes, and proceeded to try his best English and tell us about where the heck we were. He told us that his “Auntie” takes in orphans and teaches them how to live with the spirits and this was her house. We were all a little sketched out at this point, but then he told us to come inside and the real fun began. We had to remove our shoes, dip our hands in this pot of water with leaves floating around in it three times and then flick it off and then touch our foreheads and then our chests. Then, we went into this little dimly lit room and sat in a circle on tribal stools. The Auntie came in and sat there - we couldn’t talk to her because she couldn’t speak English. Antony told us about her “special connection with the other world” aka …. voodoo.
Umm, yeah, I was creeped out.
She offered us water sachets and had us all look at her herbal medicine diploma. Meanwhile, there were huge cob webs on the walls and connecting to the room we were in was a room full of bottles holding curious substances, and some gin.
Then, he made us leave the dark little room and enter the voodoo shrine. I’m not even kidding, there were voodoo dolls and a creepy clay head with beads embedded in it. That was the first time in my life I’ve ever seen a legitimate voodoo doll. We had to get on our knees, bow before the alter, touch our forehead to the floor and then kiss the floor.
Ok, just stop. Are you picturing this for me? Absolutely insane.
Then, we sat there for a minute, bowed and kissed the floor again and insisted that we had to go. But, if the whole voodoo worship session wasn’t enough, as soon as we walked out the door, a huge gust of wind blew through and the rain started falling. We couldn’t get back on the motorbikes due to the rain, so Antony made us go BACK in the house and sit with his Auntie until he came back with a taxi. The most awkward thing in my life, not kidding. She gave us a bench and some sort of animal skins to put our feet on and we just sat there in silence waiting for the car.
When he finally came back, she gave us some cloth that smelled absolutely retched to use as an umbrella and we booked it out of there as fast as we could slosh through the storm. Hmmm, it was only 10 o’clock by that point and we had already had breakfast, had a mini tour of the city, had a voodoo worship session and waited out the storm in the voodoo shrine. Wowza, what a morning.
Well, needless to say, we made it back to Accra on Monday.
So, in non-Togolese experiences, I have been going to the school twice a week as well as the orphanage twice a week. These days I live for going to the orphanage.
Little baby Blessing just started walking and baby Mina, baby Mary and baby Gwen are just as up to no good as usual. Haha, Mina discovered crayons the other day and drew all over the floors, walls and windows with them before I caught her. From then on, every time she hunted down a crayon, she would make sure I saw her before running as fast as her legs would carry her to an open space to scribble. Mary chomped down on my leg so hard I had a bruise through my pants the other day and she thought it was the funniest thing ever. Atule, the little deaf boy, ran up to me one day and shoved his shorts in my hands. Apparently he had taken them off when he used the bathroom and could get his little undies up, but for the life of him, could not get his shorts back on. I held them out for him and with a little bit of teamwork, managed to get his legs through the right holes. Haha, he’s so cute. He said thank you by banging me on the head with a toy car.
The Beacon House got four new children last week. They were rescued from the Children’s Home in Osu and I shiver to think of what that place is like, judging by the shape those poor babies were in. There is one little boy who never, ever smiles, doesn’t talk and will not let you put him down. He is three but wears cloths sized for a one year old and they still fall off of him. Proportionally he is the skinniest human being I’ve ever seen - his thigh is half the size of my forearm. There is another new little girl with ringworm on her head, and not a single one of the four is potty trained yet, even though they are all at least 3 years old. On a brighter note, watching two of the new kids get on the trampoline for the first time was absolutely hilarious. They thought it was the craziest thing ever and they would stand up, try to take a step, fall down and laugh and laugh and laugh. I loved it.
Oh, and Togo is the tenth country I’ve ever stepped foot in, hence the title of my rambling.
Meanwhile, I’m missing you all.
Much love,
Cari
Advertisement
Tot: 0.088s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 9; qc: 51; dbt: 0.0595s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Kate
non-member comment
lol
I can totally see you kneeling down and kissing the floor in a voodoo shrine. I also see you looking around at everyone wondering why in the world you were doing it haha why would you let Mary bite you? and for goodness sake, feed that little boy!