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Tata
Fortified Tamberma home near Kante PCV Meghann and I left Ouaga on the 14th and traveled to Dapaong in northern Togo. We arrived in early afternoon and went to the PC house. We were welcomed by Kyan, a volunteer from my stage in Guinea who had transferred to Togo.
The three of us borrowed bikes to explore the city. Kyan made a point to get us some
wagash, a locally-made fried cheese served with rice and spicy sauce. It was delicious and we wondered why we couldn’t find the same thing on the Burkina side of the border.
We visited Dapaong’s celebrated weavers, a co-op of local women who make quality blankets, bags, place settings, etc for sale. Their workshop was busy with women weavers running rolls of cotton string back and forth through across vertical looms. Their products were neatly displayed in a well-run boutique. They seem to have gotten some advice about colors and styles that appeal to Western tourists. I bought a blanket and was impressed when I saw all of the money I paid for it handed directly to the woman who made it.
There were a handful of other volunteers in town, some I’d met before. It was
fun to hang out with everyone in the relaxed atmosphere of the PC house, sampling Togolese sodas and beer. Kyan, always generous, made a sushi dinner for the whole group.
We left early the next morning, only to wait a couple of hours for a bush taxi to fill. We went 100 km south to Kanté, where we hopped on moto taxis that took us east toward some small Tamberma villages. The complex design of fortified homes in these villages is a remnant of the days of tribal warfare. The fighting was fiercest when fueled by the slave trade, which encouraged conquering tribes to sell their defeated enemies to European traders.
In these villages what would be a courtyard is condensed into one mud-brick house called a tata or takienda. The two-story building has sleeping chambers for every member of the family, a kitchen, a granary, spaces for drying foods, and a room where all of the family’s livestock can be brought in for the night. There are plenty of fetishes, round altars where chickens are regularly sacrificed according to the local religion. Large fetishes in front of the house are for protection, some decorated with cowry shells.
Each tata is complete with thick walls, heavy doors, spy holes, hiding places, and traps. If an intruder were to get in the front door, residents who retreated to the top floor could shoot arrows or pour boiling water on the intruder through strategically-placed holes. Clever!
From Kanté we took a bush taxi that moved painfully slowly south to Atakpamé. We found our way to the PC house and met up with Jeanne and Stephanie, also transfers from Guinea. We met a new group of PCVs and sampled more Togolese foods - tofu, fried yams with hot pepper. Pretty good, but the wagash wins.
Stephanie’s village, with its hiking and waterfalls, was just a day trip from Atakpamé (ok a long day - 4 h each way by bush taxi and moto). The village of Tomegbé was beautiful. It was amazingly free of trash, all mud-and-thatch buildings with green plantlife exploding out of every available patch of dirt. Corn stalks were taller than me at a time of year when the Burkinabé are just beginning to plant seeds. Banana, papaya, avocado, and mango trees sprung up effortlessly everywhere.
We walked out of the village into the mountains following a narrow, spiderwebby path. It took about an hour (after getting lost once) to find the Akloa falls. In a serene space isolated by hills and forest, the river makes a 30+ m drop into a pool that is great for swimming. The water was cool, clean, and so refreshing in the hot weather.
We stayed in Atakpamé that night and set out for Lomé early the next morning. To tdo this, we took moto taxis to the gare for Lomé, where several bush taxis were waiting for passengers. Since the taxis don’t leave until they’re full, you’d think that as passengers show up they’d fill one car at a time so that people could leave as soon as possible. Yet such logic should never be expected from West African transport an in reality the system works as follows:
Each driver has two or three apprentices, young men who take care of baggage and find passengers. When you arrive at the gare and express interest in traveling to Lomé, the apprentices rush up to compete for your business. They do not compete by outdoing one another in quality, reliability, or service, but by seizing your bag and playing a violent game tug-of-war with it. You watch helplessly and hope it doesn’t last long and that your bag remains intact. The apprentice that manages to wrestle your bag away from the others takes it to his boss’s car and you’re expected to travel with that driver. If you want, however, you can then pick up your bag and move it to a different car and no one can say anything. So the whole bitter battle among the apprentices is pretty pointless.
On this particular trip, there were five apprentices fighting over Meg’s bag and no one was winning. The tugging moved the group out of the street and toward the gutter then back into the street. Amidst all the yelling, we managed to find a car that was leaving immediately and tried to order the men to put the bag in that car. One driver tried to change our mind by taking my bag and putting it into his truck. My bag was still on my back, so that meant him grabbing at my shoulders and me slapping his hands away. Next he grabbed on to my upper arms and tried to physically prevent me from getting in the other car. As I ripped myself away I chastised him by saying that it is not OK to touch women like that, then I switched to English so I could openly express my discontent without anyone understanding. Really, what is it about working in transport that rots a man’s soul? Or is it just that the scum of the earth, the vilest of the thieves, perverts, and assholes come together to form the West African transportation system?
Anyway, we got in the good car and made it to Lomé without any problems. We had a few days to explore the city. We had planned a day at a nice private beach but it rained, so we wandered and visited the National Museum and the Artisan’s village, where we found some great jewellery. We walked along the public beach, a pretty place to walk but not really suitable for swimming (too much trash and drowned livestock). We were impressed by some of Lomé’s wide, clean boulevards with actual trash cans instead of trash piles. After the rain, however, some of the main roads became impassable mosquito-ridden lakes.
We didn’t get to experience Lomé’s nightlife since we were there midweek, but a group of Togo PCV’s showed us some of their favorite places, from the brand-new, upscale sushi restaurant where we could afford very little food to the guy who sells shots of sodabi (distilled palm wine) on a street corner for 100 francs.
We had a lot of fun with all the Togo PCV’s we met! Thanks for being so welcoming! From here it’s on to Benin…
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