Six of us left bright and early Friday morning to the trotro station where we waited several hours for the trotro from circle, Accra to Afloa (the Ghanaian city that borders Togo) to fill up. When we were finally on the road, about an hour outside of Accra I realized that I had forgotten my passport. I felt quite stupid. I knew I needed a passport and I knew that I don’t carry it around in my purse, so it should have been one of the first things I packed but it completely slipped my mind. I only realized that I didn’t have it when I was looking outside the trotro’s window wondering about what kind of stamp I would get on my passport. When I told my mates their first response was to think that I was joking and then their next question was what am I going to do now? It’s not like I can just ask the trotro to turn around while I pick up my passport and its about a 4 hour drive to Afloa. I really didn’t want to miss out on Togo; I had been looking forward to French pastries for days. I sat in trotro debating what to do when I finally came up with a plan. I decided I was going to ask the driver to be let out at the next safest point and hitch another trotro back to Legon (where I live) and then pay a taxi to drive me straight to Afloa to save time. I knew taxi travel would be much more expensive but it was the price I was willing to pay for stupidity. Corbett, to my relief, decided to join me on are the backtrack. We planed to meet up with the other group at the border, after all we were only about an hour behind them (despite our taxi driver being pulled over and almost arrested because of something about the fire extinguishers in his car being faulty). This plan of reuniting failed as our telephones don’t work in Togo and we had no way of getting a hold of them.
From Afloa it’s only a couple steps through the border and you’re in Lomé, the capital of Togo. In our guide book we were warned that Afloa is particularly known for its chaotic mass of people trying to take advantage of foreigners. My book writes, “readers have passed on stories about ‘unofficial officials’ hanging around, and shifty ‘guides’ getting in the middle of things—but if you’re reasonably alert, refuse any advances made by prospective guides or money-changers, and walk straight from the lorry park to the border post, then you shouldn’t have any problems.” And sure enough as soon as we stepped out of our taxi, there was a rush of Ghanaians trying to get our attention, either wanting us to get our money exchanged with them, buy a bottle of coke, or top up on minutes. So Corbett and I had our “take no shit” faces on when two guys approached us wanting to get to know us. Not knowing exactly where to go we allowed them to help us a little but made it very clear that we were not going to pay them anything in exchange. The border process was fairly simple and efficient and in less then a half hour we found ourselves in Togo. Not being able to contact our friends (no signal), we decided it best to at least find a place to stay for the night and drop off our bags. Our two followers offered to help us and we reluctantly allowed them. They ended up finding us a fairly nice hotel for a fair price right by the ocean. Since they already knew where we were staying and were pretty helpful we told them they could stop by tomorrow if we weren’t busy.
The next morning we awoke early to try to find an internet café to email our friends where we were staying on the off chance that they would check it. The internet was down in all the cafes (big surprise) so we went roaming the streets for some good bakery.
We were keeping a running total of the white people we saw because there weren’t that many (and people watching is fun). I said to Corbett "Oh, there's another white person" and Corbett paused with a puzzled expression and then said “...wait I think i know her”. I thought she was full of total b.s. but it turned out to be her old high school teacher. Imagine that! She had no idea she'd been teaching/living in Togo for two years now. Between the two of us, we had no clue what we were doing prior to meeting her because the two people with guide books that included Togo were both in the other group so she told us all the cool places to go.
Back at the hotel our two friends, Holly and Tagoe were waiting for us. We ended up going to this voodoo market, which we had been wanteding to see, where there were all sorts of dead animals used by people to make potions for medicines. Snakes, monkey heads, lizards, birds, rats, cheetahs, alligators, even a puffer fish. Ooo and I saw a gorilla’s foot. I asked how they collected the animals and the guy showing us around said they all died of natural causes but Corbett and I both find that hard to believe. We also met the chief of the Voodoo village and he showed us a bunch of different artifacts that meant different things. I got this voodoo travel telephone that he personally blessed. It’s supposed to keep me safe during my travels. We were going to go back to Afloa after that because the two guys wanted us to see their home village and meet their parents but as we were crossing the border again Corbett realized she didn’t have her wallet (she had her debit card and what equated to about 100 dollars in it). This caused a huge riot when the news broke out. Other Ghanaians were accusing the two guys we had been with all day and searched them. Corbett and I had no idea what do/think. We didn’t really think the guys had taken her money but we didn’t know. Corbett wanted to go back to Togo to go to our hotel to see if it was there and the two guys went back with us. The last place Corbett got out her wallet was at our hotels lobby to pay for another night. Having retraced our steps, we realized that Corbett must have left her wallet at the lobby after we had paid for our room. We had been sitting at this table next to these two priests, whom had been sitting there the whole time. They recalled seeing this guy come in, bend down to pick up something and then walk away. Corbett was in good spirits about losing it, she kept saying ‘it’s just money’. But the two guys, especially Holly, were very distressed. Holly kept saying what we thought was “I feel pennies” and it took us forever to figure out that he was saying “I feel penitence.” This is where things took a 180 turn. It went from them chasing/following us around to us trying to get them to follow us. They felt so bad that her wallet had been stolen and that others thought they had done it and kept sulking around, totally being buzz kills. So we were like “come on guys, cheer up, let’s get some ice-cream. So with effort we went to this really nice icecream/food place. It was so weird because Corbett’s teacher said these exact words “if you want to find your friends go to the Fountain of Ice ream, they’ll be there” and sure enough our other friends (not the ones we originally traveled with but from our program) were there. From them we learned where the other group was staying and that Ric and Megan had been searching the city for us on motor bikes. By the time we went to their hotel we learned that they had already checked out to go further north into Togo. We spent the rest of the day walking along the ocean and Corbett and I ate at this nice restaurant. The menus are all in French but Corbett is pretty fluent in the language so she did all the ordering. I told her that I wanted a salad (good salads a rare in Ghana) so she pointed at one, “get this one, it’s your typical garden salad.” Not that I’m blaming her, but something got lost in translation because the salad I received had a fish staring me in the eye, followed by a layer of tuna and beneath that was loads of pepper; all foods I can’t stand. At the bottom was some lettuce and tomatoes but they had already been ruined by the other aromas. The pizza however, was delicious.On the last day our journey we meet up with our two friends to attempt again to go to their home village in Afloa.
They took us to the local spots along the ocean where we drank this island alcoholic drink made from corn. It was so yummy! They introduced us to all their friends or ‘brothers’ and we sat and drank and talked for quite awhile. As we were enjoying of drinks, we heard this distant chanting that we found out was the people pulling in the fishing nets. All the local villages help pull the long nets to the shore and sing for good luck. It was neat to watch. We then went back to their home were they climbed a coconut tree to get us coconuts. Haha who does that? Thirsty? Let me just climb this tree and get you some. Back at their house they made us a local dish of banku for dinner with this pepper sauce filled with many small boneless fish. I of course could not eat any of it but truly I was full off the freakin coconuts I had eaten anyway. Ooo and they had a cat named Culture that I went gaagaa over. It was my first time petting a cat since I’ve been here!That day was one of the most authentic experiences I had here yet. We would have never got to experience it all had we listened to the guide book. A local village like that is not something a foreigner can see unless being invited. As we were drinking, an older women walked past us with this huge smile on her face and she finally said to us, “I like this, I like the mixing.” At the house, all the little girls were peering the heads at us from behind the trees as we were enjoying our coconuts and we tried to motion to them to come and sit by us but Tagoe said they were to shy because it was the first time they were seeing whites.
Also, while drinking we were listening to reggae music talking about the meaning behind the songs and life in general. One of the guys said in a poetic fashion “life goes on, man” which I really think should be the motto of the whole journey. I forgot my passport, we got pulled over, (my camera broke by the way), phones didn’t work, Corbett lost her wallet but we had such a surprisingly awesome time.
Lome and Accra are quite different and I made a few observations that are unique to my experience. First, there are TONS of motor bikes in Togo. We counted about 20 bikes to every car. You can pretty much hitch a ride to anywhere on the back of a motorbike; which was our main source of transportation. I didn’t have a helmet or anything (shoot me) and on dirt roads with pot holes it was slightly scary but mostly fun. I saw so many children on the motor bikes. I looked over and this man was driving with a woman on the back, not holding on, and in between them was a small child just relaxing to the max. Also, professional hospitality has been fully embraced by the Togolese compared to in Ghana. The service we received at restaurants was amazing. Venders/traders were less aggressive and more chill. The buildings of Lome have a much more distinct European design and are generally taller. Also, Lome appears to be cleaner but that is mostly because they have closed gutters. From my limited knowledge on African history, I would venture to say the more European feel of Togo has something to do with the ideology difference between France and the British on colonization. The French believed that Africans could aspire to become French and ‘civilized’ and thus strived to integrate them into their society. As where, the British ruled as if Africans could never achieve such a status. After befriending this older Togolese gentelman (who actually helped corbett and I out money-wise because we became broke on my sole budget) who is cheif of his local villiage, he learned that the Togo goverment controlls practivally every sector and that the people of Togo are not as free as the people of Ghana.
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