I'll take that meal Togo

Thus far the only things to have happened AFAWI (the NGO I’m interning with, for the latecomers) have been getting online and finding out about the Beavers and Ducks stomping the Angelinos over the weekend. Also, Liz works right near me, but her school wasn’t meeting today, so she came by my internship and sat around. Now everyone is convinced she is my girlfriend. There are worse things.

Until my boss thinks of something for me to do, it’s Togo-writing time. I really enjoyed it there. I had wondered if the poverty would be noticeable, since by all measures they’re much less developed than Ghana, but it really looked exactly the same. The only sign of a difference was the border crossing itself. Aflao is on the Ghanaian side, and Lomé is on the Togolese side. It’s apparently one of the only national capitals which is also a border town, or so says my guidebook. At the actual border, the Ghanaian immigration agents have a building, while there are a series of broken down wooden shacks on the Togolese side. Except for that, Togo was quite nice, and had a good bit of colonial architecture – certainly more than Accra.

Taryn and I (the only two people on the trip) walked from the hectic border into Lome. It took me a while to get my French in order, but after a few random conversations with people I was doing alright. The road from Aflao goes right alongside the ocean and beaches, which were beautiful and strangely devoid of people. We wandered through the city, only knowing that eventually we needed to make it to the Station de Kpalime on the north side of town, in order to catch a car to Kpalime, about 3 hours away in the mountains.

The highlight of Lome was stopping in at a bar for a coke. As we sat there, various people came by to try to sell us things, and we declined. A man walked up with movies, we shook our heads, but he came over to show me one anyway. I looked down, and he’s holding out hardcore pornography for me, unsuccessfully trying to shield it from Taryn’s view. I busted out laughing immediately and apparently turned bright red as well, declining his offer.

We really did wander randomly for a while, and then eventually I stopped and asked a taxi driver where the Station de Kpalime was. I kept saying “gare,” French for “train station” rather than “station,” French for “bus stop,” so I confused him for a while, but we eventually figured out that it was about a block away and we’d wandered right to it. We got to Kpalime right around nightfall, so we couldn’t see much, and then got a shared taxi from there to Klouto, the village further up in the hills that we were staying in. There was a nice view of the lights from Kpalime on the ride, especially because the driver liked to go up windy mountain roads with his lights off, and at high speeds. Taryn was scared, but I thought it was fun.

We got dropped off outside a bar in Klouto, which turned out to be the bar in Klouto, and asked where the auberge we were staying in was. Two guys offered to take us, and figuring we’d either get mugged or actually get there, we followed. They did not mug us, and we ended up getting the cheapest room available (1 bed, 1 fan, 1 side table, cement floor, no toilet or shower or sink.) After a dinner of delicious spaghetti bolognaise, and staring at stars and fireflies, we went to sleep.

The next day was all hiking around Klouto, the main attraction. Our guide, a local 30ish guy named Apollonaire, took us all around to show us the cocoa and coffee farms, as well as a nearby small waterfall and to the top of a mountain for a nice view. It took about 6 hours and was a lot of fun, especially because in the mountains it’s actually cool. There were lots of butterflies and exciting plants, including two dye plants that Apo showed us, bright red and bright yellow. He also told us different medicinal plants. I don’t remember many details, but it was interesting at the time.

In the afternoon I discovered that Togo has delicious beer. They actually have some ambers and porters, something Ghana really lacks. Additionally, they have coffee in Togo, and good French-influenced food, so I wish I was studying there. Also, while drinking beer, when I went to grab another round, apparently Apo started telling Taryn that he wanted to marry her and they should meet and talk about their future together. This sucked for her, since he was one of the few African men who hadn’t done this to her. We decided to go to bed pretty early that night too.

The next morning was one of the highlights of my entire time over here so far. We were going to hike up the tallest mountain in the area (not what we Oregonians would call a mountain, more of a hill), and to get there we had to go down from Klouto into Kpalime and then up to the other village. Togo’s form of transportation for things like this is motorcycles that you just hop on the back of and go. I’d never ridden a motorcycle before in my life, and here I was riding helmetless down windy mountain roads, swerving to avoid potholes and the occasional herd of goats that ran out in front of us. They even cut the motors on the downhills to save gas, but then it got even more exciting once we got to the flat and they sped up. The view was fantastic, and I wasn’t even scared at all, which I probably should have been.

We bought bananas, avocados, and bread for lunch, and then began to hike. It was market day, so we passed a long stream of women going the other direction down from villages located on the hill, all carrying large amounts of produce on their heads while we were huffing and puffing and barely staying upright. The trail was literally a 3 km long stretch of 45-degree rock steps, or occasionally just a rock face at the same angle. And it was about 9:30 in the morning, and about 100 degrees outside. We made it to the first village, which was most of the way up, and I had sweated out all my water and felt like I might vomit, pass out, or both. Taryn was about to kill me as well, as I’d been much more excited about this mountain than her, so we decided to turn back there. The village was pretty scenic, made out of rock and sitting at a steep angle on the mountain, but we didn’t really appreciate it at the time.

We caught a van from the village to Lome, and it had all the seats filled plus 5 extra people packed in. We were also dripping with sweat and exhausted, so it was not pleasant. In Lome, we caught motorcycles to a hotel on the beach we’d read about, Chez Alize. It was pretty fancy, so we again chose the cheapest room, a bungalow outside with no facilities, 1 bed, cement floor, etc. The rest of the day involved swimming in the ocean and laying on the beach, which was fantastic.

Various Togolese people came by and talked, and it was great how friendly they were. The Ghanaians are famed for their friendliness, but it mostly involves random strangers telling you that they want to be your best friend and then spending a long time trying to figure out how they’ll see you again. The Togolese are normal friendly, and will just have a conversation with you and then say “bye!” and walk off. It was really relaxing to not have everyone trying to stalk me, and I think Taryn only got the 1 proposal, as opposed to about 3/day in Ghana.

The only people at the hotel restaurant/bar in the evening were Taryn and I, and a number of older male expats and the Togolese women they’d clearly paid to be there with them. It wasn’t as creepy as it sounds, as we just didn’t interact with all them. We did meet the owner of the hotel, who was a crazy looking 50ish Frenchman with lank blond hair and an eyepatch. He would have looked equally crazy if he’d had a crew cut and no eyepatch, so everything else was just icing on the crazy cake. He was very friendly and read the entire menu and explained it to us, and I ended up with a salad and fish soup, which was much more delicious than the same thing I’d had in France.

The next day we were supposed to spend more time in Lome, but instead we’d run out of money, so we caught a barely-running taxi to the border and then reentered Ghana. They almost didn’t let Taryn back in, because she got a guard who I’m pretty sure couldn’t read, type, or think, but we got it figured out. We then took a trotro back to Accra, which took 7 hours instead of 3 and was full of Togolese women who screamed at the driver in French/Ewe the entire time. We were relieved to get home and fall asleep.

Now I’m all caught up on my trips, so the 2 of you other than my parents who read every word of these get gold stars!