Ghana/Togo: welcoming Eric to West Africa

I now have just 2 days left in West Africa…
Eric arrived on the 21st and we had our 11-day whirlwind adventure! Yesterday morning, we left Lomé and took our last tro-tro ride over to Accra, and Eric got on a plane back to the US this morning. My flight takes off tomorrow night, going to London first for a 10-hour layover (allowing for a little bit of sightseeing) before finally making my way back home to Boston.

OK, bear with me as I recap the last two weeks…

Sunday, August 16: Lomé
I woke up very early and left the house at 5:30 am with our driver, William, to go to the public beach in Lomé and watch hundreds of people run at dawn! (something I mentioned in my earlier entries on Lomé, but had never seen before) I did not participate (don’t be crazy) but just enjoyed the sunrise in the city and watching the crowds go by. There were some big groups that were very lively, with some people singing and pounding on gas cans, dressing up in costume (like one man who was wearing a little skirt and a stuffed sports bra, motivating the crowd).

Side notes on Lomé:
- The public beach that stretches through Lomé has never ceased to amaze me; driving by on a nice bright day, I find it strikingly pretty. There is a boulevard that runs right along the beach starting from the Ghana border on the west side and running east towards Benin, and a semi-circle boulevard comes off of the beach boulevard, enclosing the half-moon shape centre ville area of Lomé. The sad thing however is that this long public beach is apparently not very safe. If you are walking on the beach at night, I have heard that you have a 90% chance of getting mugged, and the daytime is questionable. The beach in my previous entry is actually a private beach on the eastern outskirts of the city, which is why it looks so empty. Sunday is the only day that is supposed to be OK to hang out on the public beach because they increase (or implement some) police surveillance. It is too bad that more investment has not yet been put into maintaining/rebuilding/improving the city, at least since the 70s (the city has much evidence of crumbling former 70s glamour if you look at many of the business buildings and hotels). Lomé could become a very attractive beach city and tourist hotspot, ie moneymaker, if the beaches were cleaned up with added security and some nice resorts were put in…just my two cents...

Thursday, August 20-Friday, August 21: Accra
Since the bulk of my work was coming to an end, and Tom encouraged me to enjoy some travelling during Eric’s visit and not work, Tom and I went out for a wrap-up lunch to sort of bring my summer volunteer time to a close. After lunch, I hopped on a tro-tro to Accra and caught up with a friend I had met earlier through Sofia.

The next morning, I was very excited to go pick up Eric at the airport for his first visit to Africa! I am impressed with the energy that he had after a long flight and his willingness to experience a little bit of Accra “as the locals do”... After sorting his Togo visa at the embassy in Accra, and taking a stroll around Osu (a busy section of Accra that I am most familiar with from the beginning of the summer, and the area where we were staying), we made our way over to the bustling Makola outdoor market, a massive maze of merchants selling everything from dried fish to underwear, and very tight crowds of customers. I had originally gone here on my 2nd day in Africa and it was quite overwhelming. At least this time going with Eric, it has cooled down since my first few weeks in West Africa, when it was extremely hot almost all the time. After touring the market and this busy area of town, we tried to take tro-tro’s home, trying to figure out the not-so-evident codes of how to take this hectic method of public transportation. As I learned over again for probably the 10th time this summer, when you want to go somewhere you have to be very explicit, and explain your destination in a variety of ways to make sure that your driver knows where you are trying to go, and is not just nodding and thinking of a completely different place with a similar name. In this case, when both Eric and I ask separately whether the tro-tro goes to “Danquah Circle” and the tro-tro mate says “yes, come”, that means that we are going to a completely different circle. After going around in a massive circle in rush-hour traffic, 3 tro-tro’s and 1.5 hours later, we made it back to our side of town.
We went to a nice little West African restaurant for dinner and enjoyed a nice evening of smoking shisha at a Lebanese bar and trying out all the different types of local beers at an outdoor party spot in Osu :)

Saturday, Aug 22-Sunday Aug 23: Ada Foah
Eric felt like heading to the beach for some relaxing, so we went east to Ada Foah, a peninsula on the eastern Ghana coast that enjoys the peaceful Volta River on one side and the rough sea on the other. We took a bumpy ride on a struggling tro-tro from Accra and arrived in Ada Foah about 2 hours later, from where we hopped on a pirogue (wooden canoe-like boat) for a half hour to take us to our beach camp. The boatman ripped us off quite a bit, also seeing as how Eric also had to row to get us moving a little past snail speed, but aside from that it was a beautiful ride on the Volta River. We made it to our beach camp, sandwiched between the ocean and the river, where we stayed in a sand-floor beach hut, without plumbing but with outhouses and bucket showers. The beach was beautiful and we enjoyed walking around (despite some unsightly piles of trash) and watching the camp staff perform traditional dancing and drumming in the evening. Even though the location was very peaceful, sleeping was a bit tough since we hadn’t brought sheets and the beds end up being a little damp from the sea air. Plus, I have always been a little weird about being outside of my toilet comfort zone, so we were looking forward to heading back to my apartment in Lome to a dry bed and flush toilet. We got on a motorized (and cheaper!) pirogue back to the bus station, where we had to take two different tro-tro’s to bring us further east to the Togo border. This was one of the squishiest tro-tro’s I had been on, where I think Eric and I had no more than 2 feet of sitting space for both of us in the very back. And two ladies had brought on buckets of dried fish, which made for an interesting scent throughout the whole ride.

Monday, Aug 24: Lomé
We took it pretty easy on Eric’s first day in Lomé. The jet lag, collection of new experiences for the senses, road travel, and new food (and maybe a bad cut of steak at the restaurant we went to the night before) finally caught up to Eric, so we hung around after lunch at Hotel Bellevue and went out for a stroll around my house in the late afternoon. We had a nice tapas dinner at Annexe (all continuing a restaurant hop of my favorite European eateries in Lomé before leaving) and relaxed for the evening.
Tuesday, Aug 25: Lake Togo and Togoville
We had planned to head up north in the morning to Kpalimé in the mountain region to do some hiking and stay for a night, but we woke up very early to some monsoon-like showers. We instead waited for the weather to clear up throughout the morning and then decided to ask William to bring us a little out west to see Togoville, a village on Lake Togo that they say is the birthplace of Voodoo, from which many slaves were brought to Haiti, forming the voodoo culture there. William first invited us to his house for a pâtes lunch (he had promised to make me some homemade Togolese food before leaving Africa). The French word pâte can mean many things – pasta, paste, dough… here in Togo it is a starch that goes with different sauces, like fufu, but instead of being a starchy vegetable that is pounded with a bit of water to make a sticky ball of dough like fufu, it is a powder (such as corn flour) that is stirred with water over heat to make a mashed potato or polenta like texture. It was served to us with a fish sauce with greens, and like in Ghana, we had to eat it with our right hand only. A pleasant surprise – Eric liked it! Most foreigners I’ve met do not like fufu or pâtes because of the texture and the messy way of eating it, plus Eric doesn’t like fish. William and his wife were ecstatic that we both appreciated their food and generously invited us for more découverte (“discovery”, as William called it) at their place two more times before we left Lome, once for pounded fufu and a broth-like chicken sauce, and again for pâtes and a very gooey duck sauce.
We arrived at Agbodrafo on one side of Lake Togo, where we caught a little wooden pirogue, which had a sail made out of flour sacks and pretty much had capsize written all over it once we looked at the choppy lake. The pirogue took us over to Togoville on the other side of the lake; the ride took about 30 minutes and got us soaked in some refreshing lake water…
An overpriced guide took Eric, William, and I around the village, showing us various voodoo statues and buildings. As it started getting late, we hopped back on the same funny little pirogue and made our way back to the other shore to head back to Lomé (to eat my favorite grilled chicken and fries at a street spot called Fifty-Fifty).

Wednesday, Aug 26: Kpalimé
We decided to just do Kpalimé in a day trip with William, instead of staying overnight to hike. Kpalimé is a town 120 km north of Lomé on the Ghana border, and is set in the mountain region that crosses over into Ghana, which features some great hiking and cooler climates. Throughout the day, we checked out various little artisanal shops, went on a walk with William through Mount Klouto so that he could point out all the medicinal plants that he uses in his traditional medicine practice, tried to avoid various sorts of tourist traps trying to take our money, and went to the big Kpimé waterfall where we got sprayed from head to toe. The sun was in and out, and we even got a little bit of rain, but the landscape was wonderful with rolling hills and rainforest. It was a whole new side of Togo, and besides the frustration of people pushing you for money for their tours or souvenirs, or straight up just asking you for money (“Donnez-moi de l’argent/un cadeau” – Give me some money/a gift) – which never ended throughout our travels but varied in intensity, it is a great getaway from Lomé.

Thursday, Aug 27: Lomé
We took another day to hang out in Lomé, have another traditional lunch at William’s, and then check out the Grand marché in the city, another big outdoor market, set up differently from the one in Accra but also chaotic. Since we were leaving for Benin the next day, we attempted to get tourist visas at the consulate in Lomé, but they refused to turn around the visas in one day. In the evening, we went to another one of my favorite spots to get fancy French fare for moins cher (yes, in Togo you can get great, relatively inexpensive French food, and I’m not ashamed!) that features the great crowd-pleaser, tartiflette... (can you ever go wrong with potatoes, cream, cheese, and bacon?)

I'll pick up with the last few days, starting with our whirlwind adventure in Benin, in my next entry tomorrow (my last day in West Africa...sniff) since this entry is already far too long... :)

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