Are you ready TO-GO? Otherwise known as: The Longest Blog Post Ever
[TL;DR – We went to Togo and many things went wrong but fun also happened.]
I'm warning you, this is probably the longest blog post you've ever seen about something you probably care very little about. So if you're not up for it, I totally understand. Go back to facebooking, or baking pastries, or trimming your nosehairs, or whatever it is that people do with their time nowadays. I'll be here. Frantically recounting every detail of my life for no reason and to no avail. Ready? Ok!
So, this past weekend a group of us decided we wanted to head east to Togo and Benin (see, the French Doctor gif is absolutely relevant). Being the way that I am (and by this, I mean extremely disorganized and simultaneously anal about planning), I drew up two documents outlining Places to Eat, Places to Stay, Things to Do, and Places to Hang Out in the areas where we would be traveling: Lomé, Togo, and Ouidah/Cotonou, Benin. I also entered the addresses and numbers of the U.S. embassies in both Togo and Benin. Working at MAP (Maryland Adventure Program) back at UMD has taught me a lot about preparedness and packing, so I was excited that I remembered to bring a first aid kit (and my Wilderness Field Guide!), my knife, and sock money. I mean, who cares about bringing enough clothing as long as you’ve got plenty of Pepto, your glasses, and 82 U.S. dollars crumpled underneath your sweaty right foot? Nobody. So off we went.
The first thing that went wrong happened before we even got out the door to head for Madina tro-tro station. I haven’t mentioned it on this blog, but about a week ago, I tried to withdraw 300 Ghana cedi from the ATM outside ISH (this is like 90-some U.S. dollars) and after going through the whole transaction, the ATM decided to not actually give me my money. Meaning: it withdrew funds from my account, gave me a receipt for withdrawing 300GHC, and said “Thank you for banking with us” in that obnoxious computer lady voice – but it didn’t give me any money. And after going inside the CAL bank office, which is really just a room filled with disgruntled employees and people waiting (so, exactly like a U.S. bank), I was informed that they were unwilling to help me in any way, and that I had to contact my bank and have the money reimbursed to my account. This was on September 25th, and since then I’ve successfully withdrawn from this ATM, so I didn’t expect anything to happen as we were leaving on Saturday morning. That’s why, after watching literally every person in our group withdraw money, I walked up to it, slipped my debit card into the reader, punched in “my secret number” and the buttons according to my desired amount, and waited as it groaned and shuffled bills inside it. I had turned to Maggie to jokingly say, “Haha, what if it doesn’t give me any money like last time!” when I heard a sickening click, the soft rustle of a receipt being issued, and the dreaded phrase: “Thank you for banking with us.” I turned back in horror to see the slot still closed and no colorful bills waiting to be gathered in my fingers. I should’ve guessed at that point that luck was not going to be with us on this trip, no matter how well-stocked my first aid kit was.
Reaching the station, we had no idea where to look for the Aflao-Lomé car, which would purportedly take us to the border. Thankfully, a helpful middle-aged woman carrying a box of donuts on her head led us in the right direction, and in what was probably our only stroke of luck on the whole trip, we were able to jump onto a nice, empty tro-tro. Next we had to wait for the rest of the car to fill before we could depart. In this meantime, our windows were crowded with the faces of hawkers and sellers hoping to provide us with those last-minute necessities; you know, like loaves of bread and stacks of underwear. This is where I encountered my next bad omen: when I bought a top-up card for my phone minutes, the first three numbers of the code I scratched off on the back were “666.” Now, I’m no superstitious person, but I’m not gonna deny feeling a little weird getting that sign as we were about to head into Lomé to visit the largest fetish/voodoo market in the world. So, I frantically entered the code into my phone and deposited the evil card onto the floor of the tro-tro, hoping that if I forgot I found it, it would forget it found me.
The ride itself was pleasant enough. It took about 3.5/4 hours and made quite a few stops along the way for those passengers who weren’t going all the way to Togo, but it was nice to stare out the window and watch the countryside and various towns blur past us.
When we reached the town of Aflao, we disembarked at a station a short walk away from the border. We were immediately met with a crowd of people asking us where we were going and if they could take us there; I suppose it’s pretty hard to slip by unnoticed when you’re a group of obruni carrying giant backpacks and lost looks on your faces. Either way, another helpful middle-aged woman who introduced herself as Mary herded us away and down the street. It goes without saying: Helpful Middle-Aged Women are the lifeblood of West Africa.
Anyways, our first checkpoint involved us walking into this open stone room on the sand where we had to show our yellow vaccine records. Here, Johnathan and Davina despaired because they forgot theirs, but it turns out all you really need to do is say “I don’t have it” and then produce a 10GHC bill and you’ll be fine. We were not, however, allowed to take even one picture of the beach. It’s a “security risk,” they said. Priorities, right?
I forget the exact order of what happened next, but we were led through a number of buildings as we grew closer to the giant border archway. In one, we filled out small immigration forms and had our passports stamped; in another tiny walkway, we were “checked for Ebola” – which means we had a temperature gun pointed at our foreheads and were told to continue on through. How this detects Ebola, I have no idea. Through all of this, Mary continued to lead us the way one would lead a pack of school children on a field trip, though we were aware she would probably ask for a hearty tip at the end of all this. We’re not exactly sure, though, how Mary was able to pass through all our checkpoints without being checked once for passport or visa; the woman literally walked from Ghana to Togo without being asked a single question. Granted, our crossing was only marginally more difficult, but still.
At a certain point, we looked up and around and realized everyone around us was speaking French. We turned to each other with wide eyes. Are we in Togo now? Apparently, we had walked into Togo without even noticing. Our passports were checked at another station by two French border-policemen sitting behind a desk rolling their eyes, paying us as little attention as possible. As we filled out forms to purchase our visas (yes, we were issued visas after actually crossing the border), we were surrounded by frantic Togolese men asking if we needed to convert our cedi to CFA, Central African francs (pronounced see-fah). The exchange rate I checked online the day before had said that 1GHC was equal to around 161CFA, and 1USD was around 512CFA. As we had to pay for our visas with CFA, I began to haggle with one man trying to get the best exchange rate. He started out offering me 110CFA to the cedi. After arguing for a bit and almost agreeing on 135CFA to the cedi, our French policemen started yelling at the man to go away and stop cheating us. We eventually exchanged with another man at 150CFA to the cedi, which was the best rate we got all weekend.
Looks can be deceiving... this is not a lot of money.
When we were all finally released into Togo with our visas, we followed Mary to a taxi lot, where the real fun began. The lot was packed with drivers and people shouting and tugging our arms to get into their cars. We had hastily checked my list of hotels once we got into Togo, and had decided to stay at Auberge Le Galion, though we had no idea how far from the border it was. Upon deciding to take two taxis at 1500CFA each (a vast rip-off, though we didn’t know it at the time), we then had to try and wade through the throngs of drivers angrily shouting at each other and at us until we could figure out what the hell was even going on. Mary, at this point, had decided she was through with us and demanded to be paid 5000CFA from each of us. With half of us sitting in one taxi and the other half of us wandering toward another, Mary refused to leave or to take our offers of 5 cedi tips, saying matter-of-factly, “I will not accept.” She even tried to prevent us from getting into the taxis without paying her, but eventually we convinced her to accept our tip and let us continue on our way.
Turns out, “our way” was just down the street. We could have walked to Le Galion. But there was no time to really dwell on our ignorance, especially since we had just stepped into the country. We checked into our rooms (4 people squeezed into each two-person room) and deposited our stuff. While they weren’t exactly wonderful, I couldn’t say the rooms were horrible either. The beds were lumpy and stale with ratty sheets and pillows, the walls were decorated with wire hangers, and the bathrooms were less than impressive, but at least they gave us toilet paper! After clearing the ants off our beds, we set out to find food and the fetish/voodoo market, known as Le Marché de Féticheurs. We walked down the street, noticing small differences between Lomé and Accra. For one, there were no deep, open gutters in Lomé. And instead of tro-tros, the main mode of transport in Lomé is by zemi, or motorbike taxi. By far, the biggest culture shock, however, was the language barrier. As soon as we crossed the border, we met very few people who spoke English. One girl in our group had studied French, but was far from fluent, and I know basic rudimentary phrases such as ça va? and parlez-vous anglais? so we were able to get around, but with difficulty.
For lunch, some of us stopped at a nice-looking French restaurant, while the others went next door to the cheaper international/Mediterranean-style place called Papayo. Our meals were great, though it was still a little disconcerting to see the 50,000CFA bill. Afterward, we took our first zemi ride. Slightly terrifying at first, it actually turned out to be really fun (though extremely dangerous – none of us had helmets), and we looked like a legitimate motorcycle gang. They deposited us off right outside the fetish market, which we had to pay to get into.
Apparently, I took pictures of nothing but Maggie this trip.
After overpaying once again, we listened to our guide as he walked us through rows of tables stacked with dead animals. Piles of cat and monkey skulls, birds spiked on wooden sticks, dehydrated chameleon bodies, horse penises, snakeskin and snake bone necklaces, baby leopard pelts – all dead by natural causes, and many for over two or three years before being brought to the market. At one point, our guide picked up a dead bat and exclaimed, “Ebola!” laughing manically as each of us exchanged eye contact and feared for our lives.
After the tour, our guide brought us in small groups into a stone room at the back of the market, where we met the fetish priest. He was a pretty cool dude that blessed us before showing us a couple different fetish items: a travelers’ charm, a house protector figure, and a seed that guaranteed good memory and sleep, among other things. He had each of us choose which items we wanted to have imbibed with power and blessing, and then we were taken one by one into another stone room, where he would ask the fetish to give us a price for the object by rolling cowrie shells like dice. It was really fascinating, especially since it reminded me of what I learned about divination in my African art history class two semesters ago. Naturally, when I said the price the fetish asked for was too high, he simply asked what I wanted to pay, so it was just like bargaining at any other craft market, and I didn’t end up buying any of the fetishes, but it was still a really cool experience.
When we were done at the market, we decided to walk back to the main road, though we were basically lost immediately and had no bearings whatsoever. I suggested we go to this bar I’d looked up called Domino, but apparently no zemi driver had ever heard of it. We walked aimlessly until we ended up in a huge outdoor market and I got distracted by stacked cages of cramped kittens, but then we decided to walk back the way we came in search of some road called Rue de la Gare. Nobody we asked had ever heard of this street, but we persisted anyways. The paved road turned into dirt and the shops grew fewer, but we still walked. Maybe it’s just a little further, we hoped, as we saw the road look more and more like a village street. We worried that it was getting dark and we had no idea where we were, or whether Domino even existed. Finding a crossing back toward a busy street, we took it, and kept walking, because maybe we had somehow stumbled onto the right street. As the day grew darker and darker, and we grew less hopeful of finding the place (not to mention more frustrated – with each other, at how large our group was, how uncoordinated and suspended in indecision and uncertainty) we decided to flag down some zemis and try again. What’s funny about these bikes is that if you manage to get the attention of one guy, within seconds, you’ll conveniently be surrounded by eight or nine of them. I tried explaining once again about Rue de la Gare and Domino, but nobody seemed sure what I was talking about. Despite this warning sign, we all agreed to get on their bikes and have them take us to where they thought it was.
Unsure but unwilling to keep walking aimlessly, I was glad to sit on the back of this stranger’s extremely dangerous vehicle, flying through Lomé as the sky glowed blue and yellow before going black, whipping along streets in a city I’d never even seen before that morning. We turned down streets with bright lights and populated storefronts, and my hope of finding Domino returned. This optimism drained, however, when we started to turn down streets that grew steadily darker, with less friendly-looking signs, and soon no shops at all. The road became unpaved and dotted with drowned potholes; we saw people simply milling about in the dark, some in small roadside markets laying pelts out in the dirt, none suggesting that a bar existed even close this area. The motorbikes stopped in the middle of one such road, proclaiming we had arrived at our destination. I looked around at the faces of my friends and saw that they were all just as confused and slightly terrified as I was. I watched Maggie pull up a few minutes after the rest of us, and found out later that her driver had stopped for petrol and she had ridden alone in this dark neighbourhood without once catching a glimpse of the rest of us. She told us afterward that she had during that ride accepted the fact that her driver could probably take her anywhere – to a sketchy alley, to his mom’s house, back to Ghana – and no one would ever see her again. We call this experience Maggie’s Terror.
After arguing with our zemi gang about the random alley they’d brought us to, they agreed to take us back to Le Galion for double our original price. Ah, we thought, of course it was all a scam. We realized that since they had no idea where we were asking to go, they’d simply colluded, scheming to bring us to an unfamiliar area so we’d be forced to ride their bikes back to our hotel, regardless of price. We had no choice but to allow ourselves to be duped. Once back at Le Galion, and once we’d finished yelling at our drivers for being royal jerks, we were relieved to step inside the small courtyard and sit down for a drink or two. Tensions were running high and a good beer was prime. Flashing our American accents around, we actually got into conversation with two American guys at the table next to us who were volunteers with the Peace Corps, and one of whom actually went to UMD! I asked him if he’d ever heard of Sketchup and for the first time ever, I was happy to hear the question: “Oh, are you the ones that perform on the mall on Fridays?” Nostalgia can be a powerful thing #ErasableInc
That night, a few of people decided to call it quits and head to bed after the long day, while the others met up with the Peace Corps group to explore the town. After chilling in a swanky place called Sky Bar up the street, they all implored us to join them at some club called Monte Cristo. We were wary of taking more zemis and of paying for a cab, especially since we weren’t guaranteed to have fun and were significantly less (read: not at all) intoxicated than our new friends. However, it was UMD guy’s birthday, and he was kind of cute, so we decided to be spontaneous and go with them. Here’s where it gets kind of weird. The whole PC group fit into two cabs perfectly, leaving me, Shayna, and Courtney standing at the side of the road. Taking this as a sign, we were about to walk back to our hotel when one of the volunteers pointed at a yellow Hummer-like car stopped at the light, and shouted, “Ask those guys for a ride! They’ll do it!” We peered inside the window to see three young Chinese men smiling at us. They took a little convincing, but soon we were climbing into their car, instructing them to “Follow those cabs!” They were friendly enough, though they played some weird electro music and the only one that spoke English was holding an extremely pungent beer that stank up the whole car. They deposited us outside the club, and we waved goodbye whilst calling for them to join us. They laughed and drove off and we will never see those men again.
Balking at the cover price for the club, we walked down the street to this quiet local bar with outdoor seating and no lights. Those of us from Accra were baffled at how quiet the streets were. It seemed like there was nobody in town, whereas Accra is constantly filled with hustle and bustle and young people out partying until 8am. In contrast, Lomé seemed bare and empty. I was consistently amazed at how culture-shocked I felt simply crossing one border from Ghana to Togo. We ordered local Togolese beer, Pils, and listened to the PC volunteers entertain each other and recite their greatest inside jokes and funniest stories for what we assumed was our benefit. It’s interested to be an outsider among a group of friends; I’ve been in this position more times than I can count, and it always seems as if they feel the need to show off how fun, funny, and exciting they are when there are strangers around to impress. Regardless, they were interesting, cool people, who had a lot of complaints about living in Togo and a lot of jealous exclamations about our “comfy” life in Ghana. Honestly, I almost felt as if they were more annoying and American than half the international students I meet at the University of Ghana, who’ve only been in Africa for two months.
Anyways, we decided to head home when they got up to go on to another club, and we flagged down two zemis. As it was two in the morning, we were a little skeeved about riding alone, but Shayna and I doubled up on one moto while Courtney took the other. When we pulled up to Le Galion, we paid and asked for change. One driver gave enough change while the other refused to pay up the last 100CFA. We angrily demanded our change, but he laughed in our faces and sped off. Pissed, we cornered the other driver, who sat there and laughed as the other guy cheated us and tried to drive away as well until I stood in front of his bike, refusing to let him pass until he paid us. He simply shrugged and said, “It’s not my problem, is it?” until we relented, since we had no other option. In truth, it was only 100CFA (which is less than one cedi, and basically $0.20) that we lost, but after the day/night that we had, it was just a bummer and left a bad taste in my mouth that we got ripped off again. I went to bed that night missing Accra and its friendliness and warmth, assuring myself that no one I’d ever met in Ghana would be that hostile in cheating me. It’s funny how loyal I already feel to this country.
On Day 2, we woke up early to hopefully get on the road toward Benin. For some reason, out of all of us, Johnathan had been bitten up by bugs throughout the night and woke up with a swollen lip and wrist. We had no idea what it was, whether it might have been an allergic reaction or simply bad bugs, but we were glad to be out of those cramped, dim rooms. After breakfast we headed out to get a taxi to the border. After some confusion and much haggling at a taxi station, we had gotten two cars for 1500CFA each (funny, considering this is the same price we paid for our first taxi from the border to our hotel) and were off. The driver for the car I was in was super friendly and was telling us about the places we were passing in our short hour-long drive. He suggested we go to a village called Agbodrafo on the way back to see the Point of No Return where the slaves were taken from Togo across the Atlantic.
When we reached the border, we expected much of the same as what we’d experienced from Ghana to Togo. In many ways, it was; our strategy, without knowing exactly what to do, was just to keep walking toward Benin until somebody stopped us. We were eventually led into a small room, where our passports were stamped and we were given some devastating news: they don’t issue Benin visas at the border. We were bummed and tried everything to change their minds. The Togolese guards agreed to let us go onward toward Benin, but couldn’t promise that the Benin guards would allow us in without visas. We tried anyways. Cautiously walking in the no-man’s-land between Togo and Benin, I got my hopes up that we’d actually make it across illegally. However, once we reached the guards right at the Benin border, and even stepped across it, they strictly told us it was impossible for us to cross. We argued for a bit, legitimately trying to talk our way into the country, but had to concede defeat once we realized it wasn’t going to work.
Heads down, tails between our legs, we walked back to Togo. We were “checked for Ebola” soon after, though it was alarming watching the number of people before me who pushed coins into the medical workers’ hands instead of having their temperature taken. Why would they do this? How hard is it to get your temperature taken and why wouldn’t you want to get it done? Are they hiding their Ebola? All these questions, no answers. So, back to Lomé the way we came not thirty minutes earlier. We had our taxis drop us off at Ibis Hotel, hoping for a nicer night than Le Galion, but found that it was actually the nicest hotel in the city and far out of our planned price range. We spent the rest of the early afternoon walking around with our backpacks in the blazing heat looking for a better hotel than Le Galion with its crummy beds and bug infestations. Unfortunately, upon finally finding and checking into another place, Hotel Ahodikpe, we found that not only was it not better, it was basically worse than our previous lodgings. Courtney and Shayna immediately found a colony of ambiguous bugs living in their bathroom, while Johnathan and Davina noticed both bed bugs and a used condom underneath their mattress. Thoroughly disgusted but with no immediate plan of action, we left to reclaim what was left of our afternoon that was supposed to have been spent in Benin.
Courtney and Shayna went to relax on the beach while the rest of us hopped on zemis in search of this arts and crafts market I’d looked up before coming. Unfortunately, we hadn’t considered that it was a Sunday, and thus literally everything we came across was closed. We ended up walking the streets of Lomé in search of something, anything, to do before we were supposed to meet the other two girls at the restaurant Lomé la Belle. Even though our plans kept falling through, walking around the city was pretty cool. It was hot and tiring and aimless, but I really enjoyed getting to see what it was like to be somewhere new, and I feel like we really did get a good experience of the city itself, seeing all different sides of it. After a while, we came upon the Independence Monument, which Anida had remembered from the last time she was in Togo. It was in the nicest part of the city, next to what I think were the American and French embassies.
From there, we took bikes to the restaurant and sated our appetites while considering what to make of our night. We found out we were walking distance from our hotel and headed in that direction after dinner; the bedbug problem freaked us all out, since they’re impossible to get rid of and can travel on your clothes – none of us wanted to bring them back to Accra. We spent countless minutes discussing what to do: to suck it up and pay for the nice hotel, to go and get our Benin visas tomorrow and leave then, to go back to Accra in the morning… spontaneous trips have a way of exhausting you. We decided to spend as little time as possible in our hole of a hotel and headed back to swanky Sky Bar to lounge. Here, we were amazed that we could spend 2000CFA on an espresso (the same price we each paid for our two rooms at Le Galion) and 5000CFA on one daiquiri (the price we each paid for our four rooms at Ahodikpe). Between games of pool and stressfully smoked cheap cigarettes, we continued the exhausting conversation about what the rest of our night and trip would look like. Johnathan made the snap decision to cut his losses and spend the money for a quality hotel that night, and invited Davina to come as well since she would otherwise be alone in Ahodikpe, while the rest of us stayed in our buggy rooms. It wasn’t all too terrible, and Maggie and I ended up having the time of our lives talking about Pangaea and whether or not Australia is a hoax before bed anyways (but seriously, is Australia even real?)
The next morning, we’d agreed to meet at Ibis Hotel at 8am so that some of us could mooch off the perks Johnathan had paid for. I had my first hot shower in two months! Surprisingly, considering I take absolutely scalding showers back in the States, it was almost… too hot. Anyways, from there we smuggled out expensive croissants and headed toward the Benin embassy to try and get visas so we could leave that day for Ouidah. As it turns out, luck was simply not in our favor this time around, since they told us at the embassy it would take until Friday for us to get our visas. We decided that it just wasn’t meant to be, and since it was Monday, went to check if the arts market was open. It was, and we spent the next hour and a half or so walking around and shopping. Compared to the markets in Accra, I actually enjoyed this one a lot more. I saw so much more variety and wasn’t hassled and bothered every time I turned around. We splurged on gifts, since we had a lot of money left over from what we weren’t spending in Benin.
After shopping and a nice lunch, we headed back to the border and toward Accra. The rest of the trip wasn’t eventful, unless you count the terrifying fact that we weren’t even “checked for Ebola” on the way back into Ghana. How’s that for safety? Though the whole tro-tro was stopped twice on our way back and we were asked to present our passports for curious policemen who asked us arbitrary questions about what departments we studied in and what year we were in school. All in all, nothing about this trip went according to plan, but it was still so much fun and a cool learning experience about what it’s like to cross into another country on foot and be so culture-shocked. I honestly felt more shocked going into Togo from Ghana than from the U.S. to Ghana. I’ll be sure to brush up on my French before we make our next weekend trip to Benin.
