Voyages Afrique de l'Ouest: Togo #1 Lome and the Marche des Feticheurs
0Tuesday 4 March 2014 by Renee
It's been three months now since we left Accra and headed back to Oz. I had never intended for this blog to end abruptly, nor did I mean for it to take so long to get around to finishing it off. Catch ups, Christmas, New year, hours spent pouring over job websites trying to work out what I want to be when I grow up, and more hours spent trying to sort through my very poorly organised photos, and here I am.
We squeezed in a heap of travelling around the Francophone countries of Togo, Benin and Senegal before we packed up and left our little home in Ghana – and despite what became fairly horrendous photo organisation, I’m finally on top of it and would love to share some of our last travel tales, and reflections on coming home. Better late than never?
We split up my remaining four weeks of leave into two, taking two weeks in Togo and Benin, coming back to work in Ghana for two, and two weeks in Senegal before the final few weeks in Accra. In true Ghana style, our trip to Togo wasn't happening until we dealt with some classic Ghana glitches - in this case, sorting out the flights to Senegal in four weeks time. Kenya Airways was the only airline flying direct Accra-Dakar thus it costs an arm and a leg, but is $US150 cheaper to pay in person. In theory that sounds great, but due to West Africa's infamous issues with credit card fraud, or perhaps the completely unreliable electricity, there are no eftpos facilities almost anywhere in Accra. So when I say "sorting out the flights" I mean: one bizarre phone call the prior Saturday in which the lady exclaimed the office was closed but would open at 5:30pm, three trips in heavy traffic to the Kenya airways office, several trips to a nearby ATM to withdraw cash, but reaching our withdrawal limits before we had enough to pay for the flights, several phone calls to two banks back in Australia, running out of phone credit, and a trip back to our old house to visit our friend who had a stash of cold hard cedis and conveniently owed us some money and more conveniently, was home because the electricity at her work had gone out, before one final trip back to the airline to wrap it all up. Sigh. As Ghanaians say, it is not easy-o, at allllll! (And yet, we should just be grateful that we have to resources to enjoy international travel - #firstworldproblemsinAfrica?)
Luckily, the capital of Togo, Lome, is just a three (or five, or six, or seven etc) hour tro-tro ride from Accra, so we made it to the border crossing just on nightfall, after a beautiful scenic trip through wetlands, with flocks of all sorts of birds seemingly racing the tro tro on dusk. Ghana can really put on a show sometimes. Finally we made it to Lome, the town of awesome Franco-African food, wine and (primarily western) sex tourists. I'm not sure if there are any hotels in Lome that don't double as brothels, but Hotel Le Galion, Lome's first choice of el-cheapo volunteers, development workers and sex tourists (not that they are discreet categories) definitely does. Anyway we were excited to have great food, great wine (almost impossible in Ghana) served in sweet carafes and finally get an early night.
Togo and Benin are both tiny slithers of land that probably share more in common than difference, but like a lot of Africa, got carved up thanks to colonial powers playing out their European rivalries on African soil. Togo was first colonised by the Germans and was known as German Togoland, which included the Volta region in the east of Ghana, for thirty years until it was invaded during World War One by the French and Brits. The French and Brits proceeded to divided things up amongst themselves until just before Ghana's independence, when the western British side of Togo became part of the British Gold Coast (which became Ghana), splitting the Ewe ethnic group is split down the middle.
The main road along the coast at Lome is beautiful. Accra is spreads out with its back to the Atlantic, like it had never noticed that the wild and stunning ocean was right there on its doorstep. Lome on the other hand makes you feel like you're in California or something, except that footpaths are generally used for drying freshly caught fish. The other thing Accra-tonians notice is how many motos there are. In Accra, motos were banned for a long time and they are still fairly well associated with crime. But there are everywhere in Togo and Benin, and the main way to get around. I had been trying to learn French for a couple of months in Accra, and after a couple of moto rides in Lome had "Aller doucement sil vous plait!" firmly implanted in my brain. Necessity and fear for your life can be a useful language acquisition tool!
After a delicious french breakfast, we headed out for a wonder around town, down along the boulevard, before heading out to the main thing we wanted to check out in Lome, the Fetish market. A word of warning, the next few pictures might be a bit full on if you aren't familiar with voudou or traditional African beliefs etc. In case you're wondering, we were told we were told that all of the animals are found after they have died naturally, (yeah I wasn't buying it...)
We decided that we didn't really need any leopard skulls or dead chameleons, but a little voudoun named Legba caught our eye and is meant to protect you from harm. Some haggling, a few shakes of the gourd rattle and a ciggie lit in his mouth to call upon the spirits and the special recipe of herbs inside him, and we had our first voodoo ceremony.
