The full set of Togoville photos can be found here
We started the day in Lome at an art gallery put together by a Swiss collector. It is housed in a grand house (not quite a mansion) which had a very tantalising pool in the backyard that was sadly off limits. The art came from all over West Africa but the strongest influence was Nigeria. There were some old statues, one of which was made 2000 years ago. The art from each place had distinct differences. One of the most striking were some very elongated statues from Mali. It’s a pity we’re travelling light as there are lots of interesting masks and statues being sold by the road.
Our main destination for the day was Togoville, the one-time capital located further East along the coast and inland on the other side of a lake. Togo is derived from the local language from a word meaning ‘behind the lake’. To get there we piled into a bush taxi. A bush taxi is basically a private car that picks people up for money. It’s much cheaper than regular taxis but you pay a price – they jam people in. A regular sized car will have two people in the front seat next to the driver and up to four squashed in the back. This is how we travelled the 45 minutes or so to the place where you can walk to the place where you catch the canoe to Togoville. First you take a detour through the port and along a dirt road so that all the dust pours in the open windows. It’s an unpleasant but effective way to get around. Once dropped off we figured out which way the lake was and walked up there. Lacking a regular jetty we just waited in the grounds of a fancy hotel by the lake for a canoe to come by. It took about 10 minutes but a local canoe did turn up, pulled in at the shore, and we hopped on.
Lake Togo is very shallow. The canoe master used a four metre long pole to propel us across the lake. The canoe is big enough to hold a dozen people comfortably, but is not as fast as a Sydney ferry. It was a very serene trip on the way there but once we arrived we were accosted by a few strapping lads who had waded out to the canoe and obviously wanted us to ride on their back to shore. This would not be a good look from a post-colonial perspective, the white couple riding black men to shore, but we still had warnings about African lakes and all the nasties living in them throbbing in our minds, so I jumped on one guy and when Sarah saw me heading in she jumped on the back of another guy. They wanted a relatively high price for the service and got it. Haggling would have just increased the post-colonial faux pas. More embarrassingly on the way back to the canoe we got the same lift but this time they carried us like babies.
Once in the town of Togoville itself we got the compulsory tour of the catholic cathedral (the pope visited at one stage – he sure gets around) and the voodoo fetish sites. Once a year there is a festival where the whole town gets together and dances in a square, offering libations to the fetish statues. There is a male and female statue for the whole town, and another female statue for the market. At any time of year individuals can make offereings to the fetish and you can get a personal fetish for your house. Offerings are often in the form of whisky or gin.
The ride back in the canoe was fun. We were joined by bunch of elders who sang a song briefly then had a big argument between each other, the butt of which seemed to be one guy in particular who defended himself the best he could. We were then caught by a canoe with a younger poler and our canoe started bantering with the other canoe. Not as peaceful as the journey out but I think more enjoyable.
The following day it was time for another border crossing. As Lome is about 50 kilometres across it doesn’t take too long to get to the border but we wanted a cheap way of doing it. A bush taxi fit the bill but for it to be cheap we had to wait until it was full of people wanting to make a similar journey as us. We got a bit of pressure to just pay more and leave early, including when they insisted we sit in the hot car to wait. Once Sarah whispered into her her travel fetish though we were underway pretty fast. Maybe there is something to this Voodoo. We had the luxury of being three across in the back with a Togolese fashion designer now living in Lagos. He was wearing a suede jacket and denim jeans which in that heat was just insanity but that’s fashion for you. The two guys sharing a seat at the front were Nigerian musicians. It’s very feasible to go from Ghana to Nigeria in one day. Benin and Togo are only about 200 kilometres wide combined at the coast.
It was a white-knuckle journey at times. Our driver had the traditional scar on the cheek which I think is an initiation rite, but he also had a nasty looking scar on the side of his head. I suspect a lot of the scarified people and those with limps are the victims of road accidents. The driving is fast and the roads poor. Most of the cars are fulling apart. This doesn’t make for a comfortable journey when your driver is in a hurry. We weren’t going far and got across the border with Benin pretty easily, although I didn’t have my vaccination certificate handy. Luckily I was waved through on the strength of Sarah’s.
Our stop for the next few days was Ouidah, home to the voodoo festival.
The full set of Togoville photos can be found here
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