It's a small world after all

Meja- I am so sorry I haven't blogged in so long. I tried to blog Wednesday but with no luck. Here was my post for then.

Wednesday: My Dad made my day last night when I called and I woke up this morning in a great mood. Tell and I went to do our Wednesday workout on the track (I had him do a pyramid) and then got breakfast. I spent the afternoon catching up on emails and washing my mosquito net. I think the dust has been getting into my room and causing my net to get dirty. The water was less than clear when I finished, so I should get a nice night’s sleep.

I played basketball for a good two hours tonight and then packed up for my trip tomorrow. We are planning on leaving around 5 a.m. and hopefully returning on Sunday. Lucy said that we will probably just stay in Togo, but the possibility of a visit to Benin is there. I am just going with the flow and enjoying my last big trip before I go home.

Not too much else to write about tonight. Drumming was frustrating as usual and our final is next week. Things are starting to wind down; I can feel it in everyone’s attitudes. Oh! On my way back from basketball tonight there were sooooo many little white bugs that it looked like it was snowing. It was funny to see people try and push them away (until one landed on my own neck) and when I asked a Ghanaian they said it was termites trying to get rid of their wings. They tend to come out only after rains. Last night we had a HUGE storm, the power went out and the thunder was shaking my bed, so I assume that is what they are coming for. I hope they go away, though, or this might be an issue…

Here is the weekend summary:
I didn’t even know if I wanted to go to Togo this weekend. I had heard horror stories about trying to cross the border and that it was going to be ridiculously expensive. Of course, Lucy persuaded me to go anyways and I am so glad that I did.

We left Thursday morning around 5:30 a.m. Originally Elaine was supposed to go with us, but she felt sick so it was just the two of us. Traffic to the first station really wasn’t bad at all and we got a tro-tro to the border easy. We got to the border around 10 a.m. Lucy had already gotten her visa so I just had to fill out some paperwork before crossing. Of course, there were a thousand people trying to help us over- they were trying to make us pay for all sorts of different things and exchange our money with sketchy guys on the street. Luckily, we are both relatively smart kids and we pushed our way through. I immediately noticed that Togo was much cleaner than Accra. Our hotel was only 2 km from the border and about a 3 min. walk to the beach. We settled in and decided to eat lunch at the hotel before venturing out. Little did we realize that the food was going to be awesome. We had ham and cheese (yes, real cheese!) sandwiches on real French bread. Granted, it took us a bit to order (neither of us speaking French) but it was enjoyable all the same. We spent the afternoon roaming the city of Lome. It is much easier to navigate than Accra and has a really nice market in the middle. Of course, when we found the artisans market we got mobbed by Rastas and eventually had to get away and go back to the hotel. By this time it was around 5 p.m. and we decided it would be best to just hang out at the hotel for the night.

Here is where the world gets small; Around 7 p.m. we decided to eat dinner downstairs. We took our time ordering a steak to share and, in the mean time, got into a conversation with a Canadian couple sitting next to us. They had taken a year off the travel Africa on their motorcycles (as they had down previously in Europe and the Middle East). While we were talking the subject of where we were from came up and while Lucy went into detail about where exactly in Colorado she was from, I dug into my steak. I hadn’t noticed a group of 5 youngish people come in and sit next to us until the one at the end of the table turned around to talk to me. “I’m sorry, did you say you were from Connecticut?” asked the boy. I told him I was and asked him where in Connecticut he was from, fully expecting to get an answer like Hartford and something, but almost fell off my chair when he said Washington. To make a long story short, we found out that I was sitting 3 feet from Joey Braccio a 2000 graduate of Shepaug and the older brother to Theresa Braccio who was a classmate and friend of my brother’s in high school. Joey is in the Peace Corps in Niger and was traveling West Africa a bit with one of his friends. They were out to dinner with a few of the Togo Peace Corps kids. Lucy and I joined them for dessert and agreed to go out the next night with them. What a crazy coincidence!

We woke up rather early on Friday to go down the coast and visit a fetish market in Vogan. We had planned to walk and find the nearest station, but it started to pour so we just got a taxi to a tro-tro station and a tro-tro to Vogan. The market was very large, but unfortunately not as busy as usual because of the rain. Communication was hard and it took a bit of time to get someone to show us the fetish market. Though we had expected much more, there were a few stalls with voodoo worship things and a whole bunch of chameleons and such. We didn’t stay too long before heading back to Lome. Back in the city we decided to take our first motor-taxi. These are just little motorcycles that work as taxis and they are everywhere! I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face as we road through town. Lucy and I got dropped off on the other side of town and began the walk around the perimeter of the city (just to get a better idea of what exactly there was in the city). Both of us having eaten very little during the day, we stopped at a restaurant (by my request) that had a huge ice cream cone on the front. The advertisement did not let me down when I found 20 different flavors of real ice cream. I was beside myself and forced Lucy to get a small cone with me before we even ordered lunch. After our pizza, another amazing adventure with real cheese, I had another ice cream! I couldn’t help myself- I can only imagine what will happen when I get home. While at the restaurant we met a family of missionaries from Virginia who had been there for 11 years. The woman was very nice and her 5 boys were adorable. She invited us for dinner at her house (she said it was the mom is her) but it was a 1 ½ ride away so we declined. Full as ticks, we walked our lunch off all around the city; we saw everything from supermarkets to mock McDonalds to street vendors. When we finally got back to the hotel around 5:30 p.m. we were ready for a nap.

I woke up to the sound of Joey’s voice asking the people next door if they knew me around 8:30 p.m. We had slept for 3 hours! Joey and his friend Andrew had come to get us so that we could meet up with more Peace Corps people for drinks. Joey had decided to invite the other rooms around us as well- who all turned out to be people from the University of Ghana. We went to a small street bar where I got a true street hotdog, then to a Lebanese restaurant (the son of the owner had befriended some of the Peace Corps people), and then to this awesome club where they had live music. I met a whole ton of Peace Corps and Embassy workers, not to mention UG students I didn’t know, and couldn’t help thinking I was having the best of luck. Two of the girls from UG were planning on going to Lake Togo- the same place Lucy and I were going- the next day so we all agreed to meet and go early on Saturday.

We left the hotel around 9:30 a.m. the next morning and started our day on the motor-taxis. Stevie and Stephanie were the two other girls accompanying us. They are in a program that keeps them off campus in home-stays so we have never met, but they were amazing people. It took us a bit to find the correct transportation, but we finally took a taxi to a village and then another motor-taxi to the lake. Lake Togo is where you can cross, by canoe, to Togoville, the first village of Togo and home to the King who gained independence for Togo. We got a tour guide for the day and wandered through this beautiful, lake front village. We got to see a funeral in process (quite the show in Africa), meet the prince of Togoville whose father was the man who gained their independence, visit the German cathedral (even though most of the village follows voodoo, they keep this amazing shrine to Jesus) and drink money bread juice with an artist from the village. Our canoe back to the land left around 3 p.m. and we got back to Lome around 4:30 p.m. Stevie wanted to eat at the restaurant form the night before so she could have ice cream so we did just that and then set off for the hotel. It took us a bit to talk back but I got a chance to talk more and get to know the other girls so it was nice. We spent the rest of the evening playing card in the lounge room of the hotel. Joey and Andrew stopped by to see if we wanted to go out again but Lucy and I opted out. They had originally planned to go to Ghana with us today, but they did not have visas yet and those take at least a day to obtain. Maybe he will be in touch when they do get here.

Lucy and I left around 9 a.m. for Accra and met up with two more girls from school. We got back to campus around 1 p.m. and I have just been doing laundry and catching us on a few things since then. I am happy to say that I will have time to play basketball. I will need something to take my mind off the fact that I finished Harry Potter 6 last night and still do not have 7. I think I will finagle a way to get it soon, I can’t bear it!

It is only 4 weeks until I return home now and I am beginning to get anxious. I am very glad that I did the Togo trip, but I still need to take exams and pack my life up. I can’t believe it went so fast. As a last little bit I did a comparison of a few things between Togo and Ghana. I thought it was a bit interesting.

Togo:
-Brighter fruit (you could not walk by a stand without staring)
-Extreme amount of motorcycles (very European of them and much better for traffic)
-French
-Much easier to walk around within the city
-Amazing food (not just rice and beans and stew)
-Stop lights (what are those anyways?)
-More smoking (it seemed there were people smoking everywhere, another European influence?)

Ghana:
-Easier to bargain (mostly because of my lack of French and ability to do the math for the exchange rate quickly in my head)
-Dirtier (Togo was soooo clean compared to Accra’s infested streets)
-More country pride (I think I only saw one Togo flag the whole visit)
-More colorful school uniforms (Togo’s looked like rags compared)
-More tro-tro (more traffic)