What I Did in Africa, Part II
Right, where was I? Oh yeah, Some Girl saying that I talked less than she remembered. It will be interesting to see what people in the States say about this when I’m back. But anyway, the next day we caught a bush taxi and made out way to Ouidah, the voodoo capital of Benin. Once there, we walked around a bit, and then tried to find the La Route des Esclaves (the Route of Slaves), which was about one km away from where we were standing. The old lady we talked to was shocked, just shocked that we wanted to walk that distance, and why wouldn’t we take a cab to it? So, finally, someone pointed us in the direction, even though they were shaking their heads at the very thought of us using our feet to get there. We couldn’t decide if they were just trying to give the cabbies business, or if they really thought we were nuts for wanting to walk that far.
We find the dirt road that is the start of La Route des Esclaves and start truckin’. It’s 4 km to the ocean, and after about the first kilometer, the various taxi drivers stopped trying to get our attention and see if we wanted a ride. The walk was beautiful and we got lots of photos. We saw stilt villages rising above water, various voodoo monuments that dotted the route, and some beautiful scenery of Benin. So we make it to the water, where there is a big monument, a “Door of No Return,” as well as a smaller “Door of Return” which was built later, to signify closure regarding the slave trade. After looking around for a bit, we walked back into town, once again, having to deal with the incredulous looks from cabbies after turning them down.
So we make our way back, and after some talking, decide to head to the Casa do Brazil, which was an old governor’s mansion, but has since been converted into a museum. Finding it was a treat, since neither of us brought with us the LP guide, so we were forced to ask for directions in a mix of very slowly, well enunciated English, and a few words of French that we knew. Though it only cost me one lost pen down a sewer grate, we finally reached it, hot and tired, with Some Girl having these two or three enormous blisters on her feet. The display was on women’s roles in African culture, and how important it is. So, that was nice to see, but as Some Girl pointed out later, too bad it was all aimed at tourists who in general would probably agree with the sentiment. There are probably some HCN’s in country who could use a refresher lesson in the equality of women.
Though there is another museum that deals with the role of voodoo in Benin’s culture, neither of us are that excited to go to it, and we catch a bush taxi back to Cotonou. That night, I call a Benin PCV who’s blog I have been reading, and the three of us hung out for a beer at a nearby bar and traded stories.
The next day started with me trying to find a bank, in order to withdraw about 100,000 CFA, which may sound like a lot, but really isn’t. Too bad the connections to the Visa network were down at both banks that I went to. Though they both say I should come back in the afternoon, I am still a bit nervous, since “come back in the afternoon” usually translates (at least in this part of the globe) to “come back next Thursday.” So, I go back to the hotel, where Some Girl had also returned from, after having gone to Ghana’s embassy to drop off her passport photos. We then sit around for a bit, and then bounce back to the embassy to pick up our visas, which are thankfully ready. I go back to the bank, where the ATM’s supposedly are working, and am able to withdraw money, without the machine eating my card. Then we catch a bush taxi up to the Abomey/Bohicon area, and meet up with 12 of 12, who was waiting for us in front of a hospital.
12 of 12 is a PCV I met on the peacecorps2 listserve after sending a shoutout for any PCVs from Benin, Togo or Ghana. She emailed me, and after only a few short conversations, she invited us to visit her site. So, that was nice of her, especially considering she knows nothing about me or anyone I was traveling with. So we meet up with her and right away set off Not-Robin’s house, a PCV who we will be staying with for the rest of the week.
That night we go out to dinner. Unlike Cape Verde, most PCVs in Benin have cell phones, so they text message each other about the restaurant. Eventually, over 15 PCVs show up, all who are in town for the Olympics and Glam Rock Prom. It was a bit weird for me to see so many PCVs together at once, since there were more of them sitting around the table having dinner, then there are left in my group.
The next day was the PC/Benin Olympics, which started out with a very dignified running of an Olympic torch, and then led into the games, which included tire rolling, carrying water on buckets on top of your head, baby carrying/piggyback races, text messaging, food eating contest and other things I cannot recall at this late point. Though I did not participate in all of the events, I contributed my part. Our team did not emerge victorious – our team captain was disqualified from the food eating contest after throwing up, though he mounted a vigorous protest to the judges. If I recall, we placed a respectable second.
What followed was your normal evening of PC drinking, playing cards and smack talk. The local Beninese liquor, Sodabes wasn’t too bad, and I had been sampling it throughout the day. We continued to drink that into the night (in moderate, PC allowable amounts, mind you). While playing Kings, there was one PCV who just could not understand what to do when the card for “Never Have I Ever...” came up. Even though about six different people tried explaining it to him, he would still sip his beer, signifying that, indeed, he had just recently engaged in anal sex with various rusty objects.
The next day, we got up and headed to another PCV house in the area. Unlike in Cape Verde, PC/Benin actually understands that having PCVs living with other PCVs can hinder integration and does not allow it. It also doesn’t place people too close to each other, i.e., more than three minutes apart by foot. So, we hung out there for the morning, and then I went with Some Girl, 12 of 12 and another PCV to take the Abomey/Bohicon tour, which is led by a descendent of a king (well, I guess that technically makes him a king, too, right?).
As we were walking to find a bush taxi, these two young kids, they were maybe 10 years old or so, walked past us, and then whipped around and started following us, snickering and making jokes at us. This really bothered 12 of 12 and the other PCV, who usually don’t get treated like this in their respective villages. So, we walk down the street to who I think is 12 of 12’s host grandmother, and they get to a talkin’, and the grandmother calls the kids over and yells at them a bit. They work to maintain their innocence, but grandma berates them some more. 12 of 12, and especially the other Volunteer (who was Asian), were pretty pissed off at the way the kids had been acting. I dunno, I guess it really is a sign of the different cultures we are living in, I would have just started shouting at the kids, and told them to go away.
So we make our way to the hotel where the tour starts. Our guide/king tells us the story of Abomey, and how a moat was constructed around the town, which gave it its name (“abo” means inside and “mey” means moat) and then we go see the actual moat. We visit this humongous old tree which grows over the grave of an old king, Dan (hence the name of the kingdom, Danomy), see some blacksmiths who still do everything the very old fashioned way. We visit some fetish locals, old palaces, and end the tour at the fetish market in town, adjacent to the normal market. We saw various animal skulls, and other body parts. All for sale.
That night was the Glam Rock Prom, where everyone dressed up their best 80s gear. Surprising, the Benin PCVs were able to find a lot of 80s clothes, at the market in town. I didn’t have enough time to go shopping, so I ended up not dressing up (and I try not to think about the 80s unless I have to) though I still went and it was a good time. We danced, we sang, and people mocked the 80s. Later that night, after we had went back to Not Robin’s place, we hung out with her host family for a bit, who were watching music videos on their DVD player.
The next day we went up to 12 of 12’s village, an actual rural village in Benin. All those stereotypical elements of what I wanted my PC experience to be were there. There was the dirt road that took us through the countryside, into the village that you might miss if you blinked. Her tin roofed hut with a layer of cement painted on the mud walls. The village children who came around to say hello and help her out with water. We walked around and visited various parts of the village, which, despite its small size was divided into at least two ethnic groups. Even though we spoke no French, or any tribal languages, everyone seemed incredibly welcoming, though I am sure that was due to 12 of 12’s presence.
So we walk around the village for a while, 12 of 12 delivers some of the gifts that had been sent from her family, we go to visit her best friend in the village, who cooks us dinner, which we take back to 12 of 12’s hut. One of the younger girls we had met earlier in the day also stops by with some food for us, so we have a virtual Beninese feast of “pot rouge,” which is a traditional Beninese dish.
The rest of the night and the next day, our adventure in getting from Benin to Togo, has already been written about here, so I will not rehash it for you.
Our weekend in Lome was nice, we walked around their market, which was pretty busy. As we were walking around, we noticed that lots of older ladies had been collecting old bottles. Water bottles, medicine bottles, perfume bottles, you name it. Though we didn’t know exactly what they were doing with them, it looked like they were reselling this to others. It was a bit disturbing, since some of those bottles looked like they had previously contained things that didn’t make them suitable for reuse.
We found a grocery store a random side road, but it had more items from the U.S. than I have been able to find in all of Cape Verde. We must have spent like an hour there, walking around this three isle grocery store, looking carefully over everything. It was crazy that this one little Lebanese run grocery store would have more random stuff from the U.S. than the one big grocery store in Praia.
That night, we had an adventure trying to find a place to eat, since the first place we wanted to go was closed, and then when we suggested a second place, he wasn’t sure where it was, and had to ask around. Finally, someone told us that there were like three restaurants with that name, and that he would just take us to one. At this point, I am ready to beat every driver in even city that doesn’t know where their own restaurants are. However, we go there, and the place is fine. But, he wants more money, since he wasted more gas driving around the city. Admittedly, I feel a bit bad for him, since he did circle around for a while, but neither me nor Some Girl had any more change on us. He was getting all offended, and doing the thing that 12 of 12 had told us about is common in these parts of West Africa. If someone feels that you are underpaying them, as a point of pride, they would rather refuse your money than take less than what they think they deserve. We ended the argument by leaving money on the seat, and going into the restaurant.
The next day we went back to the market area so that Some Girl could buy some art, and we stopped back at that grocery store again. We hung out a bit with the Swiss owner of the hotel that we were staying at, and learned a bit more about the expat life in Togo. After watching one of the last legs of the Tour de France with him, we got a ride to the Togo/Ghana frontier, where we changed some money. And changing money at the border is not like stepping into a bank or a Western Union. An old man was sitting at a rickety table and I walked up to him and told him how much CFA I had, and that I needed Cedis. He did the calculation, which was actually better than what the currency exchange website was quoting. Then he gave me a very thick stack of Cedis. A very thick stack. I had to break it up into three piles to get it into all of my pockets.
Another frontier was then crossed on foot. After getting from Benin to Togo, this one was much easier, especially since the border security people all spoke English. I had this sudden weird fear that they would be asking me for bribes, but that did not happen. At one point when we got pulled into one of the rooms for our passport to be stamped, it turned out one of the border security guys had actually been to Minnesota, when he was on his trip across the U.S.
It takes us a while to find a tro-tro on the Ghana side of the border, since it feels like everyone is trying to scam us. We end up going back to the original tro-tro that had been trying to get us to go with them. The caller guy who had been running around trying to get our attention, had, when following us down the road, introduced himself to me by saying “I’m a Muslim” which I think was his way to try to say that he wouldn’t scam us. You should have seen the scolding look on his face when we returned to his tro-tro, forced to admit that his prices were cheaper than everyone else.
The tro-tro ride was interesting since we had to go through at least six police stops, and had a flat tire. At one point, a police stop required us to get out of the tro-tro, and walk about 100 feet, before getting back on. Still not clear about that one. There was a nice Ghanaian man on the tro-tro that struck up conversation with me. He was from Accra, but now lived in Lagos, and was just coming home for a visit. So, he helped us get a cab when we got into Accra (in the dark) to take us to the hotel.
Of course, we had the same problem that we had previously encountered, a taxi driver not knowing his own town. After driving around the wrong neighborhood for a while, he finally finds it. But it is down a one way street, and he refuses to go around the block for us, so we get out, and he tries to charge us more, and at first won’t give us our change, 1,000 cedis. He screams to Some Girl, “What do you care, it won’t even buy you water!” and she snaps back “good, then it won’t buy you any either!” and he gives us the money, saying “OK, I don’t want any trouble” and then starts complaining to two guys on the street. So I whip back around and shout “Hey, how about this, next time you come to my city, I’ll know where things are, how about that?” and we stomp off.
In part III, your faithful correspondent and Some Girl spend the week in Ghana and have a somewhat scary experience with a cabbie at the Dakar airport at one in the morning. Stay tuned!
We find the dirt road that is the start of La Route des Esclaves and start truckin’. It’s 4 km to the ocean, and after about the first kilometer, the various taxi drivers stopped trying to get our attention and see if we wanted a ride. The walk was beautiful and we got lots of photos. We saw stilt villages rising above water, various voodoo monuments that dotted the route, and some beautiful scenery of Benin. So we make it to the water, where there is a big monument, a “Door of No Return,” as well as a smaller “Door of Return” which was built later, to signify closure regarding the slave trade. After looking around for a bit, we walked back into town, once again, having to deal with the incredulous looks from cabbies after turning them down.
So we make our way back, and after some talking, decide to head to the Casa do Brazil, which was an old governor’s mansion, but has since been converted into a museum. Finding it was a treat, since neither of us brought with us the LP guide, so we were forced to ask for directions in a mix of very slowly, well enunciated English, and a few words of French that we knew. Though it only cost me one lost pen down a sewer grate, we finally reached it, hot and tired, with Some Girl having these two or three enormous blisters on her feet. The display was on women’s roles in African culture, and how important it is. So, that was nice to see, but as Some Girl pointed out later, too bad it was all aimed at tourists who in general would probably agree with the sentiment. There are probably some HCN’s in country who could use a refresher lesson in the equality of women.
Though there is another museum that deals with the role of voodoo in Benin’s culture, neither of us are that excited to go to it, and we catch a bush taxi back to Cotonou. That night, I call a Benin PCV who’s blog I have been reading, and the three of us hung out for a beer at a nearby bar and traded stories.
The next day started with me trying to find a bank, in order to withdraw about 100,000 CFA, which may sound like a lot, but really isn’t. Too bad the connections to the Visa network were down at both banks that I went to. Though they both say I should come back in the afternoon, I am still a bit nervous, since “come back in the afternoon” usually translates (at least in this part of the globe) to “come back next Thursday.” So, I go back to the hotel, where Some Girl had also returned from, after having gone to Ghana’s embassy to drop off her passport photos. We then sit around for a bit, and then bounce back to the embassy to pick up our visas, which are thankfully ready. I go back to the bank, where the ATM’s supposedly are working, and am able to withdraw money, without the machine eating my card. Then we catch a bush taxi up to the Abomey/Bohicon area, and meet up with 12 of 12, who was waiting for us in front of a hospital.
12 of 12 is a PCV I met on the peacecorps2 listserve after sending a shoutout for any PCVs from Benin, Togo or Ghana. She emailed me, and after only a few short conversations, she invited us to visit her site. So, that was nice of her, especially considering she knows nothing about me or anyone I was traveling with. So we meet up with her and right away set off Not-Robin’s house, a PCV who we will be staying with for the rest of the week.
That night we go out to dinner. Unlike Cape Verde, most PCVs in Benin have cell phones, so they text message each other about the restaurant. Eventually, over 15 PCVs show up, all who are in town for the Olympics and Glam Rock Prom. It was a bit weird for me to see so many PCVs together at once, since there were more of them sitting around the table having dinner, then there are left in my group.
The next day was the PC/Benin Olympics, which started out with a very dignified running of an Olympic torch, and then led into the games, which included tire rolling, carrying water on buckets on top of your head, baby carrying/piggyback races, text messaging, food eating contest and other things I cannot recall at this late point. Though I did not participate in all of the events, I contributed my part. Our team did not emerge victorious – our team captain was disqualified from the food eating contest after throwing up, though he mounted a vigorous protest to the judges. If I recall, we placed a respectable second.
What followed was your normal evening of PC drinking, playing cards and smack talk. The local Beninese liquor, Sodabes wasn’t too bad, and I had been sampling it throughout the day. We continued to drink that into the night (in moderate, PC allowable amounts, mind you). While playing Kings, there was one PCV who just could not understand what to do when the card for “Never Have I Ever...” came up. Even though about six different people tried explaining it to him, he would still sip his beer, signifying that, indeed, he had just recently engaged in anal sex with various rusty objects.
The next day, we got up and headed to another PCV house in the area. Unlike in Cape Verde, PC/Benin actually understands that having PCVs living with other PCVs can hinder integration and does not allow it. It also doesn’t place people too close to each other, i.e., more than three minutes apart by foot. So, we hung out there for the morning, and then I went with Some Girl, 12 of 12 and another PCV to take the Abomey/Bohicon tour, which is led by a descendent of a king (well, I guess that technically makes him a king, too, right?).
As we were walking to find a bush taxi, these two young kids, they were maybe 10 years old or so, walked past us, and then whipped around and started following us, snickering and making jokes at us. This really bothered 12 of 12 and the other PCV, who usually don’t get treated like this in their respective villages. So, we walk down the street to who I think is 12 of 12’s host grandmother, and they get to a talkin’, and the grandmother calls the kids over and yells at them a bit. They work to maintain their innocence, but grandma berates them some more. 12 of 12, and especially the other Volunteer (who was Asian), were pretty pissed off at the way the kids had been acting. I dunno, I guess it really is a sign of the different cultures we are living in, I would have just started shouting at the kids, and told them to go away.
So we make our way to the hotel where the tour starts. Our guide/king tells us the story of Abomey, and how a moat was constructed around the town, which gave it its name (“abo” means inside and “mey” means moat) and then we go see the actual moat. We visit this humongous old tree which grows over the grave of an old king, Dan (hence the name of the kingdom, Danomy), see some blacksmiths who still do everything the very old fashioned way. We visit some fetish locals, old palaces, and end the tour at the fetish market in town, adjacent to the normal market. We saw various animal skulls, and other body parts. All for sale.
That night was the Glam Rock Prom, where everyone dressed up their best 80s gear. Surprising, the Benin PCVs were able to find a lot of 80s clothes, at the market in town. I didn’t have enough time to go shopping, so I ended up not dressing up (and I try not to think about the 80s unless I have to) though I still went and it was a good time. We danced, we sang, and people mocked the 80s. Later that night, after we had went back to Not Robin’s place, we hung out with her host family for a bit, who were watching music videos on their DVD player.
The next day we went up to 12 of 12’s village, an actual rural village in Benin. All those stereotypical elements of what I wanted my PC experience to be were there. There was the dirt road that took us through the countryside, into the village that you might miss if you blinked. Her tin roofed hut with a layer of cement painted on the mud walls. The village children who came around to say hello and help her out with water. We walked around and visited various parts of the village, which, despite its small size was divided into at least two ethnic groups. Even though we spoke no French, or any tribal languages, everyone seemed incredibly welcoming, though I am sure that was due to 12 of 12’s presence.
So we walk around the village for a while, 12 of 12 delivers some of the gifts that had been sent from her family, we go to visit her best friend in the village, who cooks us dinner, which we take back to 12 of 12’s hut. One of the younger girls we had met earlier in the day also stops by with some food for us, so we have a virtual Beninese feast of “pot rouge,” which is a traditional Beninese dish.
The rest of the night and the next day, our adventure in getting from Benin to Togo, has already been written about here, so I will not rehash it for you.
Our weekend in Lome was nice, we walked around their market, which was pretty busy. As we were walking around, we noticed that lots of older ladies had been collecting old bottles. Water bottles, medicine bottles, perfume bottles, you name it. Though we didn’t know exactly what they were doing with them, it looked like they were reselling this to others. It was a bit disturbing, since some of those bottles looked like they had previously contained things that didn’t make them suitable for reuse.
We found a grocery store a random side road, but it had more items from the U.S. than I have been able to find in all of Cape Verde. We must have spent like an hour there, walking around this three isle grocery store, looking carefully over everything. It was crazy that this one little Lebanese run grocery store would have more random stuff from the U.S. than the one big grocery store in Praia.
That night, we had an adventure trying to find a place to eat, since the first place we wanted to go was closed, and then when we suggested a second place, he wasn’t sure where it was, and had to ask around. Finally, someone told us that there were like three restaurants with that name, and that he would just take us to one. At this point, I am ready to beat every driver in even city that doesn’t know where their own restaurants are. However, we go there, and the place is fine. But, he wants more money, since he wasted more gas driving around the city. Admittedly, I feel a bit bad for him, since he did circle around for a while, but neither me nor Some Girl had any more change on us. He was getting all offended, and doing the thing that 12 of 12 had told us about is common in these parts of West Africa. If someone feels that you are underpaying them, as a point of pride, they would rather refuse your money than take less than what they think they deserve. We ended the argument by leaving money on the seat, and going into the restaurant.
The next day we went back to the market area so that Some Girl could buy some art, and we stopped back at that grocery store again. We hung out a bit with the Swiss owner of the hotel that we were staying at, and learned a bit more about the expat life in Togo. After watching one of the last legs of the Tour de France with him, we got a ride to the Togo/Ghana frontier, where we changed some money. And changing money at the border is not like stepping into a bank or a Western Union. An old man was sitting at a rickety table and I walked up to him and told him how much CFA I had, and that I needed Cedis. He did the calculation, which was actually better than what the currency exchange website was quoting. Then he gave me a very thick stack of Cedis. A very thick stack. I had to break it up into three piles to get it into all of my pockets.
Another frontier was then crossed on foot. After getting from Benin to Togo, this one was much easier, especially since the border security people all spoke English. I had this sudden weird fear that they would be asking me for bribes, but that did not happen. At one point when we got pulled into one of the rooms for our passport to be stamped, it turned out one of the border security guys had actually been to Minnesota, when he was on his trip across the U.S.
It takes us a while to find a tro-tro on the Ghana side of the border, since it feels like everyone is trying to scam us. We end up going back to the original tro-tro that had been trying to get us to go with them. The caller guy who had been running around trying to get our attention, had, when following us down the road, introduced himself to me by saying “I’m a Muslim” which I think was his way to try to say that he wouldn’t scam us. You should have seen the scolding look on his face when we returned to his tro-tro, forced to admit that his prices were cheaper than everyone else.
The tro-tro ride was interesting since we had to go through at least six police stops, and had a flat tire. At one point, a police stop required us to get out of the tro-tro, and walk about 100 feet, before getting back on. Still not clear about that one. There was a nice Ghanaian man on the tro-tro that struck up conversation with me. He was from Accra, but now lived in Lagos, and was just coming home for a visit. So, he helped us get a cab when we got into Accra (in the dark) to take us to the hotel.
Of course, we had the same problem that we had previously encountered, a taxi driver not knowing his own town. After driving around the wrong neighborhood for a while, he finally finds it. But it is down a one way street, and he refuses to go around the block for us, so we get out, and he tries to charge us more, and at first won’t give us our change, 1,000 cedis. He screams to Some Girl, “What do you care, it won’t even buy you water!” and she snaps back “good, then it won’t buy you any either!” and he gives us the money, saying “OK, I don’t want any trouble” and then starts complaining to two guys on the street. So I whip back around and shout “Hey, how about this, next time you come to my city, I’ll know where things are, how about that?” and we stomp off.
In part III, your faithful correspondent and Some Girl spend the week in Ghana and have a somewhat scary experience with a cabbie at the Dakar airport at one in the morning. Stay tuned!
posted by jende turtle at 2:56 PM
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