Ghana (Part Six) March 31
At the end of my last Ghana post, Cortney and I had just arrived in Togo. I had a feeling that the place we’d be staying would be nice. It pretty much had to be nicer than what we had grown accustomed to over two odd weeks. But I wasn’t expecting it to be a mansion… We basically had our own suite in the house, with air conditioning and everything. “Spoiled” would be an understatement, we were in heaven. You can check out a “walkthrough” type video that I took here.
When we first arrived, we sat down and talked to the family for a bit. It was a mother and father, and their teenage son, Léo. They called their other son, Kelly, who is in the US, and we passed around the cell phone and all talked to him. Kelly is the one who told us to come stay with his parents for a bit while we were in Ghana - I know I explained that before, but don’t expect anyone to remember. They told us they’d be serving dinner around 8:30, and I think it was around 4 or so, so we went and took showers and just relaxed in the AC for a while. Dinner was great - The first “round” of food was a huge salad. I filled up on that, not knowing there was more food coming. After that they brought out loafs of bread, eggroll-type things, rice, meat, and fish. I was stuffed. And then they brought out a cake, with golden spoons to eat it with.
After dinner, Léo asked us if we were tired, or if we wanted to go out with him. I was painfully full from dinner (it was by far the most I’d eaten since arriving in Africa) but we decided to go out anyway. He drove us around for a bit and showed us some of the places that he likes to hang out at. Then he told us we were going to “the discotheque”, and took us to this ridiculous club, called “Club Privée”. He flashed some card at the door and we went into a VIP room with loud music playing. There were only about 10 people in that room, and most of them looked like they were in their 30s or older (and at least half of them were white, if I remember correctly). We sat in there for a little bit, but it was kind of awkward, so we made our way into the main club area. Now I’m not that type of person that frequents clubs, so I haven’t been to many. That being said, this was the nicest club I’ve ever been in, by far. Keep in mind that this is in a third world country. Léo pointed some guy out to us, and told us that it was the president of Togo’s son. Walking around in Togo, I was hard pressed to find girls that I was even remotely attracted to, but almost every girl in this place was ridiculously hot. I guess Léo doesn’t drink, but he asked us if we wanted anything, so we did some tequila shots, which he paid for. We hung out for a little while longer and then decided to leave since it was getting later.
On the way back to his house, two police (he called them “soldiers”) flagged him down with their flashlights. He pulled over next to them (they were on foot) and got out of the car. He talked to them for a minute or two, handed them some money, and then we were on our way. When he explained to us what happened, he made it sound like it was completely normal. Basically, “if they pull you over, you give them money, and then you are free to go”. He explained that if you are wealthy enough to afford a car, that you will always be pulled over by the police, and you have no choice but to bribe them, or else they won’t let you go. That blows my mind, and I kept asking him about it, but he was so used to it that I guess it’s just accepted as a part of everyday life there. This happened two separate times that night. I was nodding off in the car since it was probably around 1:00 am or so, and I was used to being in bed by 9:00 pm at the orphanage.
The next morning we had a great breakfast - Coffee, bread (with brie cheese) and croissants. After breakfast, some guy that works for the family drove Cortney and I, along with Léo and his friend Willy (really), to “the market”. On the way, we stopped so we could convert our Ghanaian currency to Togolese currency (CFA Francs). 50 Ghanaian cedi got me 21 Francs. So it turns out that the Ghana cedi isn’t worth too much. And not only that, but stuff in Togo was much more expensive.
We walked around for awhile and checked out some of the stuff people were selling. Lots of cool art, masks and things of that nature. And parrots too, apparently. I saw a lot of stuff that I liked - But since I don’t speak French, bartering was out of the question, and since I’m white, the prices that they gave me right off the bat were just obnoxious. So they’d tell me a price, and I’d start to walk away, and they’d follow me, asking why I was walking away and ignoring them. This actually got kind of ugly a few times. I almost bought something, and then Léo told me it was a horrible deal, and that I shouldn’t buy it. The vendor saw Léo telling me not to buy it, so he came out and started following us, screaming at Léo in French. He followed us around for about 10 minutes and then finally stopped, but he kept reappearing and trying to sell the thing to me (I don’t even remember exactly what it was to be honest). It was ridiculous, and we ended up leaving the market because of stuff like this that kept happening.
We went to some other market that was indoors. This place was huge, and you had to pay to get in. We spent 2 hours or so there, and it was cool at first, but a lot of the vendors sell the exact same stuff, and it gets old after awhile. We headed back to the house for lunch, and then packed our stuff for Aného. Aného is right on the coast, and the family had a house there as well. We ate lunch and then headed out.
On the way to Aného, Léo rear-ended someone. He got out and talked to them to sort things out. There wasn’t too much damage to either car, but it was a strange situation to be in while in another country. It took about half an hour to sort that out. When we started moving again, Cortney started to feel sick. She said she felt nauseous, and then she opened the car door and started throwing up. This was really scary, because as she had her head out the door, oncoming traffic was ridiculously close to the car, and if a car would have even bumped into the open door, it would have slammed her head. I was trying to tell her this and have her switch seats with me, but she was pretty sick and didn’t seem too concerned. She also said she was pretty sure she was vomiting blood, which was kind of scary. We pulled over several different times for her to throw up as well. It ended up taking about 3 hours for us to get from Lomé to Aného.
When we finally arrived, Cortney went to lay down. Léo had brought his laptop with him, and he put on the only English movie he had (all of the rest were in French) which was The Marine. It was kind of lame, but it helped pass time and gave us something to do. The house was super nice by the way. There was a guest house next to it, and they had a family that lived there just to take care of the main house and the garden. So that gives you an idea of the kind of money that this family has.
Togo has “scheduled blackouts”, similar to Ghana’s blackouts. So pretty much right after we arrived, the power went out, and Léo told me it wouldn’t be back on until midnight. It was ridiculously hot in the house, so we hung out outside for awhile and just talked. He was asking me about rappers, and which ones I liked. He told me that he likes 2Pac and Big Pun, but Ja Rule is lame. It’s funny to hear about which rappers are known over there and which ones aren’t. I started to get really tired so I went inside to try and sleep, but it was literally too hot to sleep. I’d doze off and then wake up covered in sweat. So I actually went back outside and stayed awake until the power came back on, at which point I was able to turn a fan on. Just one example of the many things that I realized we really take for granted.
The next morning, we headed to the beach after breakfast. Léo had mentioned earlier that the tide was very strong, but I didn’t really think much of it. Turns out he was right - The strength of the tide was pretty ridiculous. I know how to swim, and I didn’t dare walk more than a few steps out into the ocean. So I just relaxed on the beach for a while until I started to burn, and then we headed back to the house. We left Aného at probably around 2 pm, and it only took us an hour or so to get back to Lomé.
When we got back to the house in Lomé, there were a ton of people there. They were having some sort of get-together, and people seemed to be a bit drunk already and having a good time. Léo’s father told us to come in and join them. So we sat down and ended up having a ton of different kinds of food. Every 20 minutes or so, their were 3 or 4 new dishes being put out. And every time I finished my wine, someone refilled my glass. I didn’t really know what was going on since most of what they were saying/”cheers”-ing to was in French, but it was entertaining nonetheless. We went back to “our room” to relax for awhile, and then Léo came and asked us if we wanted to watch a movie. So we ended up watching The Marine again. Sweet. We had dinner a few hours later, and then called it a night.
Woke up early the next morning to shower and get my stuff together. We had one last good breakfast before leaving. We needed to get new Ghana visas, since our original Ghana visas were single entry, and therefore expired as soon as we left Ghana to enter Togo. So we took some pictures with the family, and said our goodbyes.
Léo (and some driver that works for the family) drove us to the Ghana Embassy building. My first impression was that the people were not very friendly. Anyway, after waiting for over an hour, some lady handed us visa forms to fill out. At this point we realized we needed passport photos, so we left and found a place that was setup to print them. We got back about 45 minutes later and started all over again. We were then told that it took 3 days to process the visa. So basically we’d be stuck in Togo for another 3 days. When we went back out to the car to tell Léo this, he called his dad. His dad made some phone calls, and then told us to go back in and ask to speak with the ambassador. So I went in and asked, and the lady at the desk basically acted like I had no business talking to this ambassador, and told me to sit down. We waited another hour or so and finally we were able to get our stuff sorted out, but they made it pretty difficult. There is more to it, but I won’t bore you with the details.
Also, while we were in the waiting room, some lady that looked like Whoopi Goldberg asked if she could borrow my pen. I was using it at the time, and it wasn’t like she just needed it for a second (she had an entire visa application to fill out) but I just handed it to her without really thinking. It was a pretty nice Staedtler ink pen which I brought with intentions of maybe doing some sketches. Anyway, she obviously pushed the pen way too hard into the paper, and smashed the tip right in. She walked back over to me, handed me the pen, and said “this doesn’t even work, buy a new pen.” That made me pretty mad.
Léo and his driver took us to the Togo-Ghana border at Aflao, and we crossed over into Ghana. As soon as we arrived, we were swarmed by beggars, taxi drivers, currency converters, etc. We had no trouble finding a tro-tro to Ho, and from there we found another tro-tro to Hohoe. The tro-tro broke down though, and we sat on the side of the road in the dark for about an hour until they fixed it. I learned that stuff like that is just inevitable there - you can never expect to arrive somewhere at a specific time, you have to allow room for “error”.
When we got back to the orphanage, we had some dinner (fish and rice). After dinner, Cortney and I finished off a bottle of brandy in my room. Cortney headed back to her room to get to bed, and I accidentally knocked over the empty brandy bottle, so I spent the next 20 minutes drunkenly trying to clean up all the shards on the floor of my room in dim lighting.
The next morning (December 4th, my birthday) when I stepped outside to brush my teeth, Simon (one of the boys I got to know the best) asked me for a ‘plaster’, and wanted to know if he ‘could clean my dresses’. So I gave him a band aid, and brought out my dirty clothes. I always felt bad having other people wash my clothes, so I helped, but he was much better at it than I was. Obviously they have their own way of doing things there… But having stayed in Ghana for a month, I now know that I’ll take a machine wash over hand-scrubbed clothing any day.
For whatever reason, I sat in on Cortney’s English class that day. I sat in the back of the classroom and tried to be low key, but the kids were definitely distracted the whole time, they kept turning around and staring at me. I was done with my classes for the day, but Cortney had another one that ended at 2:30. We had plans to meet up with some people in Hohoe to get some drinks for my birthday, so I figured I’d wait for her to finish teaching so we could head out together. While she was teaching, I went for a long walk. This was actually one of my favorite things to do while at the orphanage, just going out and exploring by myself, walking along paths in the ‘bush’ and through neighboring villages. When I got back, Cortney told me that she had been throwing up again. I didn’t feel like heading into town by myself, so I decided to wait around for awhile to see if she’d feel any better. I hung out in the commons area for a bit and did some reading. While I was in there, Isaac came in and showed me a bottle of what was apparently some type of traditional herbal blend used to fight malaria. He informed me that it’s taste was “more bitter than the urine of satan” (his exact words). He then asked me to type some exams on the typewriter for him. He dictated the tests to me to speed things up a bit. I was typing one of the religion exams, and some of the questions on it were pretty ridiculous, I wish I would have written them down. Every time I used the typewriter, they had it setup under the same tree, and this tree was full of ants that liked to drop down onto unsuspecting people and bite the hell out of them. Somehow I managed to forget about that every single time until I was getting bit. So that was pretty sweet. Oh yeah, and about using a typewriter… You get so used to typing on a computer (and being able to backspace) that it’s hard to not make mistakes. This gets really annoying when you’re halfway down a page and you have to start over.
Anyway, I typed for awhile and then went to check on Cortney around 4:00. She said she still didn’t feel good at all, so I decided to go without her. The tro-tro took much longer than usual to get there, and it started pouring on the way. It was shaping up to be a pretty sweet birthday. I headed to the internet cafe to check my email, but all the power went out. So I walked over to Sunny’s place, and she called Jerusha (as well as some German girls we had met) and told them we were gonna head to the Grand Hotel for drinks. The place doesn’t look too nice, I know. I never actually stayed the night there, but they had a nice sitting area/bar out back that we hung out at and got dinner several different times.
We got dinner and hung out for awhile. Sunny had some of the “local snuff” (aka “brown cocaine”) which intrigued me, especially since it was completely legal. I had seen people snorting it in public before and not even trying to be shady about it. So in my slightly drunken state I tried it, and it was pretty stupid, it might as well have been cinnamon. I should add that this was more than likely a dumb decision on my part, and in no way does it reflect my behavior back home in the US - I don’t put stuff up my nose, but at the time I was thinking “when in Rome” and just went with it. The German girls left, but we stuck around and continued to drink for awhile until it started to get late. I then realized that I had a box of sangria in my bookbag, so we went back to Sunny’s place and finished that off. If I remember correctly, those boxes of sangria were around $1 each, which is pretty awesome.
I was going to take a taxi back to the orphanage, but it would have been pretty expensive, since it was quite a hike. Jerusha told me that it would probably be alright if I stayed at the house where she was currently staying (which was in town) so I just ended up doing that. The house was a little over half a mile from the Grand Hotel, and she didn’t want to walk back in the dark alone anyway, so I guess it worked out in both of our favor. The bed that I stayed in was actually pretty comfortable (especially compared to the one that I had grown accustomed to at the orphanage) and the room had a fan as well, so I was in heaven. All in all, I’d say it was a pretty decent birthday, especially when you take into consideration the fact that I spent it in a third world country.
There’s only 7 days worth of Ghana stuff left for me to write about, but a good amount of stuff happened in that time period… Hopefully I’ll be able to cover it all in my next post.