Food: Togo's food, though a bit difficult to distinguish from Benin's, is extraordinary in one delicacy that we enjoyed several times - freshly fried sausages, served in a French baguette and covered with a delicious tomato and onion sauce.
Best: on a rainy afternoon in Lome (the afternoon that was to reveal my umbrella's vulnerability to rust), David and I were ravenously trolling for a restaurant when we caught the scent of these sausages crackling over a street vendor's glowing coals. Cheap.. warm.. delicious. Why can't Nigeria do this?
Worst: I discovered in Togo where all the bad Beninese bottled water comes from.. the Togolese tap. Consistency of sweat, flavor of sewer... * YUM *.
New Feats of Tailoring Mastery: In all fairness, my backpack, dating from the eighth grade, has done more than a normal life's work. Ripped at the seams, zippers off-track, and a bottom so thin I could see (and even read) through it, my backpack was more than ready for the peace of the grave and backpack heaven.
Instead, it got an unexpected extension of servitude, thanks to a brilliant, fast, and cheap tailor and the amazing resilient qualities of furniture-quality vinyl.
New Hygienic Lows: It has only just occurred to me that by always talking as I am about how disgusting I am, I am perhaps giving the impression that Africa is somehow an inherently dirty place, and Africans, an inherently dirty people.
Allow me to pause on that note for a moment to say:
Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Blame the lifestyle, not the continent, for our general hygienic state - there's a reason no one ever needs elaboration on the phrase "smells like a backpacker". Though David and I could drop cows with our respective stenches (to say nothing of the damage we could do with combined forces, or those of our bags), we are generally the only people here who can. Even smell aside, Africans generally dress far better than Americans, and manage to look classy even if they're just hawking things on the street. Money's not a hugely abundant resource here, true, so a person might have just a few outfits - but among these, be assured, will be a reasonably nice button-down dress shirt or a dress, complete with dress shoes and perhaps a necklace or a tie. On the other hand, the few white people you do see wandering around non-touristed areas stand out starkly from everyone else less for their skin color, and more because they look like they just got dragged through Hell backwards. Dripping with sweat, shirts stained with dirt, backpacks repellent enough to deter unnecessary contact, and hair a general disaster, they look, more or less, like us.
The clean and perfumed Africans are good enough not to visibly lean away from us in the close quarters of share taxis. One does feel bad for them for that.
Best New Guesses at My Nationality: Friendly and bored of their work, a few persistent but unlucky Togolese guessers set themselves to guessing my nationality. I hadn't really gotten the label of 'Spanish' before. Nor, after all other European countries, Canada, and the possibility of Asia had been exhausted (without the US ever once being guessed) and it was thus determined that I had lied somewhere, have I ever been accused of secretly being Spanish - or possibly Dutch, there was some disagreement there - and just covering it up.
One wonders.. ¿por que?
Coolest Thing Learned: At the tiny national museum, extremely informative displays taught me everything that I've ever wondered about African pots. Sounds boring, but let me tell you something I've realized since arriving in Africa last December - pots are where it's at. This industry is more than just an archaic craft, or tradition-turned-tourist-trap, for pots still play a huge role in daily African life. You see massive ones in desert areas under trees or outside houses for water; you see big kettle-sized ones lined up in the market for sale or containing grain; you see smaller ones balanced atop women's heads as they go about their business. They're so ordinary, maybe dusty, maybe cracked, maybe painted, maybe plain, yet each one manages to look so very distinctive and they never fail to catch my eye. At a conservative estimate, I have probably taken a couple hundred pictures of pots.
(Does this mean I am repressing something?)
Unexpected Moral Lessons: In general, I found the Togolese to be remarkably fun and laid-back, even for Africa, and we had very little trouble getting fair prices for goods and services in the country. Only once did a demi-zhan (motorcycle taxi) try to rip me off - after the bike I was on broke down pre-destination, I got on another and named a price as we began to take off. Though the price was definitely fair (we were already somewhat close), he decided to press the point and began to fight my price - at which point I stopped him anyway because I realized we were only a block away from my hotel.
He shoulda taken the first thing I offered... it would have been about three times too much for the five-second trip anyway.
New Strategic Triumphs in the War On Mosquitos (In Which I Enjoin All Humankind): The BugBivvy, high-tech and high-assembly, may work well for the cool summer nights of its Pennsylvanian origin, but in the sweltering, airless, mosquito-infested hotel chambers of Nigeria, it was like ensconcing myself in a sticky, stuffy plastic bag. Not to mention that more than a few mosquitos demostrated the galling ability to bite me just as well through the mesh fabric. Task A in Paris: send BugBivvy home with my sister, and buy a normal net for eight euros at Decathalon.
Set up the normal hanging mesh net for the first time in Lome, creating an instant pyramid of bug-free airspace on top of my bed. Light, simple, and effective... and I am pleased as punch.
It must be admitted, however, that this triumph is restricted to defensive purposes - also important, but necessarily secondary to Objective Numero Uno : Offense. Keep your towel handy.
Quote: In a craft market in the capital, I got to talking with Jean-Marie, a fun guy my age, about politics. He, of course, wanted to know whether I'd voted for Obama. Upon hearing that I had, he cheered, before pressing further: "But did you vote for him three times??"
"No!" I blurted, scandalized, "that's not allowed--?!"
"Ha!" he gloated. "Me, I voted three times in our last election."
He was enjoying the successive wave of laughter around those assembled, until someone else cut his glory short with a snide "But your guy didn't win, did he..."
"No.." Jean-Marie (hereafter known as Three-Votes) conceeded soberly, "he didn't win."
You've gotta be pretty good to beat triplicate votes, and I asked, "So who did win?" before realizing what a dumb-ass I am, and answering it myself: "oh.. the former president."
"Right," they confirmed. "the former president." One man grinned at Three-Votes and riled him, "Democracy's great..."
But before I left the alley, Three-Votes apparently had an attack of prudence (if not conscience), and hastened to clear up one last thing - "But you never asked who it was that I voted for three times!"
I played along. "Who?"
"Well, Faure Gnassingbe, of course..." ...the current (and former) president.
(Democracy's great.)
Worst experience: I mentioned one of two big direction-asking nightmares.. in Togo we definitely hit the other. I call this one Yellow Poncho after Dane Cook, who does a skit about his time working at a Burger King drive-through. After taking one woman's order and instructing her to drive around to the pick-up window, the woman - a first-timer? - apparently paused and asked in a lost, pitiful voice: ".... But... where do I go???"
Dane Cook, being Dane Cook, took the opportunity to launch into a detailed explanation involving leaving the parking lot and a following a series of complicated directions, culminating with the line, "then you're gonna see a man in a YELLOW PONCHO... he will take you to The Burger King."
It's hilarious when Dane Cook does it as a joke, but as dirt is my witness we occasionally get this same routine when asking for directions.
Applying to get a visa is normally a manner of going to the country's consulate, filling out a form, and surrendering your passport, a couple photos, and (in the case of Niger) all the money you own. The Consulate in Lome, however, told us with completely straight faces that in order to get a Cote-d'Ivoirian visa, we should exit the embassy, go around the corner to the local bank, walk in and drop the keyword Cote-d'Ivoire to a teller, who would then slip us a card with a number on it, so we could find a telephone booth and call to get an appointment at that same Consulate the next morning at 8 to talk about a visa application.
Yeah.. that's a yellow poncho alright. (We both said, 'screw it.')
Best experience: A lot of our in-city transport in the past few months has taken place atop okadas, demi-zhans, or taxi-motos as they're variously called through East and West Africa - speeding motorcycles or scooters that zoom around and in between notorious African traffic or along the edges of flooded or tiny roads. In Kpalime, we took two taxi-motos 12 km out of the city to see a stunning waterfall we'd read about. I admit, I was rather expecting the Chutes of Lukia again, but the drive out alone was worth it. My driver soon revealed himself to be a bit of a speed-demon, but talentedly so, so no regrets here. I'm more of a downhill skier than a cross-country, (though each has their very distinct and unique merits) and for me there could be nothing finer than roaring along the little road, lush green landscape flying by, wind whipping in your face, whizzing past men bearing firewood and women with babies and head-loads.
I was seriously wrong about expecting Chutes de Lukia's cousin, though... which makes the memory even better.
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