Togo

Last Friday, Michael, Katy, Catherine and I attended my roommate’s dance show. My roommate’s name is Ashley and she’s a senior at the University of Montana, studying dance. The dance show was really cool. It was a mix of traditional African dance and contemporary dance. My favorite was a piece where all of the dancers wore crazy masks and climbed on top of each other (kind of like stunting!).

Michael, Katy, Catherine and I left around 6am to travel to Togo on Saturday. Togo is the country to the east of Ghana. It’s a tiny country and was colonized partly by the French. We took a tro-tro to the bus station, and then boarded a bus to Lome, Togo (the capital city). The four hour ride was nice because I had a window seat and watched the scenery go by. We passed through huge fields that looked like the scenery in Lion King. We also passed through multiple villages and saw people dressed in traditional outfits going to funerals and weddings. We arrived at the Ghana / Togo border around 1pm and crossed the border. Immediately upon crossing into Togo, its differences from Ghana were apparent. Everyone was speaking French and driving around on motorcycles. I ended up using the few French phrases I’d learned during a trip to Paris in high school to get us to a hotel. Along the way we met a very helpful woman who directed us to a hotel and even called the hotel a half hour later to make sure we had arrived safely. The eagerness of people to Togo to help was further embodied by the owner of the hotel we stayed at, who went above and beyond to make sure we knew where to eat, how to get to the spots we wanted to visit, etc.

After settling in at the hotel, we ventured out into the city to find some lunch. We started out walking, which was interesting because all of the main roads are covered in sand because it is a beach town. The beaches were beautiful, with palm trees dotting the white sand and colorful fishing boats, called pirogues moving through the waves. We eventually came to a French / Lebanese outdoor restaurant. We ate hummus which was served with delicious, juicy tomato wedges and fresh pita bread. We also got French chicken burgers which had coleslaw on them that tasted like cucumber sauce and French style fries in the burger. We all pigged out and even had leftovers to bring back to the hotel. After leaving lunch we travelled to the marche des feticheurs, to look for fetish items. It was around 5pm when we got there, so most of the vendors were closing up, but we saw lots of herbs / dried fruits and other items used in traditional medicine. We also saw carved fetish dolls used in voodoo rituals. Later in the evening we went to a nicer restaurant / bar that was playing American rap music and ate really good pizza and falafel.

The next morning we left early and grabbed a taxi to take us to the boarding docks. We weren’t really sure that our destination was accurately translated to the driver, and when we started driving through basically a field of tall grass on a dusty path we became skeptical. However, soon we pulled up to a dock with a single pirogue. We took a pirogue to Togoville, a small village across the water. Togoville is very rural and many naked children wearing only waist beads ran around the streets in between goats and chickens. We first visited two massive, sacred trees which are the center points for the village. We also saw a fertility shrine to a spirit known as Mama Fiokpo and a bull that will be sacrificed soon in a village ritual. We then went to the house of priestess where we were instructed to take off all of our clothes and put on traditional clothes given to us. We sneakily managed to keep most of our clothes on underneath and headed to a waiting room where other villagers were waiting to see the priestess. Upon waiting, we were informed that we would be required to pay a large sum to see the priestess so we decided to leave.

We then crossed the main area of the village to visit the Catholic cathedral built by the Germans. The church is a huge, imposing structure on the outside and a beautiful, colorful wonder on the inside. Basically all of the wall space in the structure is covered in detailed depictions of bible stories with the largest picture being the last supper with a giant rainbow over the entire thing. About 20 yards from the cathedral is a large shrine to the virgin Mary who was allegedly seen walking on the lake in the early 1970s. At first I was confused by how Catholicism could coexist so well with the traditional religion of the area, but upon further pondering I realized how similar they are. The shrine of the virgin Mary is very similar to the fertility shrine to Mama Fiokpo and the way the villagers venerated ancestor spirits is almost the same as how Catholics regard saints. These are just a few of the similarities, but I will refrain from rambling about religions.

The last stop on our Togo trip was another village visit to Glidji. We travelled to Glidji by taxi and set out to find the voodoo shrines the village is known for. We were directed to what appeared to be a small house with various doors with names painted across the top. We walked around for a while, trying to figure out what was going on. Soon, an old man with a cane walked towards us and asked us what we were doing. We were relieved that he spoke English, and soon found out that he was from Ghana. He brought us to the house of the high priest of the village and we waited in a courtyard for the priest to greet us. The priest welcomed us and introduced us to two voodoo priestesses. We thought we were going to have a tour of the voodoo shrines, but before we knew it we were buying a bottle of gin for a voodoo ritual. We were lead into a voodoo shrine for a male ancestor (I can’t remember his name). The shrine was more or less a small crawlspace with a sand floor. In the center of the room was a shrine with various candles, bottles and objects (the most interesting of which was a Barbie doll). We were directed to sit on a wooden bench along the wall of the room. The priestesses brought in some type of smoking wood / incense in a kettle that smelled weird / I liked because it kept the mosquitoes away. The priest began chanting and the priestesses sang along and clapped. A few minutes into the ceremony, one of the priestesses took a glass of water and instructed us each to take a sip. The next thing I knew, Michael was having water spit on him. I slowly realized this too was to be my fate and fought back the urge to laugh / cringe when it was my turn. After the spitting water ordeal, the priestess filled up the glass with gin and instructed us to take a sip. I was really really worried that after this the priestess would spit gin on us, but luckily this was not part of the ritual. The voodoo ritual went on with more chanting and clapping , we also had some type of holy oil squirted on us as well as baby powder. To finish, the priest shook a handful of special shells and threw them into a shallow dish. Two of the shells landed face up, and the other two face down, which supposedly meant that we all would be blessed with good luck. After the ceremony was over, the priest and priestesses insisted that we all take a series of photos with each other. It was kind of like voodoo glamour shots.

The voodoo good luck didn’t kick in, however, because we couldn’t find a taxi from Glidji and ended up having to walk a mile or two back to a station. Whenever we walk anywhere, we usually attract a few locals who approach us, talk to us and basically attach themselves to us. We were having casual conversation with them when Catherine broke out her hand sanitizer and started passing it around. It was so funny to watch the locals use the hand sanitizer. They thought the smell was strange and stared obsessively at the bottle trying to figure out what it was.

We eventually made it back to Lome, collected our bags from the hotel and exited to the border. We chartered a private taxi back to Legon, since it was around 8pm and all of the buses had left. On the way back we saw a 4-5ft. ball python crossing the road! (Alex, it was like a huge Baby snake!) I wanted to go back and take pictures of it, but Katy, Catherine and Michael are lame and were too afraid. However, we are going to a python shrine this weekend in Benin so I will have my fill of snakes.

This week so far hasn’t been too crazy, I wrote a paper about the origins of the dance we’ve been learning in one of my classes. Apparently the dance was discovered by a hunter who used magic to conceal himself to observe dwarfs (who supposedly all have one leg that’s longer than the other) perform dances. Good to know? Michael inadvertently agreed to marry the crazy old woman who sells baked goods outside of our hostel. Also, Katy and Michael both received packages so we got to eat cheez-its, cookies and starburst. Delicious!

We’re leaving to travel to Benin tomorrow! Will report more next week!