January 5, 2011

Accra is a city of sea haze and diesel fumes. Yesterday before lunch, after changing our lodgings to the upscale icecream parlour/burger joint/hotel FRANKIE'S, we met up with a friend of a friend, a local man named Ambrose, to whom we conveyed our desire to travel to Togo and specifically to a smallish town named Kpalime. In Kpalime we wanted to do some hiking and generlly get out of town for a while. After our meeting we went for lunch and then took a walk down to the beach, passing through neighborhoods and soccer fields and burning piles of rubbish and smiling kids and baby goats and women frying chicken and taro in huge pans fanning the cooking fires with grass fans.
We ate dinner in the street at Duncans, serenaded by hi-life and dancehall from the club next door. Had a round with Douglas, who made us laugh with his exuberance and good nature.

This morning we got up rather early to meet the van that was to take us to Ho, the tozn from which we would meet a connecting car to Kpalime.

Ambrose acco;panied us on the van ride and he shared some fairy tales with me. Don't let me forget to tell you, they were really incredible didactic, allegorical stories that had a certain flavour of brutality.

At Ho, we hired an old land rover to take us across the Togolese border to Kpalime. We were 6 in the back and two in the front. Two of our travelling companions were from NIger and were on their way back there. They had with them a mysterious oblong wooden box, that they kept rather close. We speculated wildly as to the contents.

The border crossing was smooth and friendly. Although the smiling, joking guard insisted that we leave him some pens. We left denuded of pens, but with stamps in our passports. On the Togo side we were greeted courteously and immediately embraced by French bureaucracy. It took some time and a little money to produce some of the most beautifully crafted border documents I have ever seen.

The rest of the ride was a little bumpy and a little dusty. After our arrival in Kpalime, after a haggle in the market square over the price and possibility of sqeezing 5 passengers plus luggage  into a tiny hatchback, while we waited for the bank to exchange some money, we compared our impressive dust tans.

We refueled at a roadside stand where gas was sold in an open glass bottles our driver simply poured into the gas tank.

We arrived at our hotel 'chez fanny', which was so charming, verdant, spacious and friendly....

We met Souleyman, an incredible young man and friend of Esther's who graciously agreed to be our guide and arranger for our days in his home town. We agreed to begin our hike up the mountain early which made the ensueing evenings revelry all the sweeter.

Feeling embraced.