may 2.
.... just over the border now, into Ghana, in Hohoe ....out on the
street come vendors calling out in hilarious english 'naa-ees fay-een
shu-gaah bray-eed' (nice find sugar bread), strange to my ears, and i am
sipping on a ghanaian guinness extra smooth (first dark beer in 14
months), nice introduction to the country, but my oh my i love Togo!...
finally returned to the tropics...lush and green and wild and beautiful,
we went straight up into the mountains, on the way my moto-taxi driver
stopped to catch a chameleon that was crossing the road, and then we are
up there in the mist and breeze, african rainforest, hillsides cleared
for towering cassava, pineapple, coffee, cacao, bananas, plantains...
bowls and bowls of avocados sit rotting on the streetsides... and the
food delicious, palm oil and bean mixtures and fish-palm-nut soup spilled
over pounded plaintain/cassava mash with an avocado to top it off and a
gourd of strong palm wine, spi! ced with ginger.... we hiked with our
guide Kungu to butterfly spots and mountain peaks and he takes us to the
palm-wine tappers and then over to Mesi's house for dinner, where the men
are cooking, pounded fufu and palm gin again ('ca donne du force') and
singing and drums, this part of the world is so alive, they call to the
spirits of the waterfall before we enter her realm, the river is female,
the kola nut wards off voodoo, there are plants in the forest used to dye
thread, we rub them over our bodies, paint pictures with fern leaves,
tattooo ourselves with the ink of the forest (for the map, this is
Kpalime, on the border of Ghana).... then Kungu invites us to stay with
his family, it is Togolese Independence Day, there are drums and
rattles beneath the indigo sky and circle-dancing til late into the
night, bottles of local sodabi passed around and around to fire the
body, loosen the hips to groove, this is the Africa I ! envisioned, as
rain pours down and drenches the world green and fresh, and so wonderful
to be in a place of abundant water again, this west africa and senegal
are NOT the same place.... roads wind through lush hillsides and red-mud
longhouses and the people blacker and their faces so wide they look
almost asian and i am startled by the differently vibrant fabrics and the
spoken love Togolese have of their land, this land of voodoo and
superstition, a fetish market in Lome full of skulls and hair-tails and
voodoo dolls with their pins and gourd-shakers and multi-colored bottles
of potions and mixtures...
and then up up up to Badou (elevation!) an amazing moutain ride a
storm happens along the way, the views astounding, the road becomes a
river, and so LUSH we breathe in the life like the desert-thirsty, and we
run immediately into Bethany, a Peace Corps vounteer up in this paradise
and she takes us back to her jungle 'apartment', a house decorated much
like an american college kids' apartment, tie-dye curtains and coffee
filters, she has sometimes-electricity and a real kitchen and a phone in
her 'village' which is much more like a town and she is rural but her
situation is miles away from mine, we realize that the statistics might
not speak so, but senegal is POOR much moreso than this nation with its
smooth roads and education rate sky-high and phones and generators in
rural mountain-rainforest towns... all roofs are tin, there are barely
any wells, we find ourselves evaluating from our skilled development
worker perspective, one i was! not fully aware that i had.... but then
again, 1 in every 8 togolese has AIDS.
and her house just a 1/2 mile from Akloa falls, a spectacular spew after
a small walk into the jungle, standing beneath it in her pool was like a
baptism, having rained the night before the cascade was almost powerful
enough to knock me over, the air was a hurricane of water-wind, i had to
hold my breath to face it, it was stunning, a revelation, beautiful.... i
let go of all my regrets my frustrations... these moments are what
vacation is for
and now in ghana, new country, same hills, visited another
sacred waterfall today, Agumatsa, 'let me flow', so we do, the road is
gentle on us, movement is easy, organic, i reach out the tro-tro window
to buy handfuls of plaintain chips, bags of cacao juice... motion is
working so we are off again, this time to look for monkeys, 'tis good to
be journeying...
gypsy again, feel at home,
linz