The trip out to Diffa required a stop in Zinder. From Dosso, Zinder is typically a 12-hour bus ride. From Zinder, it's seven more hours on broken tarmac to Diffa. There aren't any bus companies that will ply the route from Niamey to Diffa direct. I didn't mind the stop though. It gave me some time to see friends I hadn't seen in months, and Zinder is just a great city to kill a few days. It has some beautiful architecture in the old quarter, and, if you ever need a diversion, you can visit the cookie factory. Thirty or so women making honey and shortbread cookies everyday. It's awesome, but that's beside the point. I stopped off in Zinder and caught a bus out to Diffa at the "what am I doing up this early?" crack of dawn.
As a result, I missed the first half of the trip out to Diffa. It was still early, and I wasn't really concious. The road changed that. It's an old highway, and, while I hear they're going to repair it soon, it's in a pretty dire state. I was fortunate to get such a rude awakening though, as the ride out to Diffa was beautiful. The desert encroaches a bit further south than the rest of the country, which means that instead of subsistence agriculture, you're dealing with subsistence pastureland. Plains stretch to the horizon and are dotted with acacia trees that have all been grazed up above the level of hungry camels. It reminded me a lot of how I feel Kenya or Ethiopia must look: dry savannah interspersed with short, scrubby acacias. If you've ever been to Montana or maybe the Dakotas, they might look pretty similar. And the horses. These were the first horses I'd seen in country that actually looked healthy and well-fed. And why not? You could conceivably ride a horse for days in that landscape, camp under the stars, and never have to worry about food or anything else really. I don't deny I was dreaming of such things, despite the fact that I've never ridden a horse, nor do I have the money to buy one.
We reached Diffa a little after noon, and while I didn't take a long time to explore, I did get to see some beautiful marshlands. Diffa used to be close to Lake Chad, but environmental degradation, repeated drought, and climate change have all had noticable differences on the size of the lake. Diffa, though, is an important wetlands for migratory birds, and the flood plains around the city teem with life during the rainy season. I, however, was anxious to get on to N'guigmi, so I hopped a Land Cruiser bush taxi that afternoon, and, after six excruciating hours in cramped quarters, I arrived at night in the desert.
The trip took six hours, and N'guigmi is only 120km from Diffa. I'll let you imagine what the "road" was like. It's been a long time without any repairs, and with big trucks hauling from Nigeria to Libya, it's taken quite a beating. My bush taxi didn't even use the road for the majority of the trip, and after we passed Kabelawa, we left the road all together, shooting through the desert on paths only the driver knew. This of course takes a dramatic environmental toll on the desert, as eventhough it is a vast sea of sand, it's held in place by short grasses. When the trucks and Land Cruisers tear through the desert (as they have to in deep sand), they rip up the grasses and churn the earth into vast washes of deep sand. Desertification at its finest. We got stuck in one of these churned up chunks of "road," around 8:00 at night. I was not looking forward to spending the night in the desert, but I must say, the moonlight reflected from the pure, white sands reminded me a lot of a quiet winter night at home and looked quite comfortable. We managed to dig ourselves out, which was probably a bit better, as I'd completely forgotten the danger from snakes and scorpions in the desert.
We finally made it to N'guigmi around 9:00 at night, and I somehow managed to wrangle a place to stay. I still have no idea how I managed this. One minute I was talking to a shop owner and the next I was installed in a project rest house with air conditioning and a shower. Not too shabby for the first fifteen minutes in town.
N'guigmi feels like a city at the end of the earth. There's only one main paved road through a provincial town that gleams white from the desert sands. I'd like to say I did more than just take a few bush walks in the desert. I'd like to say I hooked up with a camel caravan and got to see the Grande Tal, an enormous sand dune that stretches over 30km from end to end and 2km across. In reality, however, these things cost money, money I didn't have. The bush walks were beautiful though. The white sand is as fine as powdered sugar and is peaceful and calm at night and deadly during the day. The temperature was well over 120F (48C) during most of the day, and this is during the rainy season. I could not imagine living there during the hot season.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about the city though is the diversity. N'guigmi is forty-odd kilometers from the Chadian border, and they deal with Nigerian currency so much that within minutes I was carrying the Nigerian naira, the West African cfa, and the Central African cfa. The people were also a mix: Zarma gendarmes, Arab traders, Toubou herders, Kanouri farmers, and Hausa merchants. And one white guy. The most common question I got from all groups?
"What are you doing here?"
I'm seeing the desert!
"...Why?"
Seems the thing that can best unify Africa is the realization that white folks are just plain crazy.
Anyway, this has turned into a long post, and I didn't mean it to be. I had an amazing time out in the Diffa region, and I definitely plan to go back, despite the pain of travel and the stresses of being in such a remote location. It's beautiful, and I can't stress that enough. This trip was my practice backpacking trip, and I loved it. I think I'm finally ready to get started on the serious stuff come December.
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Solo Traveling and the Desert City
Back from vacation and ready to get back to my village. I've been backpacking around Niger for over two weeks now, seeing a lot of my fellow Volunteers that I haven't seen since I went back to my restricted village in terror alley. It was great to see so many of my friends and to catch up, as well as to have some time to myself to explore. When my service is over in December, I plan on doing a big backpack trip through West Africa, so this was the warm-up for that future event. It was a lot of rough roads and beautiful scenery, but luckily I always had the Peace Corps to fall back on for places to say and villages to visit. If you're truly interested, get your map out and follow my trip!
I started in the Konni/Tahoua region and a visit to my fellow stage-mates Justin and Kathleen. They live near Tahoua, just off the road to Keita. I'd been there before, but the dry season can't compare to the end of rainy season in terms of landscape. Few people know that the Sahara used to be covered in greenery; before the climate changes, the Sahara was forested and had large lakes with plenty of game for the people that lived there. You can see the remains of these vast lake beds near Tahoua. Justin and Kathleen's village is built on the downward slope of a hill that was obviously once the shores of one of these vast inland seas. It's apparent from the fossil remains embedded in the layered rock.
The Regional Representative of the Konni/Tahoua region, who knows the area probably better than any other Volunteer, had given me a tip when I stopped in Birni N'Konni: "Take the laterite road from Madaoua to Tahoua. It's the most beautiful part of the country." So, since I was up near Tahoua, I decided to take his advice. Let's put this in perspective though. I didn't know the schedule for market cars, I don't know the local language (Hausa), and I'm alone. If there's not potential for adventure there, I don't know where you'd find it. The road isn't paved; it's a laterite (red, rocky clay) road the entire way through some pretty magnificent scenery. The truck that I caught to Keita took us along a ridge line that overlooked two valleys filled with gallery acacia forests. Honest to God. Forests. It's something I haven't ever seen in this country.
The road, where it existed took me to Keita in the romantic ideal everyone has of Africa: teetering on the edge of hills where the road has been washed away and is partially collapsed, through three feet of water for half a kilometer, and bumping along at high speeds holding on to the roll bars of an open-backed truck. I'd already seen some amazing scenery by the time I hit Keita. I was assured by a someone waiting near the tasha that the car continuing on to Bouza and Madaoua was on its way. Two hours later, I'd fallen asleep in the middle of town and told that there were no cars going anywhere for the rest of the day. Evidently there was a market in a small bush town along the road to Madaoua and, as a result, there would be no other cars. Great. So I started hoofing it out of town. What choice did I have really? Here I was in a mid-sized Hausa city in the middle of nowhere without any other Volunteers posted nearby. I got picked up by a guy going to the small bush market, and he assured me that if I sat at the gendarme post he'd take me to I could get food and water and a car would eventually come by.
He dropped me in the middle of nowhere. I mean the absolute middle of nowhere. If you've ever been on the backroads in Indiana during the summer, you've inevitable pulled up to an intersection in the country with cornfields on all corners and a view to every horizon for all your trouble. Replace the corn with millet and you've got my hang-out spot for the rest of the afternoon. The gendarmes, when we pulled up, just looked at me like, "What on earth are you doing here?"
The nice thing about Niger for us Zarma speakers is that most of the military/gendarmerie will, at some point in their service, live in or around Niamey, which means they'll pick up at least a little bit of Zarma. It's required for the military to finish high school, which gives them an education far better than the average Nigerien. So if they don't by chance know Zarma, I can get by with my French. Anyway, I spent the afternoon with two gendarmes in the middle of nowhere just hanging out until a truck pulled up just in time to save me from incoming rains. The truck belonged to the local cell phone company, and they gave me a lift all the way back to Konni. I'd survived my early jaunt.
From Konni, I went back to Dosso and on to Kiota, a small city near Birni N'Gaoure. Kiota would be fairly unremarkable if it weren't for a famous religious leader who calls the city home. The Sheik of Kiota is one of the most famous Islamic leaders in West Africa. People come from from as far as Ghana and Senegal on the major holidays to receive his blessing. I was there for Id al Fitr, the end of Ramadan, and because I had the Peace Corps hook-up, I met the sheik and received his blessing for the new year. I definitely needed it for the next few days, when I traveled solo out to Diffa and N'guigmi, the desert cities of eastern Niger. It felt like going to the end of the Earth. I will continue this story in another blog post. Look for it in the next few days.
I started in the Konni/Tahoua region and a visit to my fellow stage-mates Justin and Kathleen. They live near Tahoua, just off the road to Keita. I'd been there before, but the dry season can't compare to the end of rainy season in terms of landscape. Few people know that the Sahara used to be covered in greenery; before the climate changes, the Sahara was forested and had large lakes with plenty of game for the people that lived there. You can see the remains of these vast lake beds near Tahoua. Justin and Kathleen's village is built on the downward slope of a hill that was obviously once the shores of one of these vast inland seas. It's apparent from the fossil remains embedded in the layered rock.
The Regional Representative of the Konni/Tahoua region, who knows the area probably better than any other Volunteer, had given me a tip when I stopped in Birni N'Konni: "Take the laterite road from Madaoua to Tahoua. It's the most beautiful part of the country." So, since I was up near Tahoua, I decided to take his advice. Let's put this in perspective though. I didn't know the schedule for market cars, I don't know the local language (Hausa), and I'm alone. If there's not potential for adventure there, I don't know where you'd find it. The road isn't paved; it's a laterite (red, rocky clay) road the entire way through some pretty magnificent scenery. The truck that I caught to Keita took us along a ridge line that overlooked two valleys filled with gallery acacia forests. Honest to God. Forests. It's something I haven't ever seen in this country.
The road, where it existed took me to Keita in the romantic ideal everyone has of Africa: teetering on the edge of hills where the road has been washed away and is partially collapsed, through three feet of water for half a kilometer, and bumping along at high speeds holding on to the roll bars of an open-backed truck. I'd already seen some amazing scenery by the time I hit Keita. I was assured by a someone waiting near the tasha that the car continuing on to Bouza and Madaoua was on its way. Two hours later, I'd fallen asleep in the middle of town and told that there were no cars going anywhere for the rest of the day. Evidently there was a market in a small bush town along the road to Madaoua and, as a result, there would be no other cars. Great. So I started hoofing it out of town. What choice did I have really? Here I was in a mid-sized Hausa city in the middle of nowhere without any other Volunteers posted nearby. I got picked up by a guy going to the small bush market, and he assured me that if I sat at the gendarme post he'd take me to I could get food and water and a car would eventually come by.
He dropped me in the middle of nowhere. I mean the absolute middle of nowhere. If you've ever been on the backroads in Indiana during the summer, you've inevitable pulled up to an intersection in the country with cornfields on all corners and a view to every horizon for all your trouble. Replace the corn with millet and you've got my hang-out spot for the rest of the afternoon. The gendarmes, when we pulled up, just looked at me like, "What on earth are you doing here?"
The nice thing about Niger for us Zarma speakers is that most of the military/gendarmerie will, at some point in their service, live in or around Niamey, which means they'll pick up at least a little bit of Zarma. It's required for the military to finish high school, which gives them an education far better than the average Nigerien. So if they don't by chance know Zarma, I can get by with my French. Anyway, I spent the afternoon with two gendarmes in the middle of nowhere just hanging out until a truck pulled up just in time to save me from incoming rains. The truck belonged to the local cell phone company, and they gave me a lift all the way back to Konni. I'd survived my early jaunt.
From Konni, I went back to Dosso and on to Kiota, a small city near Birni N'Gaoure. Kiota would be fairly unremarkable if it weren't for a famous religious leader who calls the city home. The Sheik of Kiota is one of the most famous Islamic leaders in West Africa. People come from from as far as Ghana and Senegal on the major holidays to receive his blessing. I was there for Id al Fitr, the end of Ramadan, and because I had the Peace Corps hook-up, I met the sheik and received his blessing for the new year. I definitely needed it for the next few days, when I traveled solo out to Diffa and N'guigmi, the desert cities of eastern Niger. It felt like going to the end of the Earth. I will continue this story in another blog post. Look for it in the next few days.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Time for Vacation (again)
I'm running out of time in Niger. My service ends soon, and my final few months in village will be spent trying to transition my school garden project to the community and the Association des Parents et Eleves. It may not be as impressive as digging a well or building a school, but it is an important project and may be harder than actually starting the school garden. I want the thing to continue long after I'm gone, and the only way to do that is to get the adults in the community excited about it. If I came back in five to ten years, I would want to see that garden still going strong, hopefully with the children doing most of the organization and work.
The next few months before my service ends are packed. I have training for Volunteer trainers, the GRE, and my COS conference at the end of October. I'm training the new Volunteers in early December, and I have a few weeks of vacation to burn up in the meantime. I definitely need the vacation. It's been a long few months since my last one. From the end of hot season through all of rainy season, I've been farming, building rock lines, gardening on my own, and organizing a school garden with elementary/primary school students.
This time of year is one of two that agriculture/environment Volunteers can take vacation. We're allowed whenever we want, but really there's too much work that needs to be done in cold and rainy seasons. However, because I don't have a lot of time left in Niger, I've decided to take the next few weeks to travel around and see all of those in my stage I haven't seen in months. (That's basically everyone out east because of my restrictions.) I'm actually on vacation now, but I'm spending a few days in Niamey to watch the Bears/Packers season opener tomorrow. I've seen two Superbowls in country since I came, and that's all I've gotten of football. I excuse myself this one time.
I wish I could post more, but there isn't much going on right now. I've been farming and gardening and generally trying to avoid everything to do with Niamey. It's a great town, but it's got a lot of baggage that goes with it when you're a bush Volunteer. So that's pretty much it. I'll try to post something happy and uplifting and seemingly amazing (to everyone who doesn't see camels, scorpions, or millet everyday) sometime in the near future. I've been so bad about providing updates I feel like I owe it to all of you. But, until then,
Kala Tonton
The next few months before my service ends are packed. I have training for Volunteer trainers, the GRE, and my COS conference at the end of October. I'm training the new Volunteers in early December, and I have a few weeks of vacation to burn up in the meantime. I definitely need the vacation. It's been a long few months since my last one. From the end of hot season through all of rainy season, I've been farming, building rock lines, gardening on my own, and organizing a school garden with elementary/primary school students.
This time of year is one of two that agriculture/environment Volunteers can take vacation. We're allowed whenever we want, but really there's too much work that needs to be done in cold and rainy seasons. However, because I don't have a lot of time left in Niger, I've decided to take the next few weeks to travel around and see all of those in my stage I haven't seen in months. (That's basically everyone out east because of my restrictions.) I'm actually on vacation now, but I'm spending a few days in Niamey to watch the Bears/Packers season opener tomorrow. I've seen two Superbowls in country since I came, and that's all I've gotten of football. I excuse myself this one time.
I wish I could post more, but there isn't much going on right now. I've been farming and gardening and generally trying to avoid everything to do with Niamey. It's a great town, but it's got a lot of baggage that goes with it when you're a bush Volunteer. So that's pretty much it. I'll try to post something happy and uplifting and seemingly amazing (to everyone who doesn't see camels, scorpions, or millet everyday) sometime in the near future. I've been so bad about providing updates I feel like I owe it to all of you. But, until then,
Kala Tonton
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Time Just Keeps Moving Along
I came in this week to take care of some financial business. I had forgotten that the CYE/MCD/CHA Volunteers are closing their service this week, so everything has been hectic. The usual forms to sign, people to see, final reporting, etc. In short, all the fun you could ever imagine with paper-trail bureaucracy. They've been at the computers like LCD-addicted mice, and their stress is palpable and contagious. I realized pretty soon that it's only about 3 1/2 months until I'm going through the same thing. Just a little more than 15 weeks to go.
Like I've said in other posts, I'm not happy that I'm leaving. If I had the option, I would probably stay in village because I don't feel as if my work is done yet. But, you have to move on sometime, so it is what it is. I had to sit down with a calendar to chart how my work will be affected over the next few months, and what I discovered is that I have very little time left. Between trainings and work in Niamey, my time is limited to less than nine weeks at post. It's also pretty chilling to realize that with all the work of closing and reporting service, once the new kids are testing out their new sites in the week-long live-in, I'll be packing up my house and probably losing my mind. It's hard to leave any place you've lived for a number of years. But when that place is so outside your perceived normal life, and when your neighbors are the warmest (literally and figuratively), kindest people you've ever had, the transition, I think, is even harder.
My work will necessarily have to start winding down. It's Ramadan now, which means it's impossible for most of the villagers to do anything. You'd be surprised how little energy you have when you don't eat or drink all day in a landscape like this. Or maybe you wouldn't. It's not very hard to imagine, but I can assure you, it's worse when you actually experience the fast. I fasted fully for two days, but because of farming and work, I'm down to an unhealthy weight already, so I'm done now. I felt like my heart was going to just give up if I didn't eat and drink. Plus, while the villagers don't have to work, my projects are at a kind of critical stage where I have to start transitioning them to the village. (I guess I don't have to work either, but sitting around thinking about how I'd like to drink some water is not why I came to Peace Corps.)
I wish I could say more at the moment. It's been a tough, anxiety-filled week for a lot of people here, and I think I've picked up a lot of that. I need to be back in village so I can begin sorting through my next few months and hopefully organize it into something productive. It seems spending so much time in village has made me useless in normal, Western situations. I can only really ever organize myself when I'm alone and at post, and I don't want to even touch on my eating or sleeping habits. (Let's just say I doubt I'll be too productive at home sleeping 12 hours a day.)
Well, that's really all for now. I usually post some stuff from my journal, but I didn't bring it along this time. I might try to do another post before I leave for post tomorrow. Kala Tonton
Like I've said in other posts, I'm not happy that I'm leaving. If I had the option, I would probably stay in village because I don't feel as if my work is done yet. But, you have to move on sometime, so it is what it is. I had to sit down with a calendar to chart how my work will be affected over the next few months, and what I discovered is that I have very little time left. Between trainings and work in Niamey, my time is limited to less than nine weeks at post. It's also pretty chilling to realize that with all the work of closing and reporting service, once the new kids are testing out their new sites in the week-long live-in, I'll be packing up my house and probably losing my mind. It's hard to leave any place you've lived for a number of years. But when that place is so outside your perceived normal life, and when your neighbors are the warmest (literally and figuratively), kindest people you've ever had, the transition, I think, is even harder.
My work will necessarily have to start winding down. It's Ramadan now, which means it's impossible for most of the villagers to do anything. You'd be surprised how little energy you have when you don't eat or drink all day in a landscape like this. Or maybe you wouldn't. It's not very hard to imagine, but I can assure you, it's worse when you actually experience the fast. I fasted fully for two days, but because of farming and work, I'm down to an unhealthy weight already, so I'm done now. I felt like my heart was going to just give up if I didn't eat and drink. Plus, while the villagers don't have to work, my projects are at a kind of critical stage where I have to start transitioning them to the village. (I guess I don't have to work either, but sitting around thinking about how I'd like to drink some water is not why I came to Peace Corps.)
I wish I could say more at the moment. It's been a tough, anxiety-filled week for a lot of people here, and I think I've picked up a lot of that. I need to be back in village so I can begin sorting through my next few months and hopefully organize it into something productive. It seems spending so much time in village has made me useless in normal, Western situations. I can only really ever organize myself when I'm alone and at post, and I don't want to even touch on my eating or sleeping habits. (Let's just say I doubt I'll be too productive at home sleeping 12 hours a day.)
Well, that's really all for now. I usually post some stuff from my journal, but I didn't bring it along this time. I might try to do another post before I leave for post tomorrow. Kala Tonton
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Work, Work, Work
Alright, so I know I haven't been very good at posting lately. Let me offer this up as excuse. In the two months since my last post, I have been out of my village a total of ten days. That's not a lot for most Volunteers, and in fact, the responses I've been getting all seem to revolve around the amazement that I was out that long. Indeed, I only came in to do a session for the new stage and because I had run out of money, food, and a bit of sanity.
So what have I been doing in that time? Well, it's rainy season, so the work has really started. We planted in late May, but the rains didn't come again for three weeks, so everything died. Not a great thing when food stocks are already low to lose all your seed. I came in to Niamey in mid-June for a Perceptions workshop with bureau staff and other Volunteers, and the rains came. My villagers planted in my absence, including my fields, which mysteriously more than doubled in size. I had to ask where it began and ended, and the answer I got just shows the different culture of hand farming compared to any others. But first, a tangent.
We met a couple guys in Benin who were traveling West Africa overland from Cameroon to Senegal. One of them stopped by Niger and came up to visit me. As we walked through the fields, he noticed that the fields were an irregular patchwork of shapes all over the countryside. I recounted the dialogue I had with my friend Seyni as to how my fields were distributed:
"So, you start at this tree, and you follow this rock line. It's 75m to this clump of trees. Once you hit these trees, you go on a diagonal back and around until you reach this tree."
"Which tree? This tree?"
"No, this tree here, the one with all the thorns."
"The little bush? Not the big tree?"
"No, not the big tree. This little bush. Then it comes over to these trees, takes a diagonal toward the ox cart path, but doesn't reach the ox cart path. It comes to this rock here and then back to the dry creekbed."
"Wait, rock? Which rock?"
"This rock."
"Which? This?"
"Yes, this rock. How do you not understand. Out of all the rocks in the field I have chosen this one to mark the field."
"And if someone moves this rock?"
"Don't get smart."
Okay, so it's not an exact, verbatim reenactment, but it may be excused through the translation. Anyway, the original point of this story was to emphasize that my field size more than doubled in one fell swoop. As a result, I spent fifteen days in the field, from 8 am to 6 pm by the time I'd walked there and back. That was only the first weeding as well! When I go back to village tomorrow, I'll start again on the second (and hopefully final) round of weeding before harvest.
In the meantime, I've also started the school garden project which some of you may have been contacted in regards to donating money. For everyone who did, thank you very much! For those who didn't, don't worry, there may be another project in the short future to donate to if you so desire. I collected all the supplies in mid-June, held several meetings with the babas (the kids' fathers), and have been gardening with the kids for almost a month now. They're coming on a completely Volunteer basis (because of their fieldwork during rainy season), so I get anywhere from fifteen to over forty kids at a session. There are some adults that help out, but again, according to the work they have to do, sometimes I get four adults to help, sometimes there aren't any. As you can imagine, one 24 year-old kid with forty-plus kids under fourteen can be a bit of a handful. Actually, it's like trying to round up all the animals after a circus fire. But we get along. So far we've had lessons on building garden beds, composting, and soil. When I go back we'll transplant and do lessons on natural pesticides and nutrition. The group leaders, who have their own positions within their own organization, have had a few more responsibilities and a lot more lessons. I've worked with them about managing their teams, keeping track of members, and general accounting for their own money. Every week, all the kids are expected to bring 25 cfa (about a nickel) to add to the caisse. This money goes to buy seeds and manure, and when they sell their vegetables, they should be able to make a small profit for each member. That's the hope anyway. The reality is yet to be seen.
So it's been a lot of time in the village, and a lot of pressures with new language and new responsibilities. I applied to extend in Niger (sorry for all of you who've been asking me if I'm home yet), but I was not chosen for the position. As I can't stay in my village due to the kidnappings almost six months ago, I will probably be forced to leave in December. I can already tell it will be hard, as it's hard to leave almost any place you've lived and loved for two years. You may rejoice that I'll be coming home, but you'd be mistaken again, as I'll be traveling around a bit beforehand. I promise I'll come home eventually, but just how long I stay there is up in the air. I have nothing in the works, but, you know, once you've started wandering, it's kinda hard to quit. Anyway, again apologies for not posting in quite a long time, but it's been a busy time in Niger for me lately. Even now, I have to cut this short so I can go buy some equipment for the school garden and meet with my supervisor to discuss small projects I can do in my remaining five months at post. Until then,
Kala Tonton!
So what have I been doing in that time? Well, it's rainy season, so the work has really started. We planted in late May, but the rains didn't come again for three weeks, so everything died. Not a great thing when food stocks are already low to lose all your seed. I came in to Niamey in mid-June for a Perceptions workshop with bureau staff and other Volunteers, and the rains came. My villagers planted in my absence, including my fields, which mysteriously more than doubled in size. I had to ask where it began and ended, and the answer I got just shows the different culture of hand farming compared to any others. But first, a tangent.
We met a couple guys in Benin who were traveling West Africa overland from Cameroon to Senegal. One of them stopped by Niger and came up to visit me. As we walked through the fields, he noticed that the fields were an irregular patchwork of shapes all over the countryside. I recounted the dialogue I had with my friend Seyni as to how my fields were distributed:
"So, you start at this tree, and you follow this rock line. It's 75m to this clump of trees. Once you hit these trees, you go on a diagonal back and around until you reach this tree."
"Which tree? This tree?"
"No, this tree here, the one with all the thorns."
"The little bush? Not the big tree?"
"No, not the big tree. This little bush. Then it comes over to these trees, takes a diagonal toward the ox cart path, but doesn't reach the ox cart path. It comes to this rock here and then back to the dry creekbed."
"Wait, rock? Which rock?"
"This rock."
"Which? This?"
"Yes, this rock. How do you not understand. Out of all the rocks in the field I have chosen this one to mark the field."
"And if someone moves this rock?"
"Don't get smart."
Okay, so it's not an exact, verbatim reenactment, but it may be excused through the translation. Anyway, the original point of this story was to emphasize that my field size more than doubled in one fell swoop. As a result, I spent fifteen days in the field, from 8 am to 6 pm by the time I'd walked there and back. That was only the first weeding as well! When I go back to village tomorrow, I'll start again on the second (and hopefully final) round of weeding before harvest.
In the meantime, I've also started the school garden project which some of you may have been contacted in regards to donating money. For everyone who did, thank you very much! For those who didn't, don't worry, there may be another project in the short future to donate to if you so desire. I collected all the supplies in mid-June, held several meetings with the babas (the kids' fathers), and have been gardening with the kids for almost a month now. They're coming on a completely Volunteer basis (because of their fieldwork during rainy season), so I get anywhere from fifteen to over forty kids at a session. There are some adults that help out, but again, according to the work they have to do, sometimes I get four adults to help, sometimes there aren't any. As you can imagine, one 24 year-old kid with forty-plus kids under fourteen can be a bit of a handful. Actually, it's like trying to round up all the animals after a circus fire. But we get along. So far we've had lessons on building garden beds, composting, and soil. When I go back we'll transplant and do lessons on natural pesticides and nutrition. The group leaders, who have their own positions within their own organization, have had a few more responsibilities and a lot more lessons. I've worked with them about managing their teams, keeping track of members, and general accounting for their own money. Every week, all the kids are expected to bring 25 cfa (about a nickel) to add to the caisse. This money goes to buy seeds and manure, and when they sell their vegetables, they should be able to make a small profit for each member. That's the hope anyway. The reality is yet to be seen.
So it's been a lot of time in the village, and a lot of pressures with new language and new responsibilities. I applied to extend in Niger (sorry for all of you who've been asking me if I'm home yet), but I was not chosen for the position. As I can't stay in my village due to the kidnappings almost six months ago, I will probably be forced to leave in December. I can already tell it will be hard, as it's hard to leave almost any place you've lived and loved for two years. You may rejoice that I'll be coming home, but you'd be mistaken again, as I'll be traveling around a bit beforehand. I promise I'll come home eventually, but just how long I stay there is up in the air. I have nothing in the works, but, you know, once you've started wandering, it's kinda hard to quit. Anyway, again apologies for not posting in quite a long time, but it's been a busy time in Niger for me lately. Even now, I have to cut this short so I can go buy some equipment for the school garden and meet with my supervisor to discuss small projects I can do in my remaining five months at post. Until then,
Kala Tonton!
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Back in Niger and Missing Ghana
Made it back safely to Niger for all of you who were worried/concerned/mildly interested. It was a long haul from Kumasi in Ghana back to Niamey, especially as we didn't overnight in Ouagadougou like we should have. Instead we took a bus from Kumasi and had to wait for four hours in Bolgatanga on the Ghana border because the crossing isn't open at 2 am. We got into Ouaga around noon and were assured by a bush taxi driver we could get to Niamey that night. So we went, but around 5 pm, he stopped in a random little town, told us we needed a military escort from Fada N'Gourma that had already left. Evidently there are bandits on the road west of Fada, and escorts only run at specific times. So he left us in the small town and told us to wait for a bus. Really great guy in the end...except that we waited until midnight (over six hours) for a bus to come along. It was the Abijan to Niamey direct, and, interestingly, it's been running nonstop for 4000 years. It was packed to the gills with people and luggage, and we ended up displacing a few people to sit on the floor. Most of the Zarmas I know go to look for money in Côte d'Ivoire (where you'll find Abijan, the main coastal city, for you Geography majors), so the only people going from Abijan to Niamey are a bunch of poor Zarmas returning in time for rainy season. The bus went about an hour down the road to Fada, where we had to get out and wait until 6 am (about four hours total) until we could get the military escort. One would think with a two hour lead, we would get into Niamey earlier than any buses direct from Ouaga, and we might have, if we hadn't had to wait for three hours at the border to pass through customs. I think that was longer than all the combined wait we had at all the customs depots in our entire trip, and our bus even greased the wheels to the tune of about 75,000 cfa ($150) to the customs agents. I refused to pay this bribe, but evidently it's pretty common at the Ouaga/Niamey road customs depot. By the time we'd gotten back to Niamey we'd been on the road a total of 46 hours. That was almost two days without a shower, without any real meals, and almost no real sleep, so needless to say we were pretty glad to get home.
But why start at the end when I can start in the middle? I haven't said anything about Ghana, and that was, after all, a big chunk of our trip. Last time I updated, we were in Hohoe, in the Eastern Region, and we were finishing up the hiking/nature part of our trip. Mary wasn't feeling well in Hohoe, so Jyoti and I went out on our own to Mt. Afadjato and Wli Falls. Mt. Afadjato is Ghana's highest peak at 885m. There's actually a higher point nearby, but because of the relation of its base to its peak, I guess whatever that one is named isn't actually considered a mountain. The hike was tough, taking about two hours, with a rock scramble/climb near the peak, but once we were at the top, the view was beautiful. In one direction, we could see out over the mountains back into Togo, and in the other, we could see all the way to Lake Volta. We had a picnic on the top and ended up back in Hohoe that night. The next day, we went out to Wli Falls. These were nice, but I preferred Akloa Falls in Togo. The Wli Falls are much better set up for tourists, with bridges across streams, wide, well-kept trails, and even trash cans. Trash cans! Irkoy beeri. We should have taken the longer hike up to the top of the falls, but we didn't have the time as we were late leaving Hohoe. It was a beautiful day for hiking, and the falls were lovely, but the coolest thing about the area around the falls is the bat population. There were literally thousands of bats hanging off the cliff during the middle of the day with a few flapping through the mists from the falls whenever they decided they needed to change position.
On the 7th of May, we left Hohoe for Accra at the ungodly hour of 4 am. It actually turned out a little better because it allowed us the full day in Accra, and let me tell you, Accra demands a full day, or in our case three. We were blown away by this city. Compared to anything else we've seen in West Africa, it's like a fully developed, Westernized city. The streets are clean and paved, there's barely any trash on the streets as a result of pretty tough litter laws (litter laws!), and everywhere you look there are modern buildings and brand new cars.
We stayed in Labone, which is where the Peace Corps Volunteers can get a discount on certain hotels. Labone is within walking distance of Osu, where all the ex-pats dine and shop and generally try to avoid the people whose country they inhabit. I'm being a little harsh, but I've developed a generally low opinion of ex-pats. Why live in a country if you just want to shop, eat, dance, and play in areas that look exactly like America or Europe? The main ex-pat supermarket looked like a European chain, where you could get Western perks like Pop-tarts (!), salami, energy drinks, and high-end chocolates like Cadbury and Toblerone. Everything is overpriced because these places, and restaurants and such like them, cater to tastes and desires of places literally a world away. Anyway, we didn't take too much advantage of these places as they were out of our price range. Mary and I went to a trivia night with some Ghana Volunteers at a Champs Sports bar. I don't think there was even one Ghanaian in that restaurant. It looked exactly like a sports bar you'd find in an American mall. It was kind of unsettling. The third day we were there we went to an Irish pub in Osu, and, again, it was like being a world away from Africa.
Our second day in Accra we decided to take a break from the city at the Aburi Botanical Gardens, about an hour outside Accra in the surrounding hills. The gardens were a British invention and house a ton of species from all over West Africa in a classic British hill station set up. Old colonial houses and manicured lawns are the order of the day, but it was more interesting than a traditional botanical garden because it was filled with oddities such as the strangler ficus, a parasitic tree that grows around, envelops, and eventually kills other trees. The one we saw was over one hundred years old. It enveloped its host around 1937, and so, now that the tree is dead and has rotted away over the years, it's left the strangler ficus with a hollow trunk, like a cylindrical tube stretching into the sky.
Our last day in Accra, we decided to hit the markets, and went to the capital's main shopping centre (no, not the mall, eventhough there is one. Yes, a MALL in Africa). Makola Market takes up several city blocks of Accra, but because we went on a Saturday, it stretched out even further on all sides with people hawking fish, fruit, vegetables, shoes, watches, and basically anything else you could ever want. I'm convinced if you searched long enough between the pig's feet and the used electronics, you'd find the Holy Grail. We moved on from there to the National Cultural Centre, where they aggressively sell crafts of every sort from drums to batik, kente to carvings. I think most tourists get taken for a ride, but I found that it is possible to get a few good deals as all the shopkeepers sell remarkably similar things, and they've got to make a living. I don't think I paid more than half their original stated price for anything they sold.
Alright, I need some lunch, so I'll post again later, but while I'm thinking about it, I've got to go on a discourse about Ghanaian food and drink. That night, after the market, we went to an Irish pub where they had Castle Milk Stout on tap. This has now become one of my favorite beers. It's way better than Guiness (at least any Guiness I've had since being in the UK), and, like everything else in Ghana, it's cheap. The beers alone were reason to come to Ghana. From Star to Castle Milk Stout, Stone's to Gulder, every single beer I tasted in Ghana was better than any single beer I'd ever had in Niger. The food consisted of staples like yam and cassava, but their sauces and sides are the tastiest I'd had in a long time. From red red (a spicy bean dish) to palaver sauce (spinach and spices), everything goes well with a side of roast chicken, and it can all be found on the street for less than $3. I'm kind of worried to go back to Nigerien hawru tomorrow night.
But why start at the end when I can start in the middle? I haven't said anything about Ghana, and that was, after all, a big chunk of our trip. Last time I updated, we were in Hohoe, in the Eastern Region, and we were finishing up the hiking/nature part of our trip. Mary wasn't feeling well in Hohoe, so Jyoti and I went out on our own to Mt. Afadjato and Wli Falls. Mt. Afadjato is Ghana's highest peak at 885m. There's actually a higher point nearby, but because of the relation of its base to its peak, I guess whatever that one is named isn't actually considered a mountain. The hike was tough, taking about two hours, with a rock scramble/climb near the peak, but once we were at the top, the view was beautiful. In one direction, we could see out over the mountains back into Togo, and in the other, we could see all the way to Lake Volta. We had a picnic on the top and ended up back in Hohoe that night. The next day, we went out to Wli Falls. These were nice, but I preferred Akloa Falls in Togo. The Wli Falls are much better set up for tourists, with bridges across streams, wide, well-kept trails, and even trash cans. Trash cans! Irkoy beeri. We should have taken the longer hike up to the top of the falls, but we didn't have the time as we were late leaving Hohoe. It was a beautiful day for hiking, and the falls were lovely, but the coolest thing about the area around the falls is the bat population. There were literally thousands of bats hanging off the cliff during the middle of the day with a few flapping through the mists from the falls whenever they decided they needed to change position.
On the 7th of May, we left Hohoe for Accra at the ungodly hour of 4 am. It actually turned out a little better because it allowed us the full day in Accra, and let me tell you, Accra demands a full day, or in our case three. We were blown away by this city. Compared to anything else we've seen in West Africa, it's like a fully developed, Westernized city. The streets are clean and paved, there's barely any trash on the streets as a result of pretty tough litter laws (litter laws!), and everywhere you look there are modern buildings and brand new cars.
We stayed in Labone, which is where the Peace Corps Volunteers can get a discount on certain hotels. Labone is within walking distance of Osu, where all the ex-pats dine and shop and generally try to avoid the people whose country they inhabit. I'm being a little harsh, but I've developed a generally low opinion of ex-pats. Why live in a country if you just want to shop, eat, dance, and play in areas that look exactly like America or Europe? The main ex-pat supermarket looked like a European chain, where you could get Western perks like Pop-tarts (!), salami, energy drinks, and high-end chocolates like Cadbury and Toblerone. Everything is overpriced because these places, and restaurants and such like them, cater to tastes and desires of places literally a world away. Anyway, we didn't take too much advantage of these places as they were out of our price range. Mary and I went to a trivia night with some Ghana Volunteers at a Champs Sports bar. I don't think there was even one Ghanaian in that restaurant. It looked exactly like a sports bar you'd find in an American mall. It was kind of unsettling. The third day we were there we went to an Irish pub in Osu, and, again, it was like being a world away from Africa.
Our second day in Accra we decided to take a break from the city at the Aburi Botanical Gardens, about an hour outside Accra in the surrounding hills. The gardens were a British invention and house a ton of species from all over West Africa in a classic British hill station set up. Old colonial houses and manicured lawns are the order of the day, but it was more interesting than a traditional botanical garden because it was filled with oddities such as the strangler ficus, a parasitic tree that grows around, envelops, and eventually kills other trees. The one we saw was over one hundred years old. It enveloped its host around 1937, and so, now that the tree is dead and has rotted away over the years, it's left the strangler ficus with a hollow trunk, like a cylindrical tube stretching into the sky.
Our last day in Accra, we decided to hit the markets, and went to the capital's main shopping centre (no, not the mall, eventhough there is one. Yes, a MALL in Africa). Makola Market takes up several city blocks of Accra, but because we went on a Saturday, it stretched out even further on all sides with people hawking fish, fruit, vegetables, shoes, watches, and basically anything else you could ever want. I'm convinced if you searched long enough between the pig's feet and the used electronics, you'd find the Holy Grail. We moved on from there to the National Cultural Centre, where they aggressively sell crafts of every sort from drums to batik, kente to carvings. I think most tourists get taken for a ride, but I found that it is possible to get a few good deals as all the shopkeepers sell remarkably similar things, and they've got to make a living. I don't think I paid more than half their original stated price for anything they sold.
Alright, I need some lunch, so I'll post again later, but while I'm thinking about it, I've got to go on a discourse about Ghanaian food and drink. That night, after the market, we went to an Irish pub where they had Castle Milk Stout on tap. This has now become one of my favorite beers. It's way better than Guiness (at least any Guiness I've had since being in the UK), and, like everything else in Ghana, it's cheap. The beers alone were reason to come to Ghana. From Star to Castle Milk Stout, Stone's to Gulder, every single beer I tasted in Ghana was better than any single beer I'd ever had in Niger. The food consisted of staples like yam and cassava, but their sauces and sides are the tastiest I'd had in a long time. From red red (a spicy bean dish) to palaver sauce (spinach and spices), everything goes well with a side of roast chicken, and it can all be found on the street for less than $3. I'm kind of worried to go back to Nigerien hawru tomorrow night.
Monday, May 4, 2009
Gone to Togo
Alright, been a little while since my last update. The towns we stayed in in Togo had bad Internet and French keyboards. I don't know which one is worse. I'm in Ghana now, back in the realm of English keyboards, so I can update everyone on my trip.
In my last post, I was in Natitingou just about to travel into Somba/Bétammaribé country. We met up with two guys named Evan and Josh who are traveling around West Africa. The started in Mauritania and flew to Cameroon and have basically been going from Peace Corps Volunteer to Peace Corps Volunteer, doing some service work and generally hanging out with people in their villages in Mauritania, Cameroon, and Benin. We went out to Boukoumbé, a village about an hour west of Natitingou down a dirt road through the mountains. Being with some guys who've been crashing at Peace Corps houses, what did we do? We crashed at a Peace Corps house! We met up with a Volunteer in the area, though I can't give her name or post because of Peace Corps security reasons. She got us in touch to sleep in a Somba house out in the bush. Let me just say, this was one of the coolest things I've ever done. It was about a two hour hike through the mountains, and because the rains have already come to Benin (still over a month away in Niger), everything was green and beautiful. The best way to describe the landscape would be to describe the Shire from Lord of the Rings. These great mountains and rolling hills hide mini-castles dotted throughout fields of corn and yam. Because we're so used to castles built on the scale of large European fortresses, it seemed like the fortresses surrounded by gigantic baobob trees should have housed numerous little people ready to defend their Lilliputian homes. Pictures will go up on facebook when I've returned to Niger. There's really not a good way to describe them that will do justice to our sleeping conditions that night.
The Bétammaribé people build their compounds in the middle of their fields, so there's no "town" per se, and because the children so rarely see white people, they really wanted to play. Evan, Mary, and I were happy to oblige. We danced, wrestled, and fired slingshots at imaginary enemies in the fields. We ended the day climbing a giant baobob and watching the sun set before eating dinner with a local family and sleeping on top of our own little fortress.
The next day, we hiked back to Boukoumbé and met the local Volunteer and another from Togo for market day. The market in Boukoumbé rotates every four days. This confused those of us from Niger who are used to weekly markets until we realized the true meeting point wasn't the market, but the tchouk bar. Tchoukou is the local Beninese millet/sorghum beer, and, like tea in Niger and other Muslim countries, it is the drink of choice for sitting and socializing. The market rotates every four days because it takes three full days to prepare the tchouk. The women pound the millet and water the first day. It's cooked and fermented over the course of the second and third days, and then it is served up in both dark and light varieties at the market on the fourth day. It's not too potent, but over the course of an afternoon in a hot, humid market place, just drinking bowls and bowls of it, it'll pick you up and put you on your ass.
We had originally planned to head into Togo that afternoon...we stayed another night.
The next day was entirely devoted to travel. We did a pretty good job taxi hopping from Boukoumbé back to Natitingou, from Natitingou to Djougou, from Djougou to Kétao for a customs checkpoint into Togo, from Kétao to Kara in Togo for lunch. We were doing really well getting into Kara in the early afternoon, and we thought we had it made for a trip to Atakpamé, getting in in the early evening and having a nice relaxing evening to prepare for a trip to Badou. Luck can swing any direction in West Africa, and if you believe at all in luck you know you can never name it or else you'll jinx it, especially in a place that plays so heavily into Voodoo/juju. We got to Sokodé and as we were leaving, three motorcycles and a car full of police officers pulled up and forbade us to leave. The driver got out to talk to them, and I wasn't suspicious at all until the helper jumped into the front seat, grabbed the papers and tried to hide them. Over an hour later, after the driver was taken away by the police, he returned, no doubt a little lighter in the wallet, and we continued to Atakpamé, arriving around 8:00 instead of at five as we had anticipated. Finding the Peace Corps house in the dark, down a street that barely exists and is not lit was interesting to say the least, but at that point, I felt like anybody who wanted to mug us would be pushing their luck pretty far.
In the morning we took off for Badou and visited the Akloa falls. These were spectacular falls in the mountains bordering Ghana. We spent the afternoon swimming and relaxing in the pool at the base of the falls before the three of us returned to our tiny little flop house of a room in a dirty shady bar near the motor park. Where else are you going to go if you're in West Africa and on a Peace Corps budget?
Togo was mostly a week of camping and visiting nature. We stayed three nights in Kpalimé, on the border with Ghana. It was probably one of the most touristed places we'd been yet, but we did have a great time. While out at dinner, Mary and I met a guy named "Momo," an African dancer who works at lot with Peace Corps and the American Embassy. The next day, he hooked us up, helping us out with stuff to do, places to eat, places to buy music, and new haircuts for the three of us. I re-mohawked myself, Jyoti just buzzed her head, and Mary is now the proud new owner of some dreads, courtesy of Momo's sister. We played with his neice, possibly one of the cutest little girls I've ever met and just generally had a good time hanging out with a friendly local. He took us into his home and made us feel just overall very welcome.
From Kpalimé we went 12k up the road to the border town of Klouto. I took my own hike with a guide through the coffee and cacao fields. It was originally meant to be a tour of the plantations, but it turned into a tour of local plants used by the artisans as natural dyes. It was very interesting, and with my mother's extensive background in fabric and dye, it wasn't entirely lost on me. It's crazy to come from the desert plains in Niger to the tropical rain forest mountains of Togo and Ghana. Whereas in Niger it's a hot, dusty silence, Togo's humid forests team with birds and insects. I didn't know it would be so NOISY. Being up in the mountains though is great. Last night was very cool and peaceful. I'd recommend Togo for anyone into music, amazing people, and crazy amounts of butterflies.
I'm in Ghana now in the town of Hohoe. We were going to go to a town about an hour away known for its kente cloth, but decided we needed to slow down a bit. There will be plenty of time for crafts when we get to Kumasi. Tomorrow we're hiking up another mountain (Mt. Afadjato, Ghana's highest at 885m) and the day after we'll be at yet ANOTHER waterfall (Wli, over 40m tall). Our hope is we'll be able to appease the nature nut with us so she won't complain when we're rumbling through Accra or lounging on the beach near Cape Coast.
Well, that's about all that I have time for right now. If it gets a little random at the end, I'd challenge you to sum up an entire weeks worth of travel in a little under an hour. After spending a few hours here, I can already tell I'm going to love Ghana. We're a little over halfway through our trip. From here, we'll be going to Accra, Cape Coast, Kumasi and then back to Niger via Burkina Faso.
Until then, bye bye Rasta man.
In my last post, I was in Natitingou just about to travel into Somba/Bétammaribé country. We met up with two guys named Evan and Josh who are traveling around West Africa. The started in Mauritania and flew to Cameroon and have basically been going from Peace Corps Volunteer to Peace Corps Volunteer, doing some service work and generally hanging out with people in their villages in Mauritania, Cameroon, and Benin. We went out to Boukoumbé, a village about an hour west of Natitingou down a dirt road through the mountains. Being with some guys who've been crashing at Peace Corps houses, what did we do? We crashed at a Peace Corps house! We met up with a Volunteer in the area, though I can't give her name or post because of Peace Corps security reasons. She got us in touch to sleep in a Somba house out in the bush. Let me just say, this was one of the coolest things I've ever done. It was about a two hour hike through the mountains, and because the rains have already come to Benin (still over a month away in Niger), everything was green and beautiful. The best way to describe the landscape would be to describe the Shire from Lord of the Rings. These great mountains and rolling hills hide mini-castles dotted throughout fields of corn and yam. Because we're so used to castles built on the scale of large European fortresses, it seemed like the fortresses surrounded by gigantic baobob trees should have housed numerous little people ready to defend their Lilliputian homes. Pictures will go up on facebook when I've returned to Niger. There's really not a good way to describe them that will do justice to our sleeping conditions that night.
The Bétammaribé people build their compounds in the middle of their fields, so there's no "town" per se, and because the children so rarely see white people, they really wanted to play. Evan, Mary, and I were happy to oblige. We danced, wrestled, and fired slingshots at imaginary enemies in the fields. We ended the day climbing a giant baobob and watching the sun set before eating dinner with a local family and sleeping on top of our own little fortress.
The next day, we hiked back to Boukoumbé and met the local Volunteer and another from Togo for market day. The market in Boukoumbé rotates every four days. This confused those of us from Niger who are used to weekly markets until we realized the true meeting point wasn't the market, but the tchouk bar. Tchoukou is the local Beninese millet/sorghum beer, and, like tea in Niger and other Muslim countries, it is the drink of choice for sitting and socializing. The market rotates every four days because it takes three full days to prepare the tchouk. The women pound the millet and water the first day. It's cooked and fermented over the course of the second and third days, and then it is served up in both dark and light varieties at the market on the fourth day. It's not too potent, but over the course of an afternoon in a hot, humid market place, just drinking bowls and bowls of it, it'll pick you up and put you on your ass.
We had originally planned to head into Togo that afternoon...we stayed another night.
The next day was entirely devoted to travel. We did a pretty good job taxi hopping from Boukoumbé back to Natitingou, from Natitingou to Djougou, from Djougou to Kétao for a customs checkpoint into Togo, from Kétao to Kara in Togo for lunch. We were doing really well getting into Kara in the early afternoon, and we thought we had it made for a trip to Atakpamé, getting in in the early evening and having a nice relaxing evening to prepare for a trip to Badou. Luck can swing any direction in West Africa, and if you believe at all in luck you know you can never name it or else you'll jinx it, especially in a place that plays so heavily into Voodoo/juju. We got to Sokodé and as we were leaving, three motorcycles and a car full of police officers pulled up and forbade us to leave. The driver got out to talk to them, and I wasn't suspicious at all until the helper jumped into the front seat, grabbed the papers and tried to hide them. Over an hour later, after the driver was taken away by the police, he returned, no doubt a little lighter in the wallet, and we continued to Atakpamé, arriving around 8:00 instead of at five as we had anticipated. Finding the Peace Corps house in the dark, down a street that barely exists and is not lit was interesting to say the least, but at that point, I felt like anybody who wanted to mug us would be pushing their luck pretty far.
In the morning we took off for Badou and visited the Akloa falls. These were spectacular falls in the mountains bordering Ghana. We spent the afternoon swimming and relaxing in the pool at the base of the falls before the three of us returned to our tiny little flop house of a room in a dirty shady bar near the motor park. Where else are you going to go if you're in West Africa and on a Peace Corps budget?
Togo was mostly a week of camping and visiting nature. We stayed three nights in Kpalimé, on the border with Ghana. It was probably one of the most touristed places we'd been yet, but we did have a great time. While out at dinner, Mary and I met a guy named "Momo," an African dancer who works at lot with Peace Corps and the American Embassy. The next day, he hooked us up, helping us out with stuff to do, places to eat, places to buy music, and new haircuts for the three of us. I re-mohawked myself, Jyoti just buzzed her head, and Mary is now the proud new owner of some dreads, courtesy of Momo's sister. We played with his neice, possibly one of the cutest little girls I've ever met and just generally had a good time hanging out with a friendly local. He took us into his home and made us feel just overall very welcome.
From Kpalimé we went 12k up the road to the border town of Klouto. I took my own hike with a guide through the coffee and cacao fields. It was originally meant to be a tour of the plantations, but it turned into a tour of local plants used by the artisans as natural dyes. It was very interesting, and with my mother's extensive background in fabric and dye, it wasn't entirely lost on me. It's crazy to come from the desert plains in Niger to the tropical rain forest mountains of Togo and Ghana. Whereas in Niger it's a hot, dusty silence, Togo's humid forests team with birds and insects. I didn't know it would be so NOISY. Being up in the mountains though is great. Last night was very cool and peaceful. I'd recommend Togo for anyone into music, amazing people, and crazy amounts of butterflies.
I'm in Ghana now in the town of Hohoe. We were going to go to a town about an hour away known for its kente cloth, but decided we needed to slow down a bit. There will be plenty of time for crafts when we get to Kumasi. Tomorrow we're hiking up another mountain (Mt. Afadjato, Ghana's highest at 885m) and the day after we'll be at yet ANOTHER waterfall (Wli, over 40m tall). Our hope is we'll be able to appease the nature nut with us so she won't complain when we're rumbling through Accra or lounging on the beach near Cape Coast.
Well, that's about all that I have time for right now. If it gets a little random at the end, I'd challenge you to sum up an entire weeks worth of travel in a little under an hour. After spending a few hours here, I can already tell I'm going to love Ghana. We're a little over halfway through our trip. From here, we'll be going to Accra, Cape Coast, Kumasi and then back to Niger via Burkina Faso.
Until then, bye bye Rasta man.
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