African Travel

Nothing happens quickly in Africa, especially travel! Two days after leaving Cape Coast, and around 15 hours in buses and taxis later, we arrived in Atakpame, Togo... home sweet home for my parents Peace Corps service. In the interim, we had stopped for a night in Lome, Togo - the capital city. We didn't spend much time there, but got in some souvenir shopping. Near by was the main market, a 'real' market where we got a look at how locals shop for produce, meat, dried fish, and just about anything else you can think of.

We also visited a fetishes market, West Africa is the home of voodoo. We didn't end up spending much time there, a few glances at the skulls (ranging from mice to horses) were pretty much enough to send us on our way. The cages full of live rats (available for purchase to sacrifice) sealed the deal, and we were ready to get back to our hotel, an on to Atakpame.

We went to the taxi park to hire a van to take us from Atakpame. Chaos would be an understatement. The definition of taxi park is something like, 'big dirt lot with as many mini-buses as possible packed into the space.' After a little negotiating (a must for any transaction) we had ourselves our own minibus for the trip to Atakpame. The roads were pretty smooth heading up the main highway for the majority of the trip. The last ten minutes were completely different though... the last turn put us onto what could only be called a street by African definitions. We put the driver out of his misery (and us out of ours) and eventually just asked him to stop, and we would walk the rest of the way. There house is part way up a steep hill, which we started to head up. We didn't carry our bags though, because as soon as we exited the minibus about ten kids came out and grabbed everything and starting lugging it up to the house on their heads! They knew that they had a coin coming for their help, and they also seemed happy that my parents had returned home.

Once we got inside we were spent, and after a quick tour of the house and a little unpacking, we spent the rest of the night settling in and recovering from a couple of days of hot and tiring travel.