Three Day Fieldtrip Up Country: Sept 18 – 20th, 2007
Or: "How To…" According to Me
Or: "How To…" According to Me
How To Drive in Togo
While theoretically one drives on the right hand side of the road, in reality one drives on which ever side is more practical, which ends up being more often than not the left hand side, employed often but not exclusively for the purpose of avoiding potholes, circumventing mud, or passing other vehicles. This last in particular requires a certain technique, particularly on bad or curvy roads (although this does not automatically rule out risky maneuvers). You must drive very closely behind the vehicle in front of you, then tentatively drift into the left hand side in order to catch a glimpse of the road ahead to see what else is approaching. (Although again, no what matter is approaching, this may or may not have any bearings on your next steps. Driving is like a wild chicken mating dance, full of bluster and bravado.) You then either pass the car -- honking madly to alert drivers, pedestrians, bikers, and goats – or swerve back onto your side of the road. An example of when you would return to your side of the road would be when you see two huge trucks passing each other and coming straight towards you as they struggle for dominion of the road. Actually, you might want to consider pulling over until they decide to return to their side of the road…. Anything less than these two dinosaurs battling it out is fair game, though. Don’t forget to laugh at any Yovo’s who are making smart comments in the backseat, or are whimpering into their hands. Be ready to brake at any sign of a living creature scampering across the road (we missed a child, but hit a dog, and possible a duck – see How To Be An Animal Lover In Togo).
If you are not a scaredy-cat Yovo, you may choose to ride on the outside of an eighteen-wheeler, hanging from its back gate (photos to prove it) or on top of a bush taxi, or perhaps four to a motocycle. You may also choose to tie your goat on the top of a bush tax, or stuff your cow in the trunk of the car.
(NB: Peace Corps drivers are the best drivers and we love our drivers! They have been specially selected and they would never pull any dangerous stunts. )
How To Travel Like a PCT
Show up to meeting place with varying sizes of hiking backpacks and additional day packs to take in the van. Toss backpack up to van driver to be lashed onto the roof. Ask driver if you can ride on top to see his reaction. (Note: Only do this with a PC driver. Any other driver would say yes.) In your daypack, carry toilet paper, water, iPod or other entertainment device, hand sanitizer, and camera. (If you’re me, you will also carry sunscreen, bug repellant, book, extra camera batteries, and extra snacks, but you risk mocking from your comrades.) Take your place in the van or range rover. In the van, natural air conditioning is provided because the air rushing through the open windows is both strong and refreshing. Try and stay hydrated throughout your trip, although too much hydration has its disadvantages, and you can pass away much of your time deciding whether to continue to hold your bladder or whether you really want to be the person who has had to ask three times already to use the bathroom. But you better not hold it too long, because requests for bathroom stops require their own procedure and can take a few more miles/kilometers to complete The driver has a mysterious criteria, unknown to us mere PCTs, for which bushes are appropriate to use as toilets and which are not. However, ideally there will be a small goat path leading off the main road, with some handy trees or uneven ground a few feet into the bush. If you are me, and you are not on a trail, you stomp your feet loudly and wave your arms while yelling "Pas de serpents! Pas de serpents!" (Translation : Shoo snakes ! ) before continuing. (If you are not me, you may join in the chorus of: "You have to go again?!?")
When you stop for lunch or dinner, bear in mind there are really no rules in Togo. Thus, it is perfectly acceptable to go into a restaurant and pull out your packed sandwich from home and your bottled water. (However, as there are some great drinks, such as Cocktail de Fruits or LionKiller – sparkling lemonade – I encourage you to buy a drink and save the water for the road.) Always consider bringing your own food or having an arrangement with a restaurant to prepare the food ahead of the time, as food service can take two hours to materialize. Do not turn up your nose, however, at yummy snacks available either in gas station shops or on the side of the road (collectively, we purchased multiple pineapples, breads, beignets which are made from beans but are sort of like doughnuts, beans and rice, and a million packs of FanMilk. FanMilk is our obsession, and is sort of like icecream in a bag. It deserves its own blog post so more to come later about FanMilk.)
How To Be An Animal Lover In Togo / or, an Overheard Dialogue
Daniel: "Look! A duckling! It’s hurt! I think we might have hit it with the van when we pulled into the village and maneuvered our way through pebbly alleys. I knew taking a mini-van off-roading was a splendid idea."
Anna: "You should kill it now. Put it out of its misery."
Daniel: "I think its leg is broken. I’m going to make a splint out of floss and twigs."
PCVs: "Put the duckling down. We can’t take it into the school where we’re going to observe a Life Skills class."
Daniel: "I’m going to put it here under the tree. Oh look there’s a frog. They can be friends."
Anna: "Do not get attached like the baby goat. "
Daniel: "It was love at first sight. It snuggled right into my chest when I picked it up."
How To Be A Beautiful Country / Make A Roadtrip Pleasant
For a small country, Togo packs a big punch… From the mid-South, starting in Agou, the paved road is "paved", in glaring quotation marks that hang meaningfully in the air. Driving on the left hand side of the road, while surprising for the first few hours but soon becoming frighteningly normal, affords us the opportunity to get a close up view of the foliage (which itself changes from South to North). Palm trees, termite mounds, green grasses, and the hills and mountains rising above us. If you look carefully, you can see the white marks in the hillside which mark waterfalls, sprung from the caverns hiding in the rocky hills.
The hills themselves change too. In the South, they are bumps hiding under green quilts, villages nestled in between the folds. In the North, near Kara, the mountains appear again - absent after a perilous climb through the mountains to get to Atakpame, then the hills dropping away to reveal lush savannahs, watered by the rainy season and rumored to turn brown in a few months. But near Kara the mountains appear again, different from their southern cousins, these ones rocky and scruffy and somehow rather plucky-seeming. There are two paved roads, one of which runs through Kara, but to reach Sara-Kabou (Kassie’s village) we turn off the Route Nationale and pass through the red dust road passing the circular houses with thatched roofs or the children who look up from their activities and chase after the cars. (Substantially less romantic than it sounds.)
I feel like God, who looked upon the Earth and decided It Was Good. Except substantially less graceful.
How To Sing The Yovo Song
Note that this is only cute when you are four years old. A note on pronunciation : Yovo is with emphasis on the second syllable, which always makes its speaker sound vaguely surprised.
" Yovo! Yovo !
Bon soir! Ca va ?
Donnez-mois vint-cinq francs… "
[Yovo ! Yovo ! Good evening, how are you? Give me 25 francs…"
PS In the North " anasara " is the same as " yovo ". Yovo means white person, but it’s applied to strangers in general. Even our Togolese formateurs have been called Yovo, if they are hanging out with Peace Corps people or maybe they are lighter skinned than the local people. African-Americans and Asian-Americans also get called Yovos. (Conversely, yovos also get called chinois…)
How To … Visit Many Different Places…
From Agou, we drove north-east along the paved road that runs from Kpalimé to Atakpamé (where we stopped for lunch). This road takes us straight through the heart of the Plateaux region, and along the left hand side of the country, where there are many hills and mountains and long grasses and foreign trees and waterfalls in the mountain sides. We passed through all the towns that are directly on the road, including Adeta which is where the training site was held last year. We stopped at Amlamé where a current PCV works with an NGO (and met her dog, which was a rare cute bundle of fur and was excited to see more people that would pay it attention). We received yummy bissap juice (it reminded me of that ice tea that comes in the dragon cans … what’s it called) and kolico made from breadfruit and dipped in tomato paste. Yummy. After Amlamé we drove up a winding mountain, passing an overturned eighteen wheeler on the way. We stopped in Atakpamé for lunch where we got to sit on the restaurant’s terrace. Atakpamé is the regional capital of Plateaux. This is also where the two paved roads merge into one (the other one comes straight from Lomé), and which we continued to drive upon due north, smack dab in the middle of the country. It was fun riding in the car and seeing the turnoffs for the stagiares’ new posts. Later we passed through Sokodé, the capital of the Centrale region, and finally arrived in Kara. Our hotel was really nice (by Togo standards) and we took advantage of the pool a few times. Before Kara, we had picked up another PCV who would hang out with us for the week (I have forgotten to say that every week during PST a current PCV stays with us at the tech house). We got to see her house (with lovely sunflowers in her garden) which was two rooms and very homey seeming. This is also the village where Daniel finally got a chance to hold a petit chevre – baby goat – and fell in love. They are so cute. =) In Kara we went out to restaurants and had the chance to have Western food. We met many other current Volunteers in Kara. We also went to the maison de passage in Kara, all regional capitals have maisons de passage where PCVs can go to spend the night or exchange books or hang out etc. We also got the chance to use the internet which is when the last update was sent in. The next day we went to a COS-ing volunteer’s village. It turned out to be so beautiful and welcoming. It was surrounded by the rocky, scruffy mountains and has a huge mango tree under whose shade we sat. The house was great (two rooms not including a little entryway where the couches etc are; a yard with the shower and latrine and a space for gardening). We came back to Kara for lunch, and then we went to Bafilo, a town on the main road. There we visited AED, an organization where PCVs work, which is an organization for Togolese living with AIDS and nearly everyone who works there is also HIV positive. We were received with beautiful songs, and quite possibly the most beautiful child I have seen, less than three years old, who also is HIV positive. After Bafilo we went back to Kara. The next day, Saturday, some of us had the most delicious breakfast at the hotel (and was worth the price – croissants and coffee and fruit and hard boiled eggs…) and then we got on the road around 10am. We got back to Agou around 5:30pm, after several stops to use the bushes, tired but excited from the fun times we’d had and the beautiful and diverse things we’d seen and discovered about Togo.
