Francophone West Africa

I woke up fair early and made it to the Accra tro-tro station to get my fast but thankfully uneventful tro to Aflao, a small town on the border of Ghana and Togo. I only had to wait for an hour and a half for it to leave as well! That time was used trying to find someone selling tissues, with a guy following me around helping me. I didn’t find any tissues but about 20mins later the guy came up to my tro-tro window with 2 packets. I have no idea where he found them, but it was mighty helpful of him.
At Aflao, I walked across the border without much difficulty (bar finding out that my Ghana visa would be no longer valid and I’d have to go straight to Benin to apply for a new one the next day..). I was speaking to a Ghana official about where I should get a Togo visa, to which he replied ‘We’re still in Ghana, which is why you’re still speaking English. When you cross the border you can get your Togo visa’. I was thinking to myself, yeah right, walk another couple of metres and it will be suddenly all French.

Enter Togo. I was surrounded by French-speaking people offering me taxis and zemi-johns (motorcycles used to transport people like taxis), hotels and currency exchange. Feeling flustered and anxious, I ran into the Shell petrol station nearby to drink water, calm myself down and read up on hotels in my Lonely Planet before heading back out there. I asked a woman how I should go about catching a taxi, but she couldn’t understand me so she pulled over her friend, who pulled over his friend, and again I was surrounded by 7 French-speaking Africans including a taxi driver who was trying to figure out where I was going. I jumped in the taxi and managed to mumble ‘Hotel le Galion’ before bursting into tears. ‘Ooh la la’ he said, and off we went.

I stayed the night in Togo at a Swiss-owned hotel. It was pretty nice and the owner’s son talked to me for awhile, calming me down again. In the morning I took a share-taxi into Benin. The driver was pretty cool, answering all my questions along the way and slowing down when there were photo opportunities. They fit 4 in the back and 2 in the front, plus the driver. I was the one sitting in the middle next to the driver. They put a cushion or blanket over the hand-brake so it’s not too uncomfortable.. In Benin, I went straight to Ghana Immigration in Cotonou (sort of like the Sydney of Benin, capital in everything but it’s name) and after some few problems (they were closed), I managed to do my application and leave my passport there. After this I headed straight for the real capital, called Porto Novo.

Porto Novo is a nice quiet town where I did not much besides eat dinner, sleep at a dodgy hotel and eat breakfast before heading back to Cotonou. Breakfast was at a place called Cafeteria Place Catchi, a small table set up every morning by these two guys, one making omelettes while the other makes coffee. All of their customers besides myself were Beninese men so I’m sure I didn’t look out of place at all.

On my way back to Cotonou, I took a detour and visited a stilt village called Ganviè. I ended up doing the tour with a French couple who were pretty nice, and I’m sure our guide was rather knowledgeable too but he was speaking in French. Ganviè was pretty serene. I’m still not quite sure why you would want to live in a house in the middle of water, but I guess it’s just the way it goes. The people out there hated having their photos taken, with one boy almost over-turning his boat because he was so angry at me when I pointed my camera in his direction. It’s always good to see another way of life though.

I decided to stay the night in Cotonou so I found Pension de Familles from my trusty LP and checked in. By this time it was getting to be almost 5:30pm so I grabbed some dinner (crêpes, since I was in a Francophone country) and bunked down at the hotel. Apparently Cotonou is so dangerous that you don’t want to walk alone at night, and I wasn’t planning on risking it. It seemed to me that the electricity problem in Togo and Benin was more serious than in Ghana, with generators on all over the place for most of the time I was there. The guy in the hotel assured me that their generator would be on all night, but at 4am it turned off. Maybe it ran out of petrol or whatever, but I was suddenly being eaten by mosquitoes and sweating.

In the morning, I went to a patisserie and bought chocolate croissants, yoghurt and juice. Man the French were so much better at taking over countries than the English! I headed back into Togo (one of the Benin officials asking ‘do you remember me from the other day’ - gross), checked out the fetish market in Lomè, the capital, filled with fetishes and ingredients for ‘medicines’ and then crossed over the border back into Ghana. I don’t feel as though I accomplished much during my time in Francophone West Africa, but I am glad that I went alone and I survived it.

1. Me waiting for the tro-tro to leave
2. Crossing borders.. Ghana-Togo
3. Hotel Le Galion
4. Lome's beautiful beachfront
5. Me riding a zemi-john!
6. Crossing borders again.. Togo-Benin
7. Cafeteria Place Catchi - the guy on the left makes the coffee, while the other whips up omelettes
8. Heading out to Ganvie
9. Ganvie
10. A beautiful sight
11. Some ingredients for those potions you've always wanted to make
12. CUTE girl on the tro-tro back to Accra