The biggest event that has occurred since we returned from the North was our trip to Togo and Benin (the two neighboring countries to the East of Ghana). Emma and Carly left a day early, and then I met them with Liz, her friend Alex, and our friend Nana. It was about a four hour tro-tro (small bus thing) ride to the Togo border and it only took an hour to get across Togo into Benin. I was useless once we arrived in Togo, because, like most of West Africa, it's entirely French speaking. The benefit of that, however, was that baguettes were everywhere! Heaven. We spent the night in Ouidah, a small town in Benin that is known for its voodoo and as being a critical point in the slave trade. We took a tour of the slave trade sites and it was fascinating because it was so different from the slave trade in Ghana. Whereas in Ghana there are large forts that were controlled by the Portuguese and then English, in Benin, there were no large structures, just a path that the slaves were forced to follow.
The captives began by walking around this one tree seven times, which was supposed to make them forget all about their past, present and future, so as to make them like animals. Next, they walked to a place which was like an underground room, or I'm assuming just a giant hole in the ground. They were all piled in there and kept there for a while. It was meant to "train" them for the middle passage on the slave ships. Those who did not survive were buried in a mass grave and the rest moved on. They then walked around the "Tree of Return" (which is still there today) and it was supposed to make their spirits return to Africa if they died en route or upon arrival in the Americas. There was also a site where people go now a days to repent and ask for forgiveness for selling the slaves. Finally, we went to the beachside where a monument had been built for the "point of no return," where the slaves entered the ships. It was such a contrast to the Ghanaian slave trade because it seemed much more steeped with Beninese culture than the very European process in Ghana.
As we were leaving Benin on our motorbike taxis (most of the taxi's are motorbikes that they pack full), we saw two Voodoo spirits! Basically you couldn't see any human form, but it was like men under these colorful patterned cloths that were stooped over with people surrounding them. You couldn't see arms or legs or anything (look up a picture on Google, you might find something similar at least). It was really cool. The motorbike had to be careful to get through there quickly because if you are not initiated into Voodoo, you're not allowed to get close because there are people around that will beat you if you get close. The Voodoo is very intense there! A lot of people in West Africa, even very educated people, are wary of it.
Basically Benin was really neat, minus the initial stress of not understanding the language or conversion rate. I ended up loving the motorbike taxis. I have never rode a motorbike of any kind before then and the first night, they stuffed me on a motorbike with a driver and two of my friends... FOUR PEOPLE on a motorbike driving on sandy roads at night. Almost as scary as riding a horse. Anyways, the trip has left me with horrible, incurable cravings for baguettes.
In other news, I have been a little under the weather lately. No fever or vomiting or digestive issues, just random, assorted discomfort. The kind of discomfort you experience when you're in a tropical climate at the hottest time of year, going through a dirty, huge city, struggling to keep hydrated and finally missing the food from home (Thanksgiving will do that to you...). I really do love it here though, I'm starting to learn the city a lot better. Here's my basic breakdown of Accra for you:
I live in Lartbiokorshie, which is about as far as I could possibly live from School, in Legon, so it's forced me to get to know the city pretty well. Osu is where a lot of ex-pats live, and is therefore a good place to satisfy your western food needs. It's also just a fun place to hang out. In the city, all the roads are paved, but once you get into most residential areas, it's mostly dirt roads. Or, I should say, dust roads. My lungs are probably 50% dust. The open sewers are fine, I haven't fallen in one yet (knock on wood), but there are certain areas that really smell because of them. Sometimes you don't notice and other times, it's impossible not to. There's one section of the city that taxi drivers just looove to take us through that absolutely (excuse the language), smells like shit. There are some pretty smelly areas, but this one is bad enough that I have to plug my nose and cover my mouth to block the rank stench. The sad part is.... it's RIGHT on the ocean. In a lot of areas, this one in particular, people don't have adequate toilet facilities in their homes (poor infrastructure, lack of money, lack of government attention, poor sanitation), so they have to do all that business in the ocean. It goes without saying that no one swims in those areas. Thank god the ocean isn't like a giant connected body of water or anything, I'm sure we're completely safe from it a couple miles down the beach. City life can be hard with respect to those kinds of issues. It's easier being sanitary in the village for some people than it is in the city. From the houses I've been to here, in the city, and a lot of the bars and clubs, the bathrooms are just cement floors with a hole or a gutter running through them. Water and sanitation are constant topics of discussion here.
Speaking of sanitation, there are very few trash cans here and often times where there are, they are tiny and have a giant hole in the bottom anyways. So there is a company here called Zoomlion that picks up trash on the streets, which is great, but watching the process isn't quite as great. They send men around with these large wicked baskets on wheels (probably three feet wide an four feet high?) and they sweep the trash up with these brooms (a lot of straw tied together with no handle, it's what they use in almost all the houses here) and use their bare hands to pick up the trash. As someone who spent her whole summer picking up trash in Burlington parks, it really puts things in perspective. Sure they don't have to have juicy trash bags dripping on them (I hate my job), but at least I didn't have to touch the trash with my bare hands. Something is better than nothing, but what it comes down to is that the government needs to build better infrastructure to improve sanitation, which would obviously have far-reaching benefits. Anyways, there's a little random sampling of Accra for you. It's an interesting city, because it's a very peaceful and pretty developed country (comparatively), so there's always a huge contrast between the wealth that's present here and the extreme poverty (men walking around with tatters of their pants left, women bathing in the gutters, children begging aggressively, etc.). Anyways, I'm being attacked by mosquitoes, so I can't really think straight. (Don't worry, I took my anti-malarials!). I'll update again soon with a slightly better composed piece. My brain has turned to mush. Thanks a lot study abroad classes.
Posted by lib at November 28, 2008 03:07 PM