Road Trip

So I am in Lomé. Surprise! I needed to renew my visa as I am currently an illegal resident here (visa expired a month ago…oops). And Colin and I need to get our visas to visit Ghana for the New Year. Yes, that meant another comfy busload of 10 people including the devil woman (she nailed her head on the roof of the car getting in at 6 in the morning * little giggle by the white kid sitting in the front seat – we dropped her off at a mansion of a redbrick house in the rich quarter of Lomé, it’s not hard to see where her heir comes from). For the most part the trip was rather uneventful. We backtracked a few times after forgetting certain things, no people luckily. We ate bread and bananas for lunch. Our rest stops, oh the rest stops here are to die for. I always remember the stop just outside of Sioux City, Iowa, the one with the huge Teepee (my childhood favorite). The stops here don’t come close to that, but in terms of convenience man Togo has it down. You can basically stop whenever you want to and piss on the side of the road. No waits, no blue signs telling you how much longer you have to agonize and wriggle in pain, and no missing the off-ramp after seeing a sign saying next stop 54 miles. Not to say that I haven’t relieved myself in a cornfield in the middle of nowhere before, but here it’s acceptable.

The one thing of note that did happen en route was the witnessing of an accident. The highway, if you can call it that, is always littered with overturned 18 wheelers, smashed in lorries, and even stampeding cattle; but today I saw an actual accident. Well accident doesn’t quite do it justice. In fact I don’t know what to call it. Imagine one snail going East and the other going North to an intersection. The chances of hitting each other are slim to none, but the Northbounder looks East and misses the Eastbounder. The Eastbounder T-bones the Northie, honestly at a snail pace, and both slowly tip over (you know that feeling when something is happening in slow motion and there is nothing you can do to stop it). It was pretty ridiculous actually. None was injured, but had the Northie been about two feet further into the road he probably would have had his leg broken. The realness of the “crash” did hit me considering that there have been 3 monks, 1 family friend, and 1 teacher who have been injured in moto accidents since my arrival, but I couldn’t help but chuckle at the “move into ONE WAY traffic while looking in the wrong direction” mentality. In all fairness, or fate, he had a 50/50 shot at being right.

Upon arriving in Lomé and nostalgically recalling our initial stay here, Colin and I were taken out to supper by our chauffeur who also happens to be the monastery money-man. It’s nice to have well positioned friends. Over dinner we got to chatting about tv shows (which are oddly enough called films here). We found out that Jack Baur, has made his way to Togo and has kept many a monk up from evening prayer to morning prayer with his shenanigans. It was also interesting to see where some of the American impressions are formed considering there was curiosity as to whether or not Jack Baur is a real agent and whether or not some of the cities have actually been attacked. Not that you can blame anyone here, our TV shows look more real and polished than their news. Their tv shows and movies (imported from the Ivory Coast and Nigeria) are a slight step up from a home movie (the only difference is that here there is a script).

And now I am sitting in the house down seeing what the other side of Togolese monk life is like. Not that I don’t like the countryside, but there is something to be said about being able to breath without feeling like your lungs are being coated in ash and mud (the tradeoff is smog, but the smog isn’t as thick as the stuff in Agbang), constant electricity, TV, and limited sat cable. And they think they’re roughing it down here, ha.

Lastly the Prior, who was in Cuba for the ordination of one of the Agbang monks serving down there, can’t get a flight back to Lomé due to the snow in Europe. I am now extending the thought to be down and back in a day trip to a down and wait until Friday for the return trip. Looks like my pack light philosophy kind of screwed me on this one.