Mass was supposed to start at 8 in Kazaboua. The bus rolled in at 8h10 to pick up the bishop and I. Mass started and went for a short 2½ hours except this time it was all in Kabiyé. I was ready to leave as soon as I heard the priests greeting. Mass was followed by a few more hours of sitting and making small talk with whoever was around and that was followed by yet another chaotic meal. If anyone is looking for an entrepreneurial business, come here and start a catering/party planning venture – you’ll clean house.
This time after lunch, I was ready to leave and not afraid to push some buttons to get things moving. For one, the were a ton of people who made the 3 hour trek down from Kpizinde and most of them were still here even though their bus had left. I saw things unfolding very poorly for those who were unaware of the situation and I was determined not to be one of them.
Thankfully the bishop and I were staying at the same house so we were paired together in almost every discussion about seating. As it turns out, we were dropped off at the house around 15h00. I sat in the main room ready to go at the push of a button. The curator made his way in from his morning church rounds and we ended up talking about a bunch of random things before I told him that we would be lucky to get back by midnight (I definitely did not want this to be one of those times when I was right). After 3 hours of sitting and waiting I sent the driver (a monk named Grégoire) a text asking if he had dropped us off at the house so that he could finish all of the left over beer from the funeral with the other monks. I was met with a cold stare when he rolled in close to an hour later. And as I expected there were no monks in the bus. They got the short end of the stick this time and as I am writing this on Monday night, they still are not back yet.
I was happy to see, yet slightly curious, some empty space in the bus. Oh by the way, we are picking up 4 more people. We sat 4,4,3 in a made for 9 minivan. I finagled my way into a seat next to a twig of a girl (we took up slightly more than one seat together) and two other fairly thin villagers, which made for a fairly comfortable 4 hour drive back.
We were just past Kara when the Bishop asked about food (about 22h30). There wasn’t any at the monastery for us so we turned around and went back to Kara. I was tired, but I will take food over sleep if I am hungry enough. We made it to the central gas station when disaster struck. My glass bottle of honey, which had been padded between my feet for the entire drive managed (in being moved to let people out) to hit the one oversized bolt in the entire damn bus and shattered. There was honey all over the floor. I said fuck it and followed everyone to the restaurant. We ate, (me in a cranky silence realizing that I was going to have to spend 30 minutes when we got back cleaning as the bus was supposed to leave before I planned on getting up to pick up the monks down in Kazaboua).
Fortune favored me that night as Grégoire said that he would deal with it in the morning. I was uneasy about letting him clean up my mess, but figured that by his watch I would have time to clean it when I woke up. We pulled into the monastery at exactly 0h00 and I scampered off to my room to pass out from exhaustion.
That trip marked the 6th time that I have driven that 300km stretch of road in less than 2 weeks with 4 of those trips being en route to Lomé from Kara or to Kara from Lomé. And to top off the exhaustion, I no longer have my honey. The little things.
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