Leaving

The goodbyes took longer than I like, but I played along anyways as I could see that all I have done here has had a fairly sizeable impact on the community. I took one final tour of the garden and did the goodbye thing before sprinting off to the school as the bus was being loaded. I made quick stops by the primary school and each of the grade school classes to say one final goodbye to everyone. The bishop, who was running on a different schedule than mine (he was just going to Kara for the morning), wasn’t shy about his impatience as he honked his horn for me to hurry up. I ran past the school one final time towards the road where I jumped in the bus and the 12 hour, 500 km journey started.

We left at 8 from Agbang. We made it to Kara at 8h45 and left at 9h15. We stopped for a few random pee breaks (there were two women in the travel party, evil included; and nothing against women, but in my experience you need to stop more than guys). We then stopped for an hour long “lunch” (at 3pm) about 150km from Lomé. Upon leaving the driver, Fr. Gregoire, killed a goat. The darn thing had the dear in the headlights look from about 100m away, no chance. We then played stop and let three people out to go bargain shopping for roadside rat and squirrel. Alongside of the highway, hunters sell bush rat and squirrel. I thought we should’ve just taken the goat that we accidentally killed. In any case, we stopped about 3 times for up to 20 minutes at a time to let people out and go haggle with the hunters. Being someone who doesn’t like not having traveled at least 400 miles in 6 hours of driving, I wasn’t a very happy camper being 8 hours in and not having even gotten 400 km.

After finally finding a few rats (of which I will not be eating mind you), we made it to the outskirts of the city where we were greeted by a traffic jam, Togo style. Two and occasionally 3 story trucks, vans, mammy-wagons, cars, and motos to plug the spaces between all going the same direction on a 2-way street. (yes that sentence has no verb, and I am leaving it) The problem as we found out after 2 hours of waiting, was a semi that was having mechanical trouble and parked on the wrong side of the road – into incoming traffic. Then when the one-way passing lane was being cleared, the Lomé bound traffic took advantage of the clearing and moved into the oncoming lane as there currently was no oncoming traffic. That didn’t work out too well when the massive semis leaving Lomé were finally allowed to pass. It was hot and humid. The AC doesn’t work so all of the windows were down, which was wonderful considering all of the toxic fumes streamlining it into my lungs from the mass of cars trapped on what I would consider a country backroad.

We finally got free and then started dropping people off all over the city. Ezekiel even surprised me by telling the evil woman, who he usually has to cater to at the bidding of the prior that we were not going to visit her friend’s house so that she could drop off a basket of tomatoes, but instead were going straight to her house and leaving it all there. She wasn’t happy, but she wasn’t driving either. Ezekiel then surprised me again by getting out of the bus and saying that he would see us later (I found out upon arriving at the house an hour later that he had come straight here because he was thirsty). We stopped at the woman’s house, where she scolded the guard for not greeting her loud enough. I felt sorry for him. She then invited the monks inside for a beer. Nope not tonight after this car ride. I was not shy about my feelings at this point reflecting on the fact that I was all but forced to take the bus down after having already purchased a courier ticket from the postal service line. Luckily, the driver listened to my plea and was out in less than a minute.

Alas, after 12 hours on the road we arrived at the house where I was greeted by all of my friends. I was also greeted by Ezekiel who then told me that he came straight back after getting out of the car. I joked about him not taking me with or even bother asking if anyone else wanted to go back. It came out as a joke, but I was dead serious underneath the mask. That faded as it didn’t have any impact on the present. I am here and only a day away from leaving Togo.