Perhaps because we’d called it an early night the night before, we were up before our alarm this morning.  Since we were ready earlier than expected, we went downstairs for breakfast.  The rest of our group was already there.  So was an Eastern European guy who apparently thought we should all be able to hear his telephone conversation at 07:30.  

We all headed out at 08:00, and drove east on the coastal road.  On the south coast, Togo is only about 50km across, so it wasn’t going to take long for us to get out near the Benin border.  Once we got a little outside of Lomé and its outskirts, we came upon Lake Togo.  The country of Togo got its name from the lake.  In a local language, it translates as “behind the hill.”  When the Germans first came, and they were looking for one of the local leaders near the lake, they were told the local leader lived behind the hill (on the north side of the lake), and hence the Germans named the lake Lake Togo.  The Germans colonized Togo first, and then the British took over after World War I.  But German times were recent enough that Sena’s grandfather spoke German, as he grew up around a bunch of German missionaries.

Shortly before the Benin border, in the town of Aného, we turned off the main road to visit a small village named Gagaitocondji (Glidji-Kpodji looks like it may be another spelling).  At the entrance to the village we saw our first of many examples of Legba.  Legba, at least in Togo and Benin, is a protector, and also an intermediary between people and the spirit world.  Villages, stores, homes, and more often have a shrine with Legba figures outside, to protect and look over things.  Once inside the village we saw some giant calabash fruits on a calabash tree - they had to be almost 30cm in diameter.  

We briefly met the village’s local healer (who used to be a boxer back in the day), and then we saw a voodoo ceremony.  Sena told us that each village has regular ceremonies, usually on a given day of the week.  For today, this was the village that had a ceremony going on.  There were four or five guys playing the drums.  One of the drummers was perhaps the most intense looking people we’ve ever seen.  For some reason it was hard to get a good photo of him; it is almost as if his aura was preventing his photo from being taken.

There were maybe three dozen people sitting around a common area where people could dance if they wanted to.  Every so often a couple people got up to dance.  Other people were coming by with towels to cool people off, both spiritually and physically.  As the ceremony progressed, multiple people fainted and had to be dragged to a room next door.  In that room there apparently was a shrine and it was dark and people could cool down there.  Many people just sat and watched like we did; maybe only 25% of the audience were actively involved.  It is hard to describe what we saw, so it's better to just look at the pictures and videos.

We got back in the van around 11:00, and within 10 minutes we were at the Benin border.  Sena warned us this might take a while, so we just hung out and chatted on the bus.  The main topic was about border stories, and updates from whomever could see Sena best at the moment.  At one point he came back because the retirees (including us) needed to write down what they used to do.  Eventually it all worked out and we were on our way.  In Benin, we continued east on the same physical road, but with way fewer cars, though.  This part of Benin, called Grand Popo, is basically a tiny peninsula, surrounded by the river border on the north, the Atlantic Ocean on the south, and the Togo land border on the west. So basically, unless you crossed the border or you were coming to one of the beach resorts here, there’s no reason to be in Grand Popo.

We stopped at one of the beach resorts for lunch, the Awame Plage, and its restaurant The Jungle Beach.  Crystal got fish skewers, Justin got chicken skewers.  Whilst we were eating, a tiny cat sat down on the ground next to us.  We chatted about “fun facts” for each of the group, and people were really impressed that Crystal’s Mom worked on developing the flavor profile for Sunkist Orange.  The beach at the resort reminded us a bit of Yemen or Madagascar or the Philippines. 

After lunch we took a short drive east to a junction at the Mono River, then took a boat for a very short ride on the river, ironically back into Togo, and the village of Agbanakin.  This was our second unofficial border crossing, following our lunch in Angola back in 2013.  The village, as well as other villages nearby, are famous for Zangbeto Mask Dances, basically “magic tricks” they do with people inside of conical tree-type figures.  Lots of people were out singing and dancing before any of the costumed individuals came out.  We saw a kid with a massively enlarged head, not sure what from, but he seemed to be getting around like all the other kids, thankfully.

When the Zangbeto masks came out, the people inside the cones ran around a bit, spun quickly in circles, and generally veered as close as they could to us and the other visitors without hitting anyone.  We had a bunch of local kids next to us watching the event, and they were enamored with us, wanting to shake our hands.  The kids also were fascinated with Justin’s cameras, and wanted to see what was on the screens, so Justin got Crystal to take a picture of him and one of the kids who was most fascinated with the cameras.  We showed him the photo, and he was very excited.  One girl was initially very excited, but then fell asleep on the bench behind Justin, so Crystal warned him not to lean backwards.  This show/ceremony, much like the first one today, was highly entertaining, and not really like anything we’d seen before.

After taking a short boat ride back to Benin, we got back in the vehicle and continued east, getting more and more inland.  Then, at the rather large town of Ouidah, we headed due south back to the coast, arriving at our hotel, Casa del Papa Resort & Spa.  We arrived around 18:30, checked in, and then immediately placed our dinner order, because the restaurant was supposed to be very busy at our dinner time (19:30).  After a long day with a lot of time spent outside in the sun, it was nice to get into the room and have some AC.  The beach and ocean looked lovely, but we were made aware that there was a terrible riptide.  We hope the hotel doesn’t have any accidents with tourists at the beach.

At dinner, Crystal had Caesar Salad, Justin had Jollof Rice.  Crystal had two glasses of wine, Justin had two glasses of rum.  Dinner was going fairly well, but then sadly the conversation pivoted from how we would spend Elon’s money (if we had it) to discussing socialism vs communism vs capitalism, and there wasn’t much agreement amongst the table.  As usual in these sorts of conversations, no one was convinced of anything, and many of the most egregious examples were used to illustrate points as if they were generally applicable.  Thankfully the conversation ended on one point of agreement, that there should not be only two parties in the US.  There were mosquitoes at the table, which was a bummer, but also gave people a valid reason to end the conversation before it devolved even further.  We went back to the room a bit before 22:00, which was basically 21:00 since we’d jumped ahead an hour when we crossed the border earlier in the day.