We were up around 06:00.  Before breakfast Crystal went for a walk to work out her knee, as it had been bothering her a bit.  We were the last of our group to arrive at breakfast.  There was another group of TransAfrica people at the hotel, going on basically the same itinerary as us.  They had booked the trip via Native Eye, who we’d also heard of from Bill and Peter in 2024.  So apparently there were at least 3 ways to book basically this same trip - via Wilderness Travel, via Native Eye, and through TransAfrica itself.

At breakfast the WiFi did not work, and we found out it was because they’d changed the WiFi code overnight.  So not only was there a password, there was a secondary login page with a code that changed every 24 hours.  This seemed like incredibly secure WiFi for a place in the middle of nowhere, with no other buildings around for several kilometers.  They probably didn’t need one password, let alone two.  We were wondering if the owner was related to someone in the IT space, who had set up an overly elaborate system.

We got on the vehicle at 08:30.  It was nice having no luggage at the back - Justin had more room for his legs and his stuff.  Sena gave us some background on the local people in the Kara region.  Apparently the Tamberma people had moved south from Burkina Faso many centuries ago, and two main clans arrived and divided the area amongst themselves.  The Tambera are known for their architecture, and most specifically for their adobe houses that they build by hand, layer by layer.

Around 10:00 we stopped briefly at Hotel Defale to use the facilities and order our lunch, since we’d be coming back here after seeing the adobe houses.  We continued north for a bit, then went off road north of Kande where we picked up a local guide named David.  We did 15-20 minutes more of driving - getting fairly close to the Benin border - with views of open savanna and lots of baobabs and Hyphaenes around the adobe houses.  We eventually stopped at one of the adobe houses where we met a local family.  Taryn wasn’t feeling well so she stayed in the vehicle.  David showed us how the houses were built layer by layer, using Shea butter and some roasted seed used as a “paint” for the outside, and also to help waterproof things for the rainy season.

Abass came out of the vehicle calling for Sena, and we worried what that meant.  When Sena came back, he said he and Abass were going to take Taryn to a local clinic and then come back for us in a bit.  We told him it made more sense for all of us to go together, so after we finished exploring the inside and the roof of one of the houses (maybe 5 minutes more), we all got back in the vehicle and went (with David) to Kande, where there was a local clinic.  The bumpy road sucked, and Jane mothered Taryn along the way.  Stephenie and Justin chatted a bit with Jane while Taryn rested.  Stephenie had - in her vast travels - been to hospitals in Cameroon, Afghanistan, and Singapore, thankfully all with good results.

We got to the hospital around noon.  David and Sena went ahead to get the doctors’ attention.  Justin and Jane helped Taryn walk to the hospital room.  Jane stayed, and Justin went back since the room was tiny and there didn’t need to be so many people.  The initial tests were all good, and the doctor’s best guess was dehydration.  More tests confirmed food poisoning and dehydration.  Brian had some electrolyte pills, and she took those instead of the IV that the hospital wanted here to get (but she understandably did not).

Around 13:00 she got back on the vehicle and was seemingly fine, back to normal.  So we just headed on to lunch, basically on time.  We’d just traded seeing more adobe houses for seeing a local medical clinic, which was pretty interesting in its own right.  At lunch Justin got a local chicken dish with spicy peanut sauce and fufu.  Crystal got chicken skewers and fries.  We heard more about Stephenie’s fandom of Taylor Swift, which we all got a huge kick out of.  

On the drive back to the hotel, we stopped briefly in Kara at a grocery store, and to get gasoline.  We had to sign a release for the elephant encounter the next morning, which was news to us, as we thought this trip didn’t involve any wildlife.  As we got back towards the hotel, Sena thanked us for being such a good group, and we assumed it had something to do with us banding together to help out Taryn, but instead he wanted to let us know he was thrilled that Brian and Justin were eating the local food dishes.

The skies looked rather ominous when we got to the hotel, so we went straight to the bar, with a backpack for Crystal’s computer.  Justin’s was sadly too big, so he’d just have to wait out any thunderstorm.  The weather was fine at first, and we enjoyed a rum (Justin) and whiskey (Crystal), but then the wind picked up and blew stuff over, including some binoculars that were on a ledge.  Then it started pouring, with lightning.  At this point we came in from the covered terrace, and sat down in the seating area outside the front of the restaurant.  We were by a window, but eventually that had to be shut, as the wind was like a hurricane, blowing everything open and closed repeatedly.  So we spent an hour or so of the afternoon in an African monsoon in Togo, listening to Christmas music on the speakers.  It was actually more dance music remixes of popular Christmas music.  It was utterly surreal.  

Eventually the rain stopped, and we made a run for it, to get our computers back to the room.  We immediately came right back to the restaurant, as it wasn’t too much longer until dinner.  Hertz came in around 19:00 and went right by us into the restaurant, apparently to eat early again.  Then a bit later Brian came in and sat by us in the lobby area.  Taryn was right after that, feeling much better.  When Jane and Stephenie came in, we all migrated to our table outside, which was now safe again.  We enjoyed another very nice dinner.  Crystal had a salad, and Justin had Guinea fowl.  We enjoyed one more round of drinks after dinner, and we were able to pay for it with a credit card.  We came back to the room and crashed around 22:00.