September 4: Lome to Kara
The road to Kara
Another program driver, Alex, picked me up at the Hotel Ibis around 8:00 in the morning. He was a little late because of the rain. We then drove through the city to pick up Mary at her walled compound on a small dirt road. Then we began our 420-km journey to Kara.
On the way to Kara I saw many villages with huts, though it seemed many of the huts were used for cooking and storing motorcycles. Other homes were made out of mud brick. The richest homes had concrete walls and tin roofs.
On the sides of the road I saw many women and children walking with bags, tin bowls, or bundles of wood on their heads. They wrapped cloth into a small, flat circle to act as a buffer or balance between the object and their head. Sometimes children were
carrying bowls of water to their house. Mary said in many villages there is no running water and no electricity.
I saw two other things on the side of the road. Many women and children left squares of crushed corn or cassava on the side of the road to dry out. Sometimes it was on a tarp or canvas, sometimes it was directly on the street. I also saw cars or trucks broken down on the side of the road. Sometimes the vehicle placed a series of leaves in front of and behind the vehicle
to tell other drivers there had been a breakdown. It reminded me of the branches left in Ukraine and Moldova to warn pedestrians about uncovered potholes.
I thought I had read in my guidebook that I would see grassland, something like the movie “Out of Africa”. And apparently if one goes near the Burkina border one can see just that. Instead what I saw were lush, tropical valleys and hills, and the occasional river.
We arrived in Kara about 2:00 and checked into the Hotel Concorde. Mary and I had a quick drink, a Gatorade-like diet soda called Sport Aktif, at the hotel bar/restaurant. Mary had wanted to eat something before her 3:00 meeting, but the cook had run off to the market.
Lunch and the market in Kara
Alex took Mary to her meeting, and Jacques took Jean (the local assistant to Mary) and I to a restaurant for lunch. Thinking of Mary’s advice that eggs are always safe (and safer than fish or lettuce) I had an egg-tomato “omelet sandwich”. It was excellent—because this is a Francophone country, you can get good bread and omelets anywhere. The price was reasonable too (less than $1). I also tried Castel Beer, which was good.
After lunch, Jean asked what I wanted to do. I said I wanted to walk around and see the city, or see the markets. So we walked a bit around the Grande Marche (Large Market) of Kara. The arrangement of the vendors and the road conditions reminded me a lot of one of the piazzas in Chisinau, Moldova. There were of course some differences. Some stands had a pot of hot oil with plaintains or cassava cooking in them. My favorite one so far has been the stand with chicken wings in a spicy red sauce—it looked like Buffalo wings back home.
I saw many fruits and vegetables for sale. The cucumbers looked okay, but the tomatoes and peppers seemed very small and appeared to be going bad. The bananas were a little overripe but looked good displayed in circles on trays. I saw dried cassava and took a picture—it looks like chalk. I also saw the biggest yams I’ve ever seen, and took a picture of that too.
I bought a few things in the market. I bought a palm fan like the one I saw at the Hotel Ibis restaurant. I saw what I call “babushka bags”, the plaid nylon bags old women sell in Ukraine and Moldova and which are also popular in China and India. But I saw more than plaid; I saw solid colors and pictures of birds and places like New York or Italy. I had to have some of the new styles. With Jean’s help I got them at a bargain.
First day of work
We went back to the hotel so I could take a brief rest and check out the two channels on TV. Then we drove to SIL, the language institute run by a bible translation service. This is where the meetings would be held. I was surprised to see such a large complex with Western money built on a dirt road near goats and chickens.
Upon arrival, I met some of the teacher trainers from the Ministry of Foreign Languages, called DIFOP. At 6:00, Jean welcomed everyone, and then had me take the floor. I am used to the unexpected, but the only thing I could think to do was turn it into an icebreaker activity, and then ask teachers to tell me about teaching in Togo. The most surprising tidbit was that the average class size is not 50 but 80 students; some schools have as many as 120 packed in. I could only hope what I was teaching would be applicable in such large groups.
Hangin’ with the PCVs
Mary called the Peace Corps volunteers she knew of in the area, and arranged to meet them near the hotel at a restaurant called Le Chateau. Eddie from L.A. and Mike and his wife (whose name escapes me now) from North Carolina were with Mary in the air conditioned room of the restaurant playing pool, drinking beer and sodas, and eating pizza. They told me some hairraising stories about bad taxi rides, sleeping outside because it was too hot inside, and more. It was quite enlightening.
Tags: Africa, Kara, market, scenery, Togo, Travel
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