His home is a castle

I am back blipping from a cafe with fast wifi. If you want to catch up with yesterday!

Day 6

Aggy was late for breakfast as she shut her bathroom door when inside and the handle fell off. Her phone is permanently attached to her but couldn’t help as the entire network was down. She managed to use her toothbrush to extricate herself which impressed me. Breakfast was Nescafé, dried up bread, and a delicious thick dark honey.

For our first visit we rose to 600 metres so it was a nice temperature when we got out to a little settlement inhabited by Fulani (or Pula or Fula or Puel), the name of the ethnic group originally from North Africa, with facial characteristics different from others in this area. They are Islamic, very poor, but the elder has been to Mecca.

The next stop going north was to visit the Samba, originally from Burkino Faso. They came to escape Moslem slave traders. Originally the land was forest with wild animals but now the land is cleared and cultivated. they keep cattle.
They live in unusually shaped of Fortified houses, with Domestic animals below and the family upstairs. They all have fine marked lines on their faces which were cut when they were babies. They are half RC and half animist with fetish outside the houses.

We had a beautiful smooth road north to see the fortified houses and the border crossing to Togo was only 12 miles away. However it is closed so we have to return as far as the place we had lunch yesterday before we can turn off to the next nearest border crossing.

As it got hotter we asked for some aircon but the driver says he’s not an electrician and it’s now kaput. Maybe they have electricians in Togo. It is to be 38c in Ghana.

The group dynamics is developing interestingly.

The guide got a man on a motorbike to lead the way to the restaurant where we stopped for lunch at noon. By 2pm some were still waiting for food. I had veg and chips, falafels, hummus, pizza and pasta all being off.

The driver couldn’t find his way back to the main road but Lloyd and Aggy gave directions. Then our guide found he’d left his phone in the restaurant so he got on a motorbike taxi to go back for it. He got back but the driver had disappeared. Oh it’s all go on this trip.

We filled in more forms in order to leave Benin which only took 30 or 40 minutes. The fun started on entering Togo. Apparently our passports couldn’t be authorised because the guy with the stamp had gone. Aye right. The guide went with the guy to a bigger building to find the stamp man. 2 hours later our passports came back and the guide and immigration guy shook hands. Money was involved. They wouldn’t process the bus till we were all done. It did happen.

On arriving at the hotel there were no rooms for us so people had to go somewhere else in the bus. A room was found for the 2 of us, the oldest in the group , but there was no time to unload our bag. The bus will come back later. We have a sheet but had to go looking for towels. When we went for dinner we had a very grumpy group - Claire had had a hypo and needed sugar fast. She had totally collapsed. Aggie the spoiled rich Malaysian with servants and a very stroppy manner was shouting aggressively. She has no window in her room, another has no curtains and nobody has aircon or electricity. The aircon in the bus is not fixed. Tomorrow night the accommodation has been billed as “very basic”. We are not quite sure what to expect, given there was no warning about our previous “hotels”.