How I didn’t want to leave Accra. It was comfortable & familiar. But then there is a schedule that runs on me. 1 May is holiday, I got two visas to handle in Cotonou and it would be good to be in Lagos over weekend, after all people work and Lagos isn’t a place where there is time to even meet up after work – commuting time of 4-5 hours is standard.
I delayed as much as I could. I went to eat in Champion’s, a nearby fast food joint that had good jollof and even salad without ketchup. At 10am there was no jollof yet and a separate queue separated of jollof rice lovers, me included, who refused to eat anything else and waited patiently until a woman brought a huge plastic rice cooking pot and poured it into the serving trays. There was no chicken however so I had meat and stew (delicious) and salad was yet to come. Sunday mornings.
On the way back to hotel I sat in a bar and had a draught beer for 5cedis. One must enjoy his last moments in the country.
I left hotel around 11am and went to Arts Centre to say goodbye to Kenneth and Lukeman. The taxi was 7cedis but the driver didn’t have change so I paid 5. Kenneth was in town so while waiting for me I was chatting with Lukeman. I am yet to record my movements in Accra but my point is: I had gone around shops in Arts Centre and came to the conclusion Lukeman’s shop has the biggest choice.
And they before there was a white man who was looking for bronze Baoulé Mask and Lukeman didn’t have one but he showed the man two Benin bronzes, rather fake, though who knows. As I had left the previous day Lukeman told me he wanted, wait for it, $500 for the pair while the man was offering $200 and that wasn’t good enough. The morning I left Accra Lukeman said the white shopper came back and offered $275 and anyway left but said to keep the pair for him till Wednesday.
Here is the $500 Bronze pair:
And it turned out Lukeman had more treasures. A $300 Ashanti and Fanti statues, I like them:
He had $600 fertility statues from Congo:
These were the prices he told me he’d wanted to get for these pieces. He keeps them not on public sight but in a hidden box. He said only for “someone serious” he’d take them out. Lukeman said he’d want to buy a house and apparently that’s the main reason he’d want to go to Europe. Poland would be fine but he’d go to Germany from there. And I asked him Lukeman but you have family and three children (and one adult son who “disrespects” Lukeman) won’t you be missing all of it. And no, he’d wanna go, earn 10k euro in a year and return after some time to Ghana and do something with this money. Lukeman is 51 years old but as usual doesn’t look it.
I waited for Kenneth for almost an hour, I texted him, called him, nothing. So I left for the tro tro to Aflao, which leaves a walking distance from Arts Centre. We walked together with Lukeman towards STC (bus company) station. He didn’t trust the private minibuses calling for Aflao but I ended up in one, because STC station was deserted. The fare to Aflao was 28cedis. It took almost an hour for the car to fill up – an STC bus to Aflao managed to leave before us – before we left and just as we were moving a man came up to me asking for baggage money. Fortunately I wasn’t alone in the bus and another man, already fed up with the waiting time, blasted the guy asking for money. I didn’t even say a word. I paid nothing.
Women came around the bus selling… chocolates! The local ones! Expensive! 100g bar 6 cedis, 20g bar 2cedis, I bought chocolate for 10cedis and happily consumed them on the way to Aflao. They are not particularly good in my opinion but I haven’t had sweet thing (Biskrem is long gone) in a long time so I enjoyed myself.
Road to Aflao was about 3 hours, it wasn’t particularly comfortable even though we were sitting 3 in a row and the car had AC.
Aflao on one side of the border, Lomé just on the other side. I changed cedis to cfa in Ghana, 250cedis brought me 28000cfa but not every man wanted to give me that much. Leaving Ghana was easy, filling form, photo taken. On Togolese side in the small immigration room quite a crowd. Visa on arrival for Polish passport (and possibly for other Europeans too) was 10,000cfa, best paid in cfa. The problem was with phone number of the guesthouse I wanted to stay in, I wrote down two numbers from Rough Guide and the immigration woman questioned they were from Lomé. I copied yet another number, this time from Lonely Planet and she was content.
The town begins just at the border so moving on is fairly easy but I think the only city transport there is are motorbikes, here called zemidjan. A young man picked me up he agreed for 500cfa fare and off we went. I picked My Diana Guesthouse which is not far from the border. It’s in a very quiet neighbourhood with a very complicated name: Kodjoviakopé. The zemidjan driver didn’t know the place, it’s on a beautifully named rue des jonquilles which in fact is dusty and unpaved. The guesthouse doesn’t even have a sign outside. Seems that the owners have changed though the name hasn’t. I was given two prices: 12000 and 15000cfa. Oufff, too much. I asked for a discount on 12000 and that I planned to stay for 2 nights they man agreed to 10000cfa. But I had to wait for “30 minutes” because the guests inside have to check out.
It was about 6pm and I was sitting on the front porch when I felt fever coming over me. It was like someone switched on a light: I didn’t have fever and next second I am hot. Fever in these lands means one thing.
The guests have left: a middle-aged white woman and a young rastaman. Yeah. My room was ready and it turned out it’s an air-conditioned room. For 10k! A bargain. And it’s quite a comfortable if smallish room. The power quite regularly was cut because of a faulty fuse. Interesting thing: the 2008 Rough Guide, while recommending this guesthouse, mentions that the frequent short power cuts can be annoying. And 11 years later… I even mentioned it to the owner but he was adamant that it was not possible, he’d only been working with this guesthouse for a year, the woman before was no longer here. And he promised that he’d fixed this and it seems to be fixed now.
Back in the room, I’m a bit scared by the fever, I even started shivering and I take one Ibuprom. It’s Sunday evening, is there anywhere to go and be checked. I asked the young men in the guesthouse what they do in such situations, one of them said take anti-fever medication and wait. So I do. The fever seems to subside and I don’t have a headache. I go out of the guesthouse to find food, before I lose appetite. I am directed to a street joint called Fifty-fifty. It’s women roasting fish and chicken but the fish is expensive although they did have sea fish, the first so far. But even the carp was 3000 so I take chicken for 2000cfa and salad and bottle of water. The chicken is awful, tough to bite, I leave it untouched and mention it to the woman but she seems unmoved. I pay 3500cfa and buy two more 1.5l water bottles to keep rehydration operation going at night.
I come back, lie down, take one more Ibuprom, the fever is not coming back. I sleep and wake up at 10pm, sleep and wake up at midnight. I wake up at 7am, my body cold but there is a headache.
Coming back to Maman 