Once upon a time...

There were three girls named Maggie, Whitney, and Holley. They decided that they would tackle four countries in West Africa in 9 days for an epic adventure. And what an adventure they had...


It's going to take me a few days to actually recount everything that happened in our crazy, intense, emotional, ridiculous, and just all around insane week. Bare with me :-) I'm just starting to process it all.

DAY 1: Thursday, October 8

Starting location: Accra, Ghana

Intended ending location: Lomé, Togo

Ending location: Accra, Ghana

Modes of transportation: feet

Our plans to leave on Thursday afternoon were foiled by the papers that all three of us had due at 12 noon, the midterm (if you can call it that) Holley and I had Thursday afternoon, and the fact that Holley was violently ill. Plans to leave were postponed until Friday.

DAY 1, TAKE 2: Friday, October 9

Starting location: Accra, Ghana

Intended ending location: Cotonou, Benin

Ending location: Accra, Ghana

Modes of transportation: taxi

Our plans to leave on Friday were foiled by the fact that Hols was really sick. We forced her to go to the hospital on Thursday night, and she returned diagnosed with probable typhoid. Plans to leave were postponed until Saturday. Whit and I spent the day riding in cabs to several different bus stations, trying to get tickets for the next day. We arrived at the right one at 4:10 to be told that they closed at 4. We'd have to get tickets the next day.

DAY 1, TAKE 3 : Saturday, October 10

Starting location: Accra, Ghana

Traveled through: Lomé, Togo

Ending location: Cotonou, Benin

Modes of transportation: taxi, bus, tro-tro

We finally set off on our adventure on Saturday at 5 am. Since we couldn't get tickets on Friday, we had to get to the bus station an hour early to try to beg for a few seats. Our trip to the bus station was uneventful, we managed to get a few tickets, and the bus left on time. It was flawless!

Our bus ride took us to Aflao, the city at the Ghana-Togo border. We got off the bus, went to the border patrol, got our passports stamped, and successfully crossed into Togo!

First impression of Togo: lots of movement! There were a ton of cabs and taxi-motos (motorcycles that are used as taxis) with their drivers all clamoring to get our business. Funny thing was, they were all clamoring in French! It shouldn't have been surprising, seeing as the official language of all countries bordering Ghana is French, but it was a little shocking to someone who had never been in a country where a different language was primarily spoken. I was the only one of the three of us who spoke French, and I haven't studied it for a year and a half, so the beginning was a little rocky. I got much better as the week went on, but at the start it was pretty difficult. We found a cab driver who spoke a little English, so between his English and my French we managed to let him know of the bus station we were trying to go to. Or, at least, we thought he understood where we wanted to go.

We were driving along the coast in Togo, and the beaches there are the most beautiful beaches I have ever seen. The sand is white, the water is blue, there are a few gorgeous palm trees, a few fishermen with little canoes exploding with color. It was gorgeous and a wonderful welcome to Togo.

My pics of the beach are all pretty blurry because they were from the beach, but you can still see the beauty.

I'm not quite sure if our cab driver just didn't understand us or if he just had his own agenda, but he did not get us to our bus station. The ride to the station should have been about five minutes, but the cab driver kept pulling over. He would stop along the road next to random cars that apparently were driven by his friends, then try to negotiate a price for us to take the car to Cotonou. The prices he was coming up with were much more than we intended to pay, and we were not about to get in a car with a random Togolese man to take us to Benin. We were quite vocal about this to our cab driver, but he kept stopping to negotiate with other cars! I tried to tell him in French a zillion times that we wanted to take a bus, but he would just laugh, leave one car, drive about a hundred yards to the next one, then get out and start negotiating. After my exclamation that he was making me upset did nothing, we told him that if he did not take us right to the bus station we were not going to pay the 1000CFAs we had agreed upon as a price. At this point, we were sure that he knew exactly what we were talking about, and the next time he stopped by the beach to talk to a friend, we got out of the car and walked away. He followed us to demand money, but we kept walking and told him that we were not going to pay him when he did not take us to the right place. He promptly got back in his cab and started to follow us, so we crossed the street and kept walking, waiting for another cab. When we didn't see one and noticed that he had turned around and was following us again, this time with friends, we cut through a construction site by the road where he couldn't drive through. When we reached the other side, he pulled up again, and this time got out with a policeman.

Let me just pause to say that as scary as this all sounds while writing it, and as awful as it would have been in New York, I never felt unsafe. Afterwards, it was actually quite comical, and I truly don't think that these men had any bad intentions.

So the policeman, who was a tall Togolese man wearing an intimidating blue outfit and round hat, started rambling to me in French. I asked him if he spoke any English, and he exclaimed, "No! I do not speak English! You are in Togo! We speak French!" I laughed a bit, and tried very hard to make the policeman understand our situation. To him, it probably sounded like "This man say he take us to bus station, but then he talk to friends! We do not want to talk to friends, we want bus station! He try to take us car, but we do not want car! We want bus! We say we not pay him if he not take us, but he not take us! So, we get out and tell him we not pay. He not take us to bus station, so we not pay him." The policeman was actually very nice and agreeable. He listened, told us that we had already passed the station, and we still had to pay the man. We decided that arguing with him with my limited French and in a foreign country was probably not the best idea (although arguing with policemen is probably never the best idea), paid the cab driver, and walked away. 

We stumbled upon a different bus station that had some very kind people who took pity on us and helped us out. They told us that the last buses to Cotonou had already left for the day but we could take a tro-tro (called bush-taxis in other countries) for a cheap price. They tried to explain to us how to get to the tro-tro, but after a few moments of us looking incredibly confused (this was all still in French), the guys laughed and walked us into the market where the tro-tro was waiting. They left us inside, where we had to wait two hours in the heat before the tro-tro left. In those two hours, we made friends with Fred, a Nigerian who spoke English. We informed him that we were sisters from the US, our parents were Russian, and our names were Mishka (Whitney), Zorla (Holley), and Gershanka (me--but I didn't like my name, so everyone called me Shanka). He said our names were very difficult and he could not remember them. He was obsessed with Whitney and said he wanted to marry her--he was very disappointed when we told him she was already married. He loved her stature and how thin she was. I was called fat and told to run every day for 6 months to be thin like Whitney, and Holley was laughed at for eating. Needless to say, Fred was not our favorite person in the world. Hols and I gave him the cold shoulder, and Whit finally convinced him that he had been rude and had upset us and that he should leave. Fred finally left, sad that Whitney would not give him anything to remember her by. Oh, Fred the Nigerian. So silly.

The tro-tro finally left, and the trip that should have been 3 hours took about 5 and a half. The ride wasn't bad, because the scenery was beautiful. We were rather crammed in the tro-tro though. Whitney couldn't even put her legs in front of her because of lack of space, so she spent the trip sitting sideways. There was also this strange voodoo lady who was sitting in front of Whit and kept turning around and yelling things at people selling things on the street. Another lady in front of Holley and I seemed to get bored and decided to listen to music on her phone. However, she did not have headphones, so she kindly played music for us all. Her taste was unexpected--she seemed to really like "When a man loves a woman," which she played about 6 times. It was quite amusing.

Holley and Whit on the tro-tro.

Finally, as darkness was falling, we pulled into Cotonou, the capital city of Benin. We were a little nervous about getting to our hotel, but the guys driving our tro-tro were incredibly kind. We showed them on the map in our guidebooks where we wanted to go. They took the guidebook under a light and about 10 other guys surrounded them. They all started shouting and pointing in different directions, taking pauses to look at the map more. We kind of stood to the side, waiting for them to figure out where exactly we should go. Finally, the two guys from the tro-tro came back and told us they would take us to the hotel. We gratefully got back into the tro-tro and they took us right to the door of the hotel. We tried to ask them about where we should get a bus the next morning. They weren't sure, but the driver gave us his name and phone number and told us to call him any time, day or night, and he would try to help us. They were so nice!

Hotel numero uno.

We checked into our hotel and convinced the manager that we were sisters and loved each other so it was okay for us to share a bed. Then we found a bank to get a bit of money, and went across the street to a little diner-like dinner place. We each ordered huge water bottles, individual pizzas, and french fries. It was our first meal of the day and we were all getting pretty dehydrated, so it was fantastic. Our first day came to a close with us falling into bed, exhausted from day one of our adventure.

And that was just the beginning.