We arrived in Lome, the capital of the country of Togo today. The coursework is over now and Kenzie and I are off to travel. After 11 days in the village of Dagbamate, Ghana in the western Volta River Delta, we bumped along the 30 km to the border in a crowded trotro (minivan packed with people and goods) stopping frequently to load and unload. Unloading at the terminus point near the Togo border in a busy market, we made our way to the Ghana border point to get our exit visa stamp in a small office with six clerks and the boss who stamps the passport. The Togo border office was a small shelter with one wall and a couple of posts holding up a metal roof about 20 metres from the Atlantic Ocean beach. Eventually stickers and stamps were applied to our passports for a 20,000 CFAs (Central African Francs)($40 CAD) fee each and our names and some personal info were written into a large book. Togo is in a rebuilding stage and symbolically a new border building is under construction. The current border arbitrarily divided the indigenous Ewe population and what is now the city of Lome, Togo and the town of Aflao Ghana. The people in Togo were colonized by Germany and many learned German, but had to switch to French after WWI when the French took over. The people on the Ghana side had a further challenge when later part of Togo was added to Ghana and English became the colonial language that you need to know. Many people here also speak Hausa and a couple of other African languages, but in Lome most people speak to us in French. Kenzie is doing well with this and finds the Togo French much more clear and understandable than Quebecois. As usual,I am stumbling along with greetings and numbers, which I can do in Ewe or French, but not much more yet.
We walked around Lome a little, which is a mishmash of crumbling stone colonial architecture, a few new buildings and office towers, and many older buildings. Roads vary from grand tree lined boulevards to city streets with broken sections of humps and potholes. There is little tourism here and few people bother with you, as does not always happen when tourism creates an industry of peddlers and opportunists. We have been learning much about traditional fetish worship and healing practices in the village, where a popular shrine draws hundreds of people each week to perform rituals and animal sacrifices. This area of Africa provided many of the Haitian slave population and traditional beliefs were modified into what we know as voodoo. There are large fetish markets in Lome and in Benin, where we will travel next. We will be visiting the markets to learn more, so if you need us to pick anything up let me know. Animal bits are popular, but sorry no endangered species please.
The bird life was spectacular around the village and in my early morning jogs or walks, I spotted Senegal like parrots, pintail wydahs with tails (a small finch-male grows two long tail feathers 3-4 times the length of the bird in breeding season), and many other beautiful birds that I have not been able to name yet. The tall grasses support many types of finches. At six am people are tending their plots of corn, cassava, and legumes before the heat of the day. Doves are everywhere and the morning is filled with their rhythmic calls.
The time in the village was spent learning and watching drumming, singing, and dancing, which form a very important part of village life. It seems that there is a funeral in some village in the region every weekend and they run Thursday through Saturday. Our village held one last weekend and since it was for a young man who had been murdered in the city by armed robbers, while driving his cab late at night, there was a big crowd of young people in from the city of Accra- 2-3 hours by car without traffic. Thursday afternoon/night was a quieter night and more for the women, while by Friday 400-500 people at least were in attendance, dancing, singing there way to a Saturday internment like only Ewe people can do. We are made welcome at these events with consistent enthusiasm, but do provide entertainment with our attempts at Ewe dance moves, of which Ewe people spend years developing unique styles that they vary for funerals, shrine worship, or general merrymaking. Since this person was young, people wore black and or red as this was a tragic untimely death.
The weekend before we attended the Friday dancing for a funeral in a adjoining village for an older person where people wore the standard white with black detail,as this is seen as a more natural process, as the deceased will be joining one's cadre of ancestors who watch over the material world and help out as they are able. Immediate family (which can be a lot of people in a polygamous culture) wear robes, dresses, and cloth wraps made of the same cloth specifically for the event, which often takes a month or so to organize. The event is expensive and people join funeral societies, most often in their late twenties, paying monthly fees and contributing to ongoing funerals in a sort of funeral insurance plan. About 20 people play drums and other percussive instruments for many hours at a time while people dance and sing songs selected by a designated song leader, who holds a horsehair pointer.
After three days and nights of funeral, Sunday was shrine worship day, which started a bit late - 10:30 am -ish due to rain, but runs to about 7:30/ 8:00PM. The village elders attend / preside at most of these events as well as other duties. There are a number of people in their 80s-90s and even over one hundred years of age who still function and contribute productively in village life. we spent the last few days trying to find people withy free time to interview for an assignment that generates information on change in village musical arts.
That is all for now. I need to get some French lessons. I hope everything is going well for you and will try and get more regular posts up- there was no internet in the village.
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