Tô in Togo

We have now been in Togo for a week and are nicely settled. Our base is in Dapaong, in the North West (that’s top left Tom) around 30km from both Burkina Faso and Ghana. We are helping out at CLET (which stands for something, but it is French so shouldn’t be repeated), a theological college.

 
Dapaong is a small town with a bustling market spread out over 5 odd miles. There are few cars here, but many motorcycles. Rather wonderfully, transport consists of ‘Taxi-motos’, where the passenger is relegated to the role of pillion passenger. Helmets are obligatory and we have yet to see one. Joanna is terrified every time we get on a bike but the thought of the 5 mile walk into town in 35 degree heat nicely does the trick. Dapaong is also not on the tourist circuit. Since we have been here we have seen perhaps 4 white people, which means that we get as excitable as the local children in our reaction to these freaky looking individuals. In fact we are starting to feel as important as the Queen. As our car drives down the small roads hoards of children shout and wave frantically. Indeed, we are starting to wave like the Queen. You may have thought that he wave is more royal, but we can testify that it is easier. The Queen is obviously as lazy as we are…

Once again, it is very dusty, which has led to general haziness further exacerbated by the sun on the vegetation (in England you are on the rainy end of the water cycle, here we are in the transpiration stage) but this does mean that we have the classic African sun at sunrise and sunset.

It is extremely hot here, with temperatures approaching 36 degrees. We are starting to understand the terms ‘sun beating down’ and ‘oppressive heat’. To step outside is to enter a Mercurian climate of superheated gasses (staying inside isn’t much better). What this really is is self justification of our tendency to have afternoon siestas. One should also remember that it is winter here, temperatures will increase by 10 degrees over the next few weeks, when we shall melt. Sharing the universal human quality of not being happy with your lot, the people here complain that it is cold and are visibly shocked that we think it is hot.

Again the people are incredibly friendly – we have had two meals at peoples houses already and there is the prospect of many more to come (which is where the Tô comes in as we had it at one of the houses. Tô is a bit like pate, and no doubt will have its spelling corrected in due course by Burgers). We shall introduce you to the local characters next week. We are greeted by everyone we pass when we walk anywhere with ‘Bon arrivee’, and we also find ourselves waving to children who stand by the paths (some of whom are too scared to touch us!).

Our duties here are to teach the students English to the point where they can read theological books. To do this we have 16 lessons, and so we are concentrating on having fun. Brilliantly, they have no interest in accountants, and so Edd’s projects include fitting fans to rooms and painting.

However, as previously alluded to, French is spoken here, and so we are learning it as fast as we can (which is slowly). They say that to learn another language is to open a new window onto the soul, and whilst it would be bad to open French windows (let in too many mosquitoes for a start), we think that it is okay to learn it here as the French culture is somewhat diluted by West Africanism. Irksomely, Edd has been told (many times!) that I am lucky to have Joanna to teach me French, as her French is so obviously better than mine (although Edd likes to think of us as possessing equal ability).

Ouagadougou

We have been in Ouagadougou for a week with James, on the way to Togo where we shall spend a few months, Ouaga (as the cool kids – Jo - call it) for those of you who do not know, is the capital of Burkina Faso (Burkina), lying 300m above sea level, N12o, W001o (so yes, English time). Burkina Faso, according to our guide book, is the third poorest country in the world; although the internet disputes this. In any case, its list of assets (ignoring the population) is as follows:

Sand

Burkina is very hot, even though it is winter here and the locals complain that it is cold, reaching a meagre 35o during the day when they have to have siestas because it is too hot, wimps. Fortunately it is a dry heat. James was a missionary here for a few years, and so knows his way around. He eventually got fired for (the horror) planting a church.

The Burkinabe (as the people are known) are a very welcoming and friendly bunch. Their most obvious feature being tribal facial scars (so you can identify if any of your tribes children have been captured for slaves). Their ex-president, Tomas Ombati was described as the Che Guevara of Africa. As far as I can tell, apart from being a socialist he was not that similar. But anyway, he appears (unusually for Africa) to not have stolen everything that he could and to actually have done quite a lot of good for his people, probably why he was assassinated. One of his projects was to build a big market place (resembling a giant concrete Souk) to get the traders off the streets. This we visited on Friday, where James told the locals that Edd liked a particularly fetching and garish pair of trousers resulting in Edd being tailed by a mob of trouser waving locals. Needless to say we did not buy anything.

We also went around to a friend of James, Sam, who is a tailor. He is making Edd a shirt and Jo a dress, results still to be established but eagerly anticipated. Sam and his wife live in a small house in Ouaga and are dreadfully poor. We gave them wine and beer and boozed the night away. We also had our first taste of Pat, which is like Ugali in the fact that it made out of maize but is a little bit more jelly like. We must confess that neither of us are particularly keen on it but it is preferred to Ugali.

The next day we went to the church, to be met by the congregation, who were annoyed that we had not told them when we were arriving – they wanted to meet us at the airport. We then visitied two villages, located down small paths (which we travelled in our BMW 3 series taxi, squeezing 4 grown men across the back seat). In the villages James gave small talks to the crowds that gathered (a recurring question is ‘is it true that Christians are not allowed to drink alcohol – answer no, to much relief) and in one village we met the chief! We also started to find out that Berkinabe culture is much, much more complicated than European culture. For example, one is not allowed to sit on the giant pestle and mortars dotted around the place, or ‘don’t stand there, it is forbidden, it is a grave’. Again, the people were excited to see us, but it was hard to see so many children suffering from malnutrition, mainly protein deficiencies as they are too poor to eat meat often. A visit to the Carnivore would go a long way…

On Sunday we had a feast after church consisting of delicious chicken soup, along with rice, pima and rohm. Pima is an incredibly spicy pickle, which made my eyes water and earned Edd the epithet ‘Frenchie’ due to his extreme wimpyness, whilst rohm is the local beer, made of the corn husks and much stronger than it looked. James, Jo and I shared a cup, and my stomach was pleasantly warm for hours. The children dived on our chicken bones when we left. We are incredibly lucky in the West (a weird phrase seeing as you are mostly east of us!).

We were also invited to a group of women and children in the afternoon. They wanted a church to be built, but they also had many other requests (as white people are so rich). There were many tales of woe, most of the children were orphans and the women have been displaced (due to flooding) and some were visibly extremely sick. James declined to tell us all that had occurred and was visibly subdued afterwards. One could become a full time, fully funded social worker and not even scratch the surface here.

Monday morning dawned with James, bent double poking his head from his bedroom, and croaking ‘need help, get coke’. Which Edd thought was hilarious 7.00 am conversation, until he said he had spent the night being sick. One does have to enjoy the fact that Edd gets the wimpy ‘Frenchie’ nickname, but Butch there is the one who is ill. This meant that we accompanied Pascal, the eight language speaking teacher who translates books for fun to try to buy a computer so that he can type up his work (there are notebooks full of his work), whilst James slept. We failed in our task. Due to high import taxes the cheapest laptop was above $1,000, which Edd is far too stingy to pay.

One of the things about Africans is that they can be more innocent than us tourists. We got slightly stung by what can only be described as a cartel of shop owners, and whilst Jo and Edd were irritated (but not surprised), Pascal was shocked that people should be dishonest.

Anyway we have had a very good time in Ouaga, especially visiting all the restaurants. It turns out that being a French colony has its advantages as the food is fantastic! Pastries every morning and a good selection of European food for the evening. We have even tasted frogs legs which are great in garlic and butter.

We are off to Dapong in Togo tomorrow, so we shall see what the future holds then. Adieu for now.

The Carnivore Restaurant

It has been a while since we wrote our blog, which begs the question (asked in a weary voice) ‘where to begin? Where to begin?’

Well, let me start at the beginning. We had a house in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong hills. The equator runs through these hills, a hundred miles to the north. But more pertinently, a few miles away is a restaurant. And not just any restaurant, but the Carnivore! A place that had to be visited before we departed for Togo.

You will obviously know that Kenya is proud of its carnivores. Lions, hyenas, cheetahs, et al., compete to see who can eat the cutest/most baby animals and get the most face time on television, or snuggle up to Ussain Bolt (for those who don’t know Ussain Bolt raced against a cheetah in Nairobi a few weeks ago).

Well, at the Carnivore restaurant, similar things happen, (but without the TV). It is an eaterie dedicated to meat, and doesn’t do vegetables. Wonderful.

We went with James and his in-laws. As things like this should be male only occasions, all women (with the exception of Joanna who grew a beard for the day) were left behind. Babbling excitedly we entered the Restaurant, passing a big barbeque on which a vast amount of meat was roasting, before being shown to our table on which sat a small flag which we were told we should lower when we ‘surrendered’. We just stole it. Brilliantly, the chairs were zebra print, even though animal rights fairies had managed to get zebra (and most other bush meat) removed from the menu a while back. Now you have to go to South Africa if you want to eat zebra.

The principle is that you sit around a table, and joints of meat (all, and I mean all, the usual characters, as well as ostrich and crocodile) are brought to the table on Maasi swords and carved directly onto the plate by a profusion of waiters.

We ate until we couldn’t move, James wining the endurance award. Then we had pudding. Then we went home. Then we slept. And once the food had finished digesting we left for Ouagadougou (a gap, admittedly, of a few days).

Meru making

The day after our trip to Kibwezi, we found that we were once again in a matatu, hired for the weekend, on the way to Meru, and the subject of 15 to 20 police checks on the trip up.

We dropped our bags at the Hotel Incredible (again, one of the plentiful misnomers in Kenya) before going to a small and very busy church in a small village for several baptisms. Here they demonstrated the awful reality of subsistence living, and stuffed us until we could barely move. We also met Jane Nkonge, an incorrigible and irrepressible church worker who had arranged our trip and was to be our guide.

In the evening, Jo was feeling unwell (suspected malaria), so James and I went to the pub (aren't I sympathetic) where we had our first encounter with the overly friendly deaf dumb barman. He took to us very quickly and started throwing sawdust on some prostitutes so that they would leave.

We also met a man who wanted us to take photos of his house (again one suspects miraa, which doesn't make one violent, but does make one wierd). Here he is with his wife and cow.

The next day we went to two churches. The plan was to visit the first for twenty minutes, before going to the second church. Best laid plans and all that...

When we arrived at the first church the matatu driver stated that he needed more money, or he wouldn't drive us anywhere. So we stayed for the service, whilst Jane tried to sort him out. This church was started in August. In this time they have built a building (no walls yet), and the congregation has grown to 103! Not bad huh.

Meanwhile the row over the matatu was getting more and more acrimonious. The driver called the police, and whilst we as white people would have been in the wrong, I got rather excited about the coming confrontation with the law. Unfortunately, Jane knew the policeman’s boss, and so nothing happened. Maybe later in our trip.

Then we went to another church in a banana plantation which was cool, but a long drive down a muddy and bumpy road. Due to the matatu dispute the service had finished, but everyone was patiently waiting for James to give his sermon. This was the third time for the sermon in two days, he was getting polished. Once again, they stuffed us, but fortunately it started raining, and we were told that we would have to get moving or we would get stuck. The upper road was already impassable, so we took the lower road.

It started to rain on the way back, but we were fine until we got to a hill. We slid our way up it, and at the top Jane said that we were past the worst bit and would be fine. At this point another hill hove into view, a hill we got stuck on. So out jumped the men (including Jane and Jo) to push in the pouring rain (I had hoped African culture would be more chauvinistic), and boy did we push, to no avail. Meanwhile, another matatu turned up, so we pushed some more. Eventually, our matatu rolled to the bottom of the hill, and we tried pushing from the bottom, only to get the matatu up with comparative ease.

The second matatu then had a go, and got stuck half way up. We pushed, and we pushed and we pushed again. Nothing happened. The suggestion that we start from the bottom was greeted with disdain (what do muzungos know about pushing matatus anyway), so we pushed and we pushed and we pushed. The tyres were totally bald, and were being left on the road as they span and sprayed all pushers with mud. Eventually, the Africans produced a rope. Once this had happened it was short work to get the matatu to the top, although we did have a conversation with an African who could not get his head around the fact that we were pushing a matatu and didn't want anything in return.

The next day we were due to return to Nairobi, but there was a matatu strike and so danger of violence.  As James would say, 'I wonder why they are being harassed; oh I know, because they drive death traps like dangerous lunatics, the morons'. So we stayed in Meru and ate a kilo of meat each. I also got hippo poo, ask Margaret for details.

We also went back to the pub, where the deaf and dumb barman (with eyes like polished eight balls from the miraa) decided to drink with us, stopped someone’s pool game so that we could play almost provoking a mass brawl, and provoking the banning of pool for the evening by the manager. He then spent the evening conversing with James by writing on my leg with his hand (which remained when he wasn’t writing!), decided we were army helicopter pilots (and started miming to people that we were soldiers and that they had better shut up or we would shoot them), and then demanded that we pay for his drinks, before passing out. We took a photo and scarpered.

The next day the matatu strike was still on, but we left anyway getting an army escort at one point (this was a bloke in an old golf, so unimpressive I didn’t even bother trying to take a photo), and arrived home safely, before watching ‘Cars’. Shrek is better.

Kippin' in Kibwezi

It has been a long time since we last wrote on the blog. This has to do with inability, inactivity, and laziness. Let me expound upon the reasons, and be dazzled by my soaring rhetoric. Alae jacta est and all that, here we go.

Boxing day saw us, along with countless others, dreaming a dream. In this dream there was hope, hope which soars like eagles into a better world. Hope which changes, change we can believe in... (yawn).

Then the alarm went off, because the Rev'd Samwel Atunga had organised a trip to see the people in Kibwezi, three or four hours away and we had to be there in time for church. Weirdly, upon emerging from our troglodyte den, we found that many Kenyans were up and about already, it could have been any usual day (but we knew different, because of the dream).

Off into town we went (on a matatu no less, we have changed, change you can believe in), before getting into another matatu! and heading to Kibwezi.

Kibwezi is a very poor area of Kenya, with no industry to speak of. The town consists of a few streets with stalls along either side, and unsold vegetables rotting in the street.  We stayed in a small guesthouse run by pentacostals, where they made the best ugali we have ever tasted. Comfortingly, they also had a Tesco so we didn't get homesick.

The surroundings are populated by subsistence farmers who are from the Kamba tribe and who have been moved from their homes to make room for the national parks. The problem that they have is that there is not enough rain. They have had a three year drought and all their animals have died. The village we were in, called Kibarani, had no running water and no wells, except to get salty water (therefore all the children have brown teeth). They also have no electricity, so as a result the place is beautifully peaceful. Although they are some of the poorest people in Kenya they definately have something that the rich in the west don't have and that is a fantastic community to live in.

Despite how little they had they were incredibly welcoming, and looked after us very well, feeding us more than necessary and way more than Jo could eat. Fortunately it rained just before we went and so their crops were growing (very fast). Before it was just a dust bowl.  In fact they hardly have anything except land to grow their crops. Here we ate our first baobab fruit (tastes like sweets, quite uncanny), learned that mangos do not need to be peeled to be eaten, and met many orphans and their parents. We were also an unusal sight. Children either cried when they saw us or screamed 'Muzungu' and giggled a lot. It was amazing to think that some children here have never seen a white person in their lives. Sadly they do not have the money to send their children to school, as whilst it is free, they have to buy uniforms and books, a task that is well beyond them, especailly considering that they have not had a good havest in three years.  If anyone wants to sponsor a child, it would cost less than Compassion...

We also spent time with Atungas family, a charming bunch. Rather wonderfully, we hired a matatu to take us to Tsavo East Park. Having managed to get into the park on residents rates (they trusted that Atunga as a priest would not mislead them), we proceeded at 80 kilometres per hour into the heart of the park, mowing down birds as we went (we saw their bodies on the way back). Not much wildlife was seen, partly because the road was bumpy and the constituent parts of the matatu vibrated in different directions, loudly. Having said that, Tsavo park is beautiful, and we did see some lava flows and a very large spring, complete with hippos and crocodiles.  On the way back we ran over a snake. Still no lions or elephants.

Another day we spent swimming and relaxing with not much to report, baring the trip back.   I had their 3 year old Juma on my lap in the matatu (it was rather crowded), when a bloke gets in chewing sticks.  This turned out to be the drug miraa (qat). When he told us this Juma slapped him in the face. I, of course was greatly amused by this, as was the driver. Ahhh, kids.

We spent a couple more days in Kibwezi, visiting the congregation at Kabarani, wondering around there homesteads and learning more about their way of life. (Edd secretly suspects they hide Ferraris in their mud huts.) We saw another Baptism and then return to Nairbo but this time not by Matatu but in a Toyota estate. All 10 of us crammed in.

Then we were home for an evening, with just enough time to check our e-mail, before not bothering to reply and going to bed. Then off to Meru, near Mount Kenya for an eventful few days...