The Stilted Chameleon

We’d Benin the country too long. It was time Togo. Unable to speak French, these are the kinds of terrible puns that two thirds of us have been amusing ourselves with for the past five days. We left on Wednesday morning and took a tro-tro to Madina market. On the way there, as a man in a suit got up to leave, we noticed that he had left a plastic bag on his seat. No big deal, until we noticed that it was filled with several stacks of cash. Oh, dear. We watched the top of his head disappear deeper and deeper into the writhing crowd and because our driver refused to stop or turn around, we all just sat there for a while, in a small moral panic, wondering what the best way to get it back to him would be. Suddenly, about ten minutes later, in the middle of an entirely different throng of people, a Ghanaian woman in what I might add was a stunningly beautiful dress hops out of the car, tells the driver to wait, and within thirty seconds she's back with the same guy from before, who is now grinning sheepishly and thanking everyone. And all is well. And I guess that's just how Ghana works sometimes.

Well, then we take another tro-tro to Togo (the tongue twisters are endless) for about five or six dollars, and by the time we arrive at the beachside border, the sun is setting, everyone is speaking French very quickly, and there are motorcycles everywhere. We stayed in a hotel in Lomé called Le Galleon and ate real baguettes for the first time in months, along with delicious desserts and a drink called "Pamplemousse", which means 'grapefruit' in French. Pamplemousse is just about the greatest word I've ever heard, at once charming and totally unnecessary, and it inspired yet another long chain of tongue twisters and terrible puns.

The next morning, we went to see the marketplace and the Catholic church, and finally ended up at some kind of resort on a gorgeous lake, where we drank more Pamplemousse and witnessed two crocodiles having a very private moment. Wink wink, say no more. From there, we took a pirogue (gondola…canoe?) across the lake to Togoville, a very quiet, lantern-lit town where you can just barely see the Milky Way. The town looked different in the morning, but just as beautiful with strange Voodoo shrines and goats perched on tombstones. We spent a little while roaming around and then took a taxi into a village called Vogan, which boasts one of the largest Voodoo markets in West Africa.

It took us quite a while to get deep enough into the market, past the regular assortment of pineapples (or could these be… Voodoo pineapples?) and pottery (Juju pottery?) but sure enough, once we found it, we knew we weren't in Kansas anymore. There were rows upon rows of beaks, claws, monkey heads, cheetah heads, skins of all kinds, dried chameleon corpses, porcupine quills, skulls and wooden dolls, all spread out casually on blankets. It obviously wasn't for the tourists, either. Someone simply goes to the market, buys some palm oil, a few tomatoes, a dried snake, maybe, and a new sponge.

After standing there slack-jawed and eventually agreeing to let a live chameleon crawl across my knuckles for a few minutes, I tried to have a few things explained to me. My French is pretty watery, though, and I had to rely mostly on nonverbal communication, which can be pretty ambiguous when you're talking about fetish ceremonies and someone's fortune. Eventually I gave up and settled for embracing the mystery of it all, and we went on our merry way.

The Merry Way ended up leading to Benin, which was another bureaucratic shuffle over a new border, and with that came another avalanche of taxi drivers trying in vain to convince me of something I couldn't quite understand. Je ne parle Francaise. Desolée. But with the help of Miriam and Rebecca, our two Francophiles, we made it to a beautiful hotel on the beach with an Olympic-sized swimming pool, four-post beds in the bungalows, and, yes, naturally, more Pamplemousse.

The luxurious and rewarding destination was preceded, though, by a pretty unsavory journey that included a forty-five minute argument with a taxi driver who tried to rip us off, throwing a tantrum when we refused to pay above the agreed price. He literally stomped his feet on the floor and ended up grabbing Rebecca’s luggage and locking it in his car, in some kind of second grade attempt to establish his dominance. Neener neener neener. We conceded, sadly, and paid him the extra money to just leave us alone. But the rest of the night was wonderful, and we made full use of the pool and its three diving boards under the stars.

The next morning, we headed into Ouidah, which we were told was the birthplace of Voodoo. After breakfast we walked into the allegedly sacred but wonderfully kitschy Temple des Serpents, where we were led through a small structure into a room with about fifty pythons writhing around on the floor. Those of us who were interested got to wrap them around our necks, which was incredible, while a man told us (in English... phew) about the history of deep reverence for the python in their culture. The snake is powerful because he preceded man, and because his entire body touches the earth at all times. When asked what they feed the pythons, the man casually replied that they are let out into the village every night to feed themselves, and men are paid to capture them and bring them back. Bizarre! I tried to imagine what we would have done if we’d seen one slithering around the corner the night before.

From there, we took motorcycle taxis across the country toward Ganvie, a stilt village near the Nigerian border that has been called the Venice of Benin. Don't worry, Mom, we were all wearing helmets and knee pads and elbow guards and life jackets and plenty of sunscreen and fanny packs with first aid kits and flares in them. Say no more. Once we reached the shoreline, we climbed into another pirogue, except this one had a sail, and adorably enough that sail was a 1970s snoopy sheet. The sun was setting by the time we made it across the lake into the village itself, and the entire sky was pink and orange, reflecting on the water. I had imagined a stilt village as a very tall one, where we would find houses towering above us as we creaked and twisted through the wooden beams. Instead, the stilts were underwater, which makes far more sense. We all climbed from the boat into a red hotel called Chez Raphael that felt very much like an incredibly still ship, which in retrospect I guess it was. The entire place was all creaky wood and strange colors, paintings and cluttered cabinets and lace-topped tables, as if an eccentric family had lived there for years and just decided hey, why not let people stay here with us if they're so damn interested in our lives and our stilts.

So we did stay there, and ate dinner of cous-cous et Pamplemousse, for the culinarily curious among you. From the window (which was actually just a door) you could sit and look out at the shimmering water all around and beneath you, something I spent most of the night doing, since it was a furnace under the mosquito net next to two other people. Every so often, around 3am, a confused rooster would crow, or a boat with a tiny lantern would appear from the dark and glide by silently, pushing slow ripples through the star-dappled lake.

Our tour of the village and ride back to shore occurred the next morning at dawn, when we all yawned and "unnnnghhh"-ed our way out of bed after an hour or so of sleep and crawled into our third and final pirogue. We were led through water lilies and crooked sticks into each area of the village, and it was really surreal and beautiful to see so many people gliding softly through their neighborhood in boats, conducting business in boats, with children learning to use the paddles and the occasional old man with a toothless grin yelling "bonjour!"

Back on land meant more baguettes and more moto-taxis through the markets, over the hills and across the fields. We took a taxi (six of us, plus the driver, crammed into an old stationwagon for over five hours) all the way across the border again into Togo, where we made one last stop at Le Galleon for one last round of Pamplemousse et chocolate mousse, and walked across the beach to the Togo-Ghana border. It was then and only then that we realized the two boys had bought single-entry visas to Ghana. Double Merde. So it went a little something like this: we argued and pleaded for about thirty minutes, the girls batting eyelashes and the boys pulling every card from the deck ranging from accusations of sexism to not-so-subtle bribery. They were officially denied entry and told they had to sleep in not-quite-Togo not-quite-Ghana limbo for the night and buy new visas in the morning. Deciding it was worth a shot to at least try to make a run for it, we tiptoed to the road around the back of the office that led straight to the border itself, where, to our surprise and delight, the guard just waved us all across merrily, saying "Americanos! Keep your passports! Go go go go go!" and grinning, not at all realizing that he had just made our day and paved the way for two pseudo-fugitives.

There was no time to purchase fake mustaches or uncork a bottle of champagne, so we settled for grabbing the first tro-tro we could find and heading home, exhausted and giddy and oui, very much on the lam. And Jacques had Jill and naught went ill and the man had his mare again and all was well. And I guess that's just how Ghana works sometimes. Le fin.