ghannnna

it?s not easy to get there but then we realised why is that. first we were refused a visa on the border and we were sent off to the ghana embassy in lome (togo?s capital, on the border with ghana). at the embassy we were sent off to the border because it was 5 minutes after the closing time. at the border we were sent off to the embassy again but the embassy was closed. so the whole bus (it was a student trip, remember? ? 19 people in a 14-seat minibus) turned around and went to the university of lome to ask if we can spend the night there (to apply for the visa the next day). it was the day of the change of government so the atmosphere was tense (during the last presidential elections in togo there were serious riots) so they didn?t want us there. so we decided that the group will continue the journey to accra and me and meike will stay for the night in lome. fortunately there was dawid, a polish student i met during eke ekpe, on internship in lome. we spent the night at his place and the next day all three of us (he decided to join us) went to the embassy. we visited the embassy 4 times altogether but finally we got the visa and safely arrived to accra (achimota station) in the evening. there the students picked us up and our ghana experience started!!

our merry company

my head is full of different thoughts after this trip but there are 3 that are the clearest ones /shit, my english is totally french-influenced. i hope, it won?t last. sorry/
*the beauty of ghana
*really developing country
*total cultural shock

...but still it's too much to write about. wait 10 days and i'll tell it all personally!!!

accra

TG (richard) shows off making pate noir (manioc porridge) / Peace-O spoiled by constant attention of everyone

us /you-know-who, grace, dawid and tg (my husband but apparently taken. shit)

3in1

hurray!!! finally!!! we presented our project and the very next day we drove our bosses to the airport and now it?s the non-stop party in their apartment!!! dolce vita :)

i don?t know why but apparently it?s easier for me to write about events in threes.
this time these are: epe ekpe, fete in the village (along with the presentation of our project) and the departure of our bosses (seriously:))!!!

epe ekpe. the day of the stone. kind of togolaise (what?s the adjective for something coming from togo???) groundhog day. first day of the goun?s (?) year. lots and lots of adepts of voodoo come to one tiny village in togo, right next to the beninian border. they sing, dance and wash themselves in sacred water (with special herbs). then they are ready to go to the sacred forest and pick one of a few stones of different colours. if they didn?t perform the rituals correctly, the stone will vanish when they try to touch it. the color of the stone predicts the weather for the next year. this time it was white, meaning lots of rain and peace in the country. after last year?s bloody elections and with the former dictator?s son as a president, it?s hard to imagine that the prediction could be different.

it?s a big ceremony with lot?s of medias and yovos (lots here means about 15). i went there alone and met with bartek on the spot. it was great! and the benin-togo border is amazing ? a big marketplace where tomatoes are visibly larger on the togo side!

presentation and fete. last saturday we organized a small conference of people involved in alternative forms of tourism in benin. we got about 11 confirmations and got ready to present our project and animate a discussion afterwards. one person came on time. two others were late. about three hours after the beginning another three came. welcome to benin. but still it was good. some friends came, so our lovely conference hall wasn?t empty and the discussion was very interesting and inspiring (even too much ? now we want to change the whole conception of the project?shit, three weeks left and there?s soo much work to be done?).
our lovely conference hall under a bread tree. empty and full :)

then it was a fete (kind of party) in the village. the people of kpotome demanded a long time ago a fete to introduce pantodon to the village. due to many different factors, the fete took place last saturday, right after the presentation. the fete was short and intense: dances of wonderful young dancers, speeches (of pantodonians and the chef de village), soda bi (vodka made of palm wine), food and dances again. the chief drum player was the zongbeto leader and a mason. dancing boys made the same movements as sakpata dancers.

and now seriously. it?s funny to drive to the airport the person that welcomed and hosted you somewhere. but we did it. matial and damien are off to congo for a few days to consult on a fish project for the ministry of agriculture. they are accompanied by khamy, a smart paris/congolaise. as they say, when the cat is not there, the mice are dancing...but before they dance, they have to finish the work...:/



superjoli sidonie (leon's wife) and rouffet and (specially for lucia) the new dog at the farm. her name is Glupi Pies :)

and tomorrow to ghana!! me and meike are going with norliette and her fellow students on a student trip!!! cu in a week! yuppie!!!

pictures

first one guesswho with nath. second one meike with florentine, mr sossou's wife and a pool where the rain water is stored


and the picnic at the fidjorose beach in cotonou:)

party time

wednesday was the party time. first a picnic at the fidjrose beach in cotonou. great! music, good food, frisbee, dancing, playing in the ocean (most of the beninans can't swim, so we only played with the huge waves at the shore) and a wonderful walk with iesous (that's how i should spell "yesus"..., and "oras" is really horace, of course:)) with wave-jumping, racing, crab-hunting, picking shels for the aquariums and exploration of a beautiful pirogue; iesouos says it's made of baobab tree!

evening, meryas's birthday! (happy birthday, dude!! joyeux anniversaire!!!) again dancing, eating and drinking. and introductions in fon, english and french. totally adorable. kevin, damien's friend, definately the best salsa dancer i know:)

then soiree dansante of the students of agriculture (meaning norliette). sounded great but quater to midnight the music wasn't even on so i decided to go to sleep, because...

cinema odyssey

as most of you know very well, i adore going to the movies:) everywhere i am, i try to find a movie theatre. so from the very begging i was trying to trace down one here. and this is my story...:)

...there are no cinemas in calavi
...there are 3 in cotonou: benin, concord and some other
...cinema benin is no longer a cinema, it's a church for some popumlar sect
...cinema concord shows only a few movies weekly, hard to find out when exactly
...nobody knows anything about the third cinema...
...hope! there're "salles video" - private rooms with a tv, showing a few movies daily, entrance at less than 20cents
...there's one at a marketplace close to our's place!
...first tryout: meike and me went to the salle video, liked the movie, entered, were greeted traditionally by the family with water, waited and waited because the electricity was out (as usuall) in the whole zone, waited... and went home without watching a single second of a movie:/
...second tryout: as above, the electricity was there this time. we were seated on a bench in a tiny, provisoric shed. the video cd kept breaking down but finally we've changed the movie and the other one worked. the movie was a bollywood fantastic thriller. we left before the end...

go to togo

the last three days in the mono-kouffo departament (close to the border with togo) and partly in togo (driving tiny roads, we crossed the border without being noticed by anyone who might care...). trip was organized by prof. sossou, damien's friend.

so welcome to:
TOGO ADVENTURES

featuring: the blue vehi-recule ("reverse-car") & the crew:

• meike
• nathalie
• patrick
• florentine (m.sossou's wife)
• cloie ("le facilitateur")
• kasiou

screenshots:
+dancing: with women singing and claping their hands (atchikpe?) in the village of kpevi, with the children there, during the ceremony of cocou (voudun), with young people in atomey (togo) to modern togolaise music, in an evangelic church on sunday

+cocou couvent with all the magical equipment and the ceremony - wonderful dancers in trance, in grass skirts, covered with white and yellow paint (made of corn flour and oil). one of them caught my hand and started to cut his forearm with a curved knife(they are all coverd with scars). i escaped.

+ organge trees, cashews, calebas trees, cotton& many many more plantations in the breathtaking scenery of west benin

+driving in our lovely vehi-recule. things working there-not many; things not working-side windows, speedometer, from time to time reverse gear, wipescreen (it's the rainy season, i remind you...). one of the highlights of this trip for me was driving the car on the sandy/muddy/full of huge holes laterite roads, in a heavy rain, with my head sticked out the side window to see something (without the wipescreen the windscreen was of no use). then driving it at night, with only one feeble light, in the crazy beninian traffic (with people having their long lights on all the time and motorbikes driving often with no lights at all). no accident!!:)

+long discussions about the politics, the situation of women, the life

+police marking their posts at night with red buckets with oil-lamps inside. witty:)

and many many more. now in ab-cal again. gatting things ready before the big day (saturday) - alternative tourism conference and fete in the village!!!

the small rainy season

in the south there are two rainy seasons: big and small. now it's the small one starting. we've already noticed that it's the small seasons of big rains not the big season of small rains... :)

it rains and rains - heavily or lightly but since sunday almost all the time. when it stops, it gets instantly hot and humid. everything dries immediately (fortunately, our cloths too...) and then it starts raining again... all the roads are paddles of mud (what's more, there're some roads that were repaired last week, so the ground is soft and likely to be washed away), short trip on zem means you're all covered with mud, washing clothes is a risky business (will it dry or not?), air is thick...

but the people live with it. as they live with electricity crisis which happen from time to time. light goes out in the whole zone for half an hour or so. funny thing, yesterday i was working in the office when the electricity went out. while i was trying to find a torch, vivid discussion next door didn't stop even for a second. i thought they still have their light on, but next door it was also dark. they just didn't care:)

update

sooo many things going on that's hard to keep you up to date...

first, sorry but things i got to know about voudun are just too many to explain it properly. and i don't want to confuse anyone... let me just say, that on thursday bartek bumped into another ceremony - and of another voudun and on friday, at a marketplace in godomey i saw zongbetos again. this time they were three: one regular, one made of banan leaves (it's a cheap and fast version - to be made in an hour or two; when needed) and one huge, with three statuettes (usually there is one).

if you're crossed with somebody, he may complain to the chief of voudun who will come to your home or stand at a marketplace and block it with sticks. if you try to pass under them, bad things will happen. the chief will remove them when you reconcile with the person and give some money for the cult.

damien organized a soiree of geopolitics - discussion, or rather lecture of one of his friends, ahmed. extremely interesting!!! and one thing for which we owe a lot of respect to benin:
PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS 2006:
it's a long and complicated story, but in brief: kerekou, the former president (ruling much much longer than he should) was rather reluctant to organize elections which should take place in spring 2006. he didn't refuse directly but he refused to give money for the organization. but the young people were so motivated that at the day of the first round they brought they own tables, chairs, blackboards to count the votes etc. and it worked! then, when the second round was supposed to be organized, kerekou announced it ONE day in advance. but the people didn't give up. they decided to do their best and they succeded in organizing elections in one day (transporting voting sheets and all documents needed from the capital to all of the regions, even far north). and kerekou lost. now it's yai boni and "the change". people are hopefull. viva la democratie!!!


oooh... that's my birthday... a nice evening with beer and fruits at home friday night, sunny, beautiful saturday with patrick's fantastic omlette in the morning and a little party at the farm in the evening. party was celebrated with a super-salade, supervised by damien. hmmm. as always in benin, we added piment (spicy spicy spicy thing). if you cut it and then touch your eyes, you're lost. for me it was enough to cut it and i spend the rest of the evening with my hands burning like hell, with my only hope - the bucket of water... but still, it was nice:) playing cards and taking a little walk in te moonlight around the farm...
sunday-third day of celebrations:) early in the morning motorbike driving lesson, fishing, sleeping and having fun during the long rainy afternoon, way home in the rain with nothing to wipe the windscreen and a fete in the evening prepared by patrick, thierry and idris. world champions in cooking!!!


and yesus - the acrobat!

voodoo here voodoo there

bartek, the photographer www.bartwrzesniowski.com, apart from shooting pictures at the farm, hunts also voodoo (voudun). he's a real porte-bonheur, cause it came out that voudun's everywhere...



on the left, the ceremony of zongbeto (guardian of the night), organised for us by the people of kpotome, right next to the farm. lots of music and dance. this time i could see the feet of zongbeto. tsss...

on the right, at the same day, ceremony of sapatos (protecting homes) in zinvie. we were lucky!! a rough discussion with local crooks wanting to make money on us, but in the end - beautiful dance!!!

more about voudun soon (when i find a bit of time to type all that i learned...)

more

sooo... time for some more: let's start with some photos. lucia, for you meike&kasia with braids:)