Our visas are only valid for 60 days at a time so we either have to pay 40 Cedi each month to get them renewed… or leave the country. Tough choice… so today we went to Togo! It was only a day trip so we could keep costs down, but that meant that we could only spend so long across the border. It took about three hours to get there and hour and a half to cross into Togo (everything was ass-backwards: go here, then go there, then go back…) so we really only had about three hours to explore the country… Yep. So we took a taxi to the central market, wasted twenty minutes looking for lunch and then basically vegged out. We found a little hole of a restaurant and ordered lunch from a mixed menu. On one hand, there was couscous, on the other was fried chicken and Jollof, a Ghanaian staple. The couscous was awesomely regular but had a super delicious buttery cabbage soup as a side!
After lunch we had about 45 minutes to wander around before finding a ride back. The market in Lome sells much of the same things as those in Ghana, but with some distinct differences. Instead of people selling huge loafs of bread, it was tasty, crunchy baguettes! There were swarms of motorcycle taxis everywhere instead of cabs. Plus there was that tiny little French language problem. We did manage to find the BEST street food I’ve ever had, a baguette with chunky avocado, onion, lime and oil. Hoooo, we ate a whole one of those and brought another and two plain baguettes home! I’m really looking forward to needing to renew my visa again!
Sunday was another adventure day. We’ve been assigned this GIGANTIC research group project in psychology of religion. My topic is to compare the leaders of Christianity, Islam and Traditionalism. So of course, when our group split up to do interviews another study abroad student and I jumped at the chance to interview a few traditional priests! We went with a Ghanaian who knew his way around traditionalism to Jamestown and met with three priests. The first reminded me of my uncle, it was really weird. But each of them said a few of the same things. The first thing that each of them said was that they were appointed, by god, to the role. To be a traditional priest, you have to be born the oldest son of a practicing priest. So it’s thought that God chooses and directs a soul to fill the first baby of a priest. A good deal, but is lineage really all that a person needs to become a priest? Traditionalism is also one of those religions that believes there is a spirit for everything (trees, rocks houses, toothpicks, etc.) and that the spirit of the world, the one that keeps other spirits in and turns the globe and all that, is Djemawon. So basically how the religion works, is the people offer something to the priest asking for help, the priest offers something else to Djemawon asking for advice, and then Djemawon speaks to God, who in turn tells the priest what should be done.
We finished the three interviews and Miriam (studying here from Norway) and I went to the Accra vs. Kumasi soccer match downtown! This was seriously the biggest deal in the world to everyone in Accra. Apparently, the grudge between Accra and Kumasi is bigger than that between the Packers and the Vikings, and craaaaap did we see it! People were getting pissed at others that were standing in the way and punches were thrown. After the game cars all the way back were honking like mad, flags were hanging from side mirrors and taxi drivers were charging more to people from the opposite team! Accra lost pretty badly so a lot of people were sour for the rest of the day. But it was still awesome to see!
PS. I promise updates are coming about another football game and our trip up north!
never a dull moment at those games?!?! very interesting!
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