1) Guacamole on fresh baguettes.
2) Taxis didn’t honk at us. They didn’t try to over charge us. They didn’t lie about knowing where things were.
3) The gutters were covered.
4) No one came up to us for the sole purpose of speaking to us in a language we didn’t understand and laughing at our blank stares.
5) People gave us space. They didn’t stare. They didn’t yell. They didn’t mob. They didn’t harass.
6) Their Fanchocos (frozen chocolate milks) tasted like if you somehow made a brownie into the best ice cream ever.
7) The air smelled delicious and not like fish and sewage.
8) We weren’t dragged into one shop.
9) I got to speak French. (Kind of.)
10) Everyone went above and beyond and out of their way to help us. Whether it was figuring out where we were going in our broken French or getting us to the closest bakery stat, everyone was full of hospitality like I’ve never seen in my life.
The best example of this was our taxi driver from the mountain where we took the hike back down to Lome, the city on the border of Ghana. It was a shared taxi, which means there is a set price and a set route. He got to the end of his line when we asked him where the nearest bakery was.
He told us to get back in the Taxi and he’d take us. We asked him how much and he said no no. We thought he was doing the Ghana thing where people don’t want to tell you the price to get somewhere and then try to charge you an arm and a leg upon arrival. What he was actually saying was that he would take us there for free.
Once we got to the bakery he told us he wanted to walk us in. He walked us in on his injured foot and asked where we were going next. We said the border but that we’d probably just take motos (motorcycle taxis. Oh add that to the list. Motos are the greatest). He once again said this was no good. I thought he was wanting to guilt us into paying him to take us to the border in exchange for his kindness (vehicles are 2-3 more times expensive than motos).
Wrong again, he thought leaving us on our own with no ride was no good. So he asked the owner of the bakery to call and negotiate motos for us when we were done eating. He then shook our hands and headed out.
My heart was all warm and happy, and those were the kinds of things that happened consistently all weekend.
Togo, you’re the best.
beach, baguette, birkies
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