Cape Coast

The waves of euphoria and sheer horror that swept over me as I surged through unknown territories were just as apparent in Cape Coast as during any other part of my travels. One moment I could be filled with joy and wanting to sing from the palm tree tops, and the next I could be totally paralysed by revulsion.

The Cape Coast Castle was the source my dread. Wide, foreboding ramparts confronted the ocean: the tyrannical canons defying passing ships to even blink at its impenetrable walls. The castle had to both contain the hundreds of slaves caged within, and stave off other greedy slave merchants. Nations squabbled over human life like hyenas ripping the flesh off a dying animal.

The waiting cells’ suffocating blackness struck me: two hundred men would be cramped in this squalid darkness for months; clinging to life as they waited for ships named Liberation, Jesus, or the Virgin Mary to drag them to the unknown. The punishment chambers for the women who resisted rape felt hideously simple. However, ice burned up from my stomach; billowed into my lungs and petrified my brain as I entered the cell for the prisoners who had attempted to escape. The circular gouges in the floor betrayed the slaves’ futile flights for freedom as the continuously ground their chains into the rock face during their slow, laborious starvation. I noticed in passing that there was an ante-chamber for disobedient prison guards at the entrance to the cell. Clearly a sharing a few hours of slaves’ torment was enough to scar them once more into obedience.

Thankfully, the cloak of dread only remained within the prison walls: outside, Cape Coast simmered with life. I sat on the seashore and imagined surfboards licking the wave crests as they laughed amongst the swathes of swimmers: this was one of the coastlines where it was safe to bathe, and would be a surfer’s paradise.

Cape Coast was also a nest for other travellers. I met a fellow German adventurer; we scoured the town during that day, dodging through the kaleidoscope of colours, pungent smells and blaring gospel songs as thousands of evangelical Ghanaians danced for hours in an indefatigable frenzy of joy.

In the bar that evening, we met some local Ghanaians, who introduced us to Sodabi.  Taking a shot felt more like being clobbered over the head with the tree trunk than drinking distilled tree sap. I declined another. As the night wore on and the Sodabi flowed, the guy I was talking to became more and more convinced that we were destined for one another, that I should really be staying at his, and that marriage was the only logical option. Tragically it was not meant to be. Feeling grateful that my legs were indeed still functioning, I blundered my way back across the beach, ignoring the cries of other revellers draped around their dwindling fires, and found my nest for the night.

I discovered that the Rastafarian bamboo hut that I had booked was an acquired taste. The laid-back owner seemed vaguely offended as I turned down his spliff, but I realised afterwards that daubing a hazy lacquer over the powerful smell of rot, lack of electricity and running water would have been a welcome advantage. Shivering in my bamboo cot that night, I reminded myself that falling asleep to the sound of breakers seeping through the bamboo walls, with Bob Marley’s reincarnation in the hut next to me floating somewhere up in the stratosphere with his dog One Love (who was probably equally woozy from all the fumes) were adventures were all about.

Déjà Vu

Roaming the streets of Accra, I was beset by the same feeling of childlikeness that had overwhelmed me on my first day in Togo. This time however, it was spiked with incredulity. Accra felt shockingly similar to the UK. For a start, I was meandering down impeccably signposted streets that meticulously matched my tourist map! The city bloomed with aesthetically pleasing architecture. It had flyovers and amusement parks. Western brands blithered polished propaganda from every available billboard.

Everything was overwhelming. How could Accra have a National Theatre and a Symphony Orchestra, and a state of the art Health Service, when Lomé’s roads were first paved three years ago? How could a strip of barbed wire marking national perimeters sear such a void between these two universes?

I knew that the “positives of colonialism” do not exist. It is impossible to absolve the enslavement and subjugation of another human life. Yet there lies an undeniable disparity between these two French and British ex-colonies. Likewise, Nigeria, bordering Benin, is now an economic powerhouse, and a former British colony. I clung to these observations, in the hope that they could be shreds of acquittal that I could use to dab at the bloodstains saturating my nation’s history.

However, I knew that these flimsy excuses would be snatched from my fingers the moment that I ventured to Cape Coast. My visit to its infamous castle the following day would have innumerous horrors to disgorge about the colonial amorality committed within those walls.

At the same time, I hoped that there would also be euphoria drizzled into my emotional melting pot of horror and outrage and joy and sheer adrenaline. I was alive: there were so many new things to discover. Each morning, I awoke without the slightest idea of what was going to happen in the next twenty-four hours. Each day was an adventure. Each day I grew and learnt and flourished, as my view of the universe continually upended itself.

Waking up the next morning: excitedly preparing myself for the day’s events, I blissfully stowed all my possessions into my rucksack, and boarded a coach to Cape Coast. Had I have predicted the events that followed: the decisions and mistakes that I would make, I would have left the bus immediately, and caught the very next coach back to Lomé. 

Crossing the Border

I could have had a better start. The night before my trip ached painfully on as I tossed and turned between clouds of anxiety and pitiless mosquitos; all the whilst clogged in a layer of treacle-like humidity.

 The previous week’s waves of furious organisation and total paralysis finally reached their crescendo at half past four, with the ringing of my alarm. Shouldering my rucksack, I crept out the house with the first fingers of dawn sneaking over the rooftops. I hailed a bleary-eyed motorbike driver, and off we sped towards the border, the city stirring in our wake.

At the border, I found myself tossed like a fish between the jaws of predatory taxi drivers; each one plying their trade with terrifying insistency. Once I had finally succeeded in shaking myself free, and dodging swiftly between the currents of hand carts, market stalls and overladen trucks disgorging their produce onto the pavements, I plunged through a wall of air-conditioning, and into the Ghanaian border office.

As I had expected, they were far from pleased with my slab of cash posing as a Visa. I had been informed that what I was doing was technically legal: I was buying an “Emergency Visa”.

 Even so, I remembered to breathe only after my passport had been stamped. I was even handed a receipt.

Stepping over the border, feeling as secure as the wafer-thin scrap of paper that “legalised” my entry, I made my way to the nearest Accra-bound bus. Speaking English felt incredibly foreign. There was something equally bizarre about fixed prices and actual tickets, not to mention an entire seat to myself. I had grown accustomed to the Francophone chaos.

Waiting for the journey to start, and fighting the urge to dash back over the border, I reminded myself of why I was doing this. There was a tangible desire to fill my mind with new horizons, not to mention the empowerment that I felt as a young white woman exploring Africa alone.

However, my main motivation for visiting Ghana, and stepping further still out of my comfort zone was three letters: IJM.

I first heard of this charity four months ago.  I had been reading a book on prayer: completely unrelated to Human Rights or charity work, yet it contained an interview with a lawyer who worked for the “International Justice Mission”.

 Intrigued, I found their website. I discovered that they work with governments all over the world in order to help them transform their justice systems. Over the course of several decades, the poor suddenly receive inquests following a burglary of their land or property: rapists are condemned; child-traffickers are criminalised.

With IJM’s help, justice stops being a luxury.

The day after this discovery, during a car journey, my friend suddenly started talking about charity work; a topic that we had never previously breached. She informed me of an amazing charity called IJM that she was fundraising for, and raved about their success in drastically reducing child sex slavery in the Philippines.

Slightly disconcerted by hearing about this unknown charity two days in a row, I decided to put it to the back of my mind. Later that day, I picking up the topmost magazine lying on the coffee table and aimlessly flicked through it. A page fell open. It was an article written by the head of IJM.

I definitely prefer accepting things as coincidences; life is so much simpler without God sticking His nose in and making things exciting. Even so, there was something divinely fishy about the fact that three days ago I had never heard of IJM, yet it was brought to my attention from three consecutive events from three unexpected sources.

 When I discovered that IJM’s only West African office was located in Accra; a four-hour drive from where I would be staying in Togo, I knew that this was not something that I could ignore.

Telling God that He better be a good reason for all of this, I wrote IJM a letter to ask if I could pay them a visit.

Returning my mind back to the minibus, and the cacophony of sounds at the Togolese border, I suddenly felt very small and very overwhelmed.

 Although I knew that there were some incredible sights to visit, I had been dreading travelling to Ghana. This felt way too far out the safety net. The border crossing from Togo to Ghana was almost impenetrable (the Emergency Visa was the only way that I could cross). No Togolese person would be able to find US$150 to come over and bail me out of an emergency. Besides, I did not have a Ghanaian phone to call them with.  I did have the number of a friend’s Ghanaian business acquaintance, but other than that, I was very much on my own.

I had also been forewarned that travelling to an English colony could not differ more from travelling through a French one: visiting Ghana would be starting again from scratch.

My eyes returned to the window, and I realised that we were on the move. Backing out was no longer an option. Hugging my rucksack against my chest, I told God that He better know what He was doing, as I certainly did not.

Benin

I began my travelling feeling emotionally exhausted and craving a few days’ peace. The town of Ouidah, in Western Benin, gave me no such respite. No city that has its foundations soaked in blood: its streets carved by the footprints of millions upon millions of slaves, can ever be a place where hope and joy abounds.

Upon exploring the empty streets; a lone Yovo in a Beninese world, I was met with accusatory glares rather than welcoming smiles.

There is the perception that poverty leaves Africans with an intense inner joy: the simplicity of lifestyle; lack of “worries” in a family-orientated community somehow produces contentment and fullness of life. We Westerners, with our security and technology and vaguely stable futures, are the ones missing out.

This ideology was not something that rang true in Ouidah. Life seemed bitterly hard; most jobs involved either waiting fruitlessly in empty restaurants for non-existent tourists, or selling produce at the roadside that was so cheap I had no idea how it could ever equate to the price of household bills.

I had come to Ouidah for the “Walk of No Return”: the final 4km of the slaves’ epic exile out of Africa.

At the half way point, I arrived at the mass pit for the countless thousands of dead and dying slaves who had no hope of even reaching the shoreline. After months of trudging through the unbearable heat, they would be “fortunate” enough to die in their homeland.

What I found almost as horrendous as the mindless slaughter of thousands of innocent men, women and children, was the grave itself. The only commemorative efforts were a large slab of concrete and a tacky tiled plaque. The Beninese government simply did not the money to sufficiently honour their memories. This felt like tragedy upon tragedy. Has Benin not been able to move forwards in all of this time?

I progressed to the “Tree of Forgetting” which men walked around nine times and women only seven. This was a ritual to “forget” their past African lives; to forget that they were ever considered as human beings. From this moment on they were reduced to servile beasts.

Reflecting upon all of this, I had no idea why their hearts resolutely continued to pump blood around their exhausted bodies; why each foot was determined to carve yet another small imprint on the unrelenting path before it. The past, their freedom, was now an unattainable memory, and each new day brought with it a fresh onslaught of nightmares. Yet, despite full knowledge of this, countless millions continued their desperate existence.

During my walk, a memory from my taxi ride to Ouidah resurfaced. My stunned brain had discarded it; refusing to accept it as truth. However, as the series of events bubbled resolutely to the surface, their absolute clarity forced me to readdress them.

On this particular roadside stop, (which up until now had either been for food or to tip a bottle of something that I hoped was petrol into the fuel tank), we were met by a round-faced girl. Looking at her, I nostalgically remembered my own awkward pre-teen stage; where my body stubbornly clung onto childhood, whilst at the same time propelling me at terrifying speed into a great unknown, which I could only assume was what others defined as “womanhood.”

This poor girl was trying to bridge the gap by wearing a bra that was several sizes too large, which clashed magnificently with her baby face. Bless her, her bra was also falling out of her top. Why had her mother not pointed this out? Especially at her age, I would be so embarrassed!

Her full attention was fixed on the driver. Swivelling my head from one to the other, I suddenly felt incredibly ill. There was something far too deliberate about all of this.

With a look of greedy expectancy, the driver heaved his sweaty mass out of the car, and the girl dutifully followed him. They disappeared for around ten minutes. Inside the car, there was absolute silence.

After what seemed like an age, the girl joined a group of other girls chatting at the roadside, and a hawk-like woman swooped in from nowhere to collect the cash: 3000 Francs (£3.90).

As we drove off, my driver’s jubilant mood was expressed in the energetic church service played the radio; the Virgin Mary swaying enthusiastically from the rear-view mirror.

The swamps and villages turning into a blur, I clung to two thoughts. The first, was that at least this girl was a little better off than Togolese prostitutes, where sex only costs 2000 Francs (£2.50).

My second thought; this one riddled with shame at my utter uselessness, was that I was incredibly glad that it had been that young girl at the roadside and not me. It seems absolutely ludicrous that for some freedom and consent come free with their birth certificate, yet for millions of others, those two words have no definition.

That girl’s plight had a strange parallel with my friends’ journey back from Kpalimé, a Togolese rainforest region, where we had spent the weekend. Stopping at the first checkpoint, the policeman informed their taxi driver that he wanted either one of the white girls, or some money. The driver duly paid the bribe.

As they continued, the driver explained that he did not have enough money to cover the next checkpoint’s bribe, so one of the girls would have to go with the policeman. My friends calmly objected; explaining that sex was consensual: their bodies were for the people that they loved rather than tools to get through checkpoints! The driver laughed, and said that coming to Togo involved trying new things, like motorbikes and Fufu (a local dish) so surely trying a black man was just another part of the experience!

This discussion continued up until they reached the second checkpoint, where the policeman lazily waved them through, without even blinking an eye.

By the time that I had reached the Beninese shoreline with its majestic arch covered in staggering slaves marking the Point of No Return, I was a wreck. Gazing out at the azure blue sea; void of all but tumultuous waves crashing against a fringe of golden sand embellished with coconut palms, I sat down and cried. Tears fell for the barbarism that had taken place in such a paradise: for the fact that millions of lives had been hideously lost for the sake of rolls of cotton and sacks of cane sugar.

The deepest pain; welling up from deep below my lungs, was the knowledge that slavery never died with its abolition. Despite all of the museums and history books, there are more slaves alive today than there ever has been in the course of human history: innumerably more than during the time of the Slave Trade. This brutality, which we heap upon our ancestors with cries of self-righteous outrage, exists under our very noses.

 The next day, I prayed for joy. I wanted a day that required no emotional energy. No frenetic debates over prices, no objectifying men; no unexpected challenges.

I managed to hitch a ride into town with a lovely Beninese/French family, and it made an interesting start to the day to discover their experience of bridging the two worlds, and how they thought that Benin had changed over time.

Upon being dropped off at the motorbike rank, I made an exciting discovery. Here in Ouidah, motorbike drivers wore official vests with official numbers! This might actually suggest that the drivers knew how to drive!

In Togo, the government assumes that if you are intelligent enough to blunder over to the side of the road and buy a motorbike, then you are clearly adequately equipped enough to be unleashed onto the roads.

Consequently, during my six weeks in Lomé I saw four motorbike accidents, one with a dead body on the road, and I was in the fifth. Feeling far more at ease here in Benin, we set off, zigzagging through markets and crowded streets towards my destination.

Upon arrival, I had some hassle with the ticket officer who tried to make me pay for my invisible companion; clearly solo travellers deserve to be ripped off. Fortunately, I was saved in the nick of time by three Parisians who invited me to join them. Finding ourselves a pirogue (a wooden punt), we set out across the lake.

Yesterday’s angst dissolved in the open water: a bedsheet sail propelling us along. The water was full of pelicans and cormorants and enormous pied kingfishers. Waterways had even been constructed with woven palm fronds, ensuring that boats did not trespass onto private fish farms.

Our destination was Ganvié: a bamboo-stilt town- home to around 30,000 people. There was something almost comical about seeing Beninese culture transposed into a nautical setting. There were the same roadside peddlers, but this time trade was passed from boat to boat; there were the same bustling markets, and there was even a floating Family Planning Clinic!

I found real joy in lazing through the waterways and breathing in the atmosphere. I was incredibly grateful that I was permitted to gawp in amazement at their bamboo paradise: an explorer drinking in yet another man’s world.

The Accident

I always knew that motorbikes were not safe. Weaving between psychotic taxi drivers who seemed to think that their rear-view mirrors would be better served as TV screens, the eclectic collection of mopeds and motorbikes and long-suffering bicycles perilously lug babies and old men and even double mattresses, through the crowded streets.

I could not really describe my driver as “calm and collected” either. We belted along the roads as though constantly pursued by a herd of irate buffalo; ignoring traffic lights, racing through petrol stations in order to avoid that inconvenient roundabout.

 I decided that the best thing to do was to trust him. Aside from the fact that I secretly really enjoyed our journeys, and could not honestly say that I wanted to go any slower, I told myself that what was good enough for the Togolese was good enough for me. If I wanted a booster seat and a fwuffy padded jacket, then I should have stayed in the UK. 

I did at least possess the intelligence to always travel with a helmet.

This evening, it rained on our journey home. Shutting my eyes against the driving rain and feeling my cotton top and skirt plastering themselves against my skin, I reminded myself that normally, I live in England. A true Brit forgets what life is like when it is not raining.

 I am not sure what it was that made me open my eyes. I suddenly noticed that the motorbike in front had just crashed into a car. I realised, in a strangely detached and logical manner, that we were hurtling straight towards them.

I surprise myself in the “Kairos”* moments. I can tie my stomach in knots over a social event or difficult conversation, but in the really massive moments, I always seem to have an overwhelming sense of peace.

My driver’s actions saved my life. Jamming on the brakes, the bike spun on the flooded tarmac, and we skidded sideways along the road. The detached and highly logical part of my brain told me that I had seen this manoeuvre in several James Bond films, but I had never expected to be slicing sideways on the back of a motorbike myself. 

Most of the time, I cannot say that I am gifted with common sense. The tattoo of bruises on my knees are a testament to my incurable clumsiness: the water bags that we drink from generally end up down my trousers or all over my face, as I have yet to work out the right way up to hold them.

Today, once the bike had finally skidded to halt and deposited us onto the tarmac, the only thing that crossed my mind was that I should probably make a list of the most helpful things to do in such a situation. I promptly picked up the wing mirror and walked off the road.

Praise God, the worst injury of the crash was a broken leg. I wanted to help the poor man at the side of the road, but I knew that whenever there is an accident between a car and a motorbike, the car always pays. Regardless of who is actually to blame, the chances are that the people in the car will be the ones with the cheaper medical bill.

We hobbled back onto our bike, and headed off home; the deceased wing mirror nonchalantly tossed into the bushes. With the wind whipping my face and oozing adrenaline, I could not contain an enormous “What-have-I-got-myself-into-now?” manic grin.

I cannot know why I walked away from that scene with nothing more than a swollen wrist and a couple of scrapes and bruises. I cannot know why it was a friend of a friend, not me, who was squashed by a truck in their motorbike accident last week. They were driving an identical motorbike on the same roads.

There are too many people who have been taken away too early; snuffed out in an instant. There are so many times when I have shouted at God, and told Him that even if He does exist I want nothing to do with Him, as I cannot understand how He can let these things happen.

Yet, there are also the people like me who get to walk away. People like me who just so happen to live next door to an amazing trainee doctor, and are friends with a qualified physiotherapist who can give any swollen tendons a full examination.

For me, the only way that I can respond is with gratitude. I can be grateful for my driver’s quick reflexes. I can be grateful that I walked away with almost non-existent injuries. I can be grateful for how well I was looked after. I can be grateful to be alive.

No matter how much security I try to create for myself in the form of money or intelligence or human connections, it is impossible to know whether today will be my last. I am so glad that as a Christian, death is not something to fear.

The only thing that I can do is live each day to the full, and as I go to sleep each night, I can thank God for giving me one more day to be alive.

*In Ancient Greek there are two words for time: “Chronos”, which is every day, commuting to work, scrubbing dishes, ordinary-little-things time, and “Kairos”, which is for earth-shattering moments like your wedding day, or the birth/death of a family member.

Finishing the Chapter

“England” is beginning to feel more like an invention than a reality.

Six weeks of stifling humidity and cloaking dust have made me question my memories of biting cold, incessant drizzle, and cloaking fog. Is there really a land where this exists?

Meticulous organisation seems equally like a laughable concept. I am not sure that I believe myself when I picture wide, concrete pavements free from the paraphernalia of goods that are peddled at the roadside. Is there really a world where everything has a non-negotiable price; where stopping in the middle of the road for a conversation would either result in instant death or an earful of expletives from a passing driver?

I am not sure if I would prefer to return to this imaginary land, or to remain in my current reality. Returning to England would give me the reprieve of not having my posh accent stand out a mile. My bizarre turns of phrase like “I’m up for that” and “nutty as a fruitcake” would be considered banal rather than worthy of mockery. England would be a land where everyone would speak my language and French would hardly be needed at all.

Yet at the same time, I am beginning to feel at home in this chaos, and flying back would create frustration and a fair amount of culture shock. Surely no country exists where vegetables are thrown away after two days, and where perfectly wholesome food rots in skips two streets away from impoverished council estates?

Plastic gloves and food hygiene certificates seem comical as I stand at the roadside for my avocado sandwich; complementary flies nonchalantly swatted away.

Through this process, I have begun to see myself as a chameleon rather than an ugly duckling who cannot identify with either culture. Being adaptable to a variety of countries and climates is a huge benefit. There is a great advantage in being equally comfortable with tossing a freezing cold bucket of water over my head as taking a scalding hot power-shower.

Fully aware that my rusty-orange chameleon skin may soon have to change to grey-blue in the transition back to England, I feel a definite twinge of sadness. Friendships from all over the world have been forged in Togo: it is bittersweet to realise that this may have been the only season where my path will ever cross with such a wonderful group of people.

On the other hand, there are things about my work at “le CACIT”, that I will not miss: the hours in front of the computer trawling through admin, the projects I agonised over that ended up in the Recycling Bin; the sinking realisation that a lot of what I was doing had been created to appease a white intern rather than to create change.

Overall, I am glad that I did the internship. I have definitely achieved my objective of  greatly improved French. I now have some understanding of how Human Rights Law works within a professional context, even if I do not feel that the Human Rights Situation in Togo is remotely different to how it was six weeks ago. 

I was pretty naïve to think that I could create change within such a short period: the Togolese have been fighting for ten years and have still not received a single Franc in reparation from the government.  

However, my time here has reinforced my suspicion that the source of Africa’s problems resides in my half of the globe rather than theirs. The reason that the Togolese citizens have not received reparation for being tortured by the armed forces in 2005 is because just like his father Eyadema, the current President, Faure Gnassingbé, is fully supported by the French. During the clampdown the soldiers fired French bullets at civilians from French guns.

All over Africa, the fortunes of the corrupt are comfortably stashed in Swiss bank accounts.

I was horrified to discover that the United Kingdom is the world’s second largest weapons exporter. We stand on our moral high ground and condemn the rest of the world, only to discover that our platform of piety consists of the bones of the nations that we have crushed.

If we want to change the lives of impoverished Africans, we first need to wash the blood off our own hands. We need to tell our government to remove the stranglehold of debt that the West leaves “developing” nations in: forcing them to always be economically dependent upon us. We need to stop buying 30p chocolate, and pay Africans a decent wage for our exploitation of their raw materials. We need to support African entrepreneurships. We need to stop throwing our clothes in the bin every time we get “bored” of them.

I always find a dark amusement in noticing the clothes of the passers-by. They are either wearing a kaleidoscope of multi-coloured traditional outfits, or an oddment of assorted western clothes. KFC uniforms are combined with Donald Duck pyjama bottoms. I had to blink twice as I walked past a scrawny child with a “Feed the Children” T-Shirt hanging off his bony shoulders.

These are all clear signs of what the locals call “Dead Yovo Clothes”. It is impossible for the Togolese to believe that the clothes that have been donated to them from western countries could ever have been taken from the bodies of the living. Which human being has that many clothes that they can give them away to others? The only logical explanation was that they were taken off corpses during the preparation for their funerals.

I do believe that the West can right their wrongs. One of my heroes is a man named William Wilberforce. For eighteen years he fought for the abolition of the slave trade. He was the constant butt of jokes as he was ridiculed by the British Parliament. They told him that his absurd ideals would bankrupt the entire British Empire. Even if they did free the slaves, surely the French and German Empires would just sweep in and claim them instead?  Besides, it was blatantly clear that the slaves actually enjoyed their bondage so why deprive them of such a pleasure?

 Undeterred for eighteen years, Wilberforce incessantly petitioned parliament for the abolition of the slave trade. He never let go of his desire to be a voice for the voiceless; an ideal that was formed within him when he became a Christian  in the 1780s.

In 1807, the slave trade was finally abolished, and in 1833, all existing slaves were freed within the British Empire.

Privileged Westerners could have come to Togo for six weeks and mopped the poor slaves’ brows as they were dragged onto slave ships, but that would have done nothing to change the fact that slaves were about to commence the most hideous voyage of their lives, where many of them would not live to see the American shore. For those Westerners, refusing to eat slave produced sugar and wear slave cotton would have been a far louder cry for change.

I do not regret coming to Togo. I feel no shame in admitting that this has been a time of personal investment, rather than a time of giving to others. The panic that I was initially consumed with as my aeroplane slowly descending upon Lomé, has now been replaced by the confidence to wanderer alone across three countries.  The fear that I once felt expressing my opinions has now been replaced by the fear of not wanting to appear too confident.  I have matured, developed and asked an enormous amount of questions. I have tried to understand other peoples’ perspectives and philosophies. I have learnt to trust God with the future, and walk with Him in the present.

Above all, I have learnt not to associate sensitivity with weakness. I strongly believe that if more people empathised with others as acutely as I do, then mindless torture would be impossible. No soldier, brutally aware that the rest of his week would be spent reliving the gunshots: the petrified faces of his victims seared into his eyeballs, would ever be able to break upon the front door. It takes great strength to be weak.

I feel equal exhilaration and anxiety as I consider the following chapter: adventuring through Togo, Ghana and Benin. There have been numerous times when the magnitude of what I am about to do has paralysed me and left me frozen in indecision.

However, the fact that I am currently on the other side of the world from friends and family means that I have no safety blanket to run to. I still have twelve days until my plane leaves, and I want to make the most of every last minute. I have dreamed of travelling through Africa for so long. Once the niggling details have been smoothed over, then I hope that the anxiety will dissolve as I embrace the adventure before me.

Discovering my limitations has also been extremely helpful. It is useful to know when to terrify myself, and when to hold back. I decided to abandon my trip to Northern Togo, as I realised that it would have created more anxiety than enjoyment. There is nothing wrong with having limitations. Closing one door often opens another.

I have no idea what I will see or who I will meet in the next ten days. I simply know that it will be an adventure, and that I will return home with plenty of stories to tell.

Things to pray for:

·         For safety during my travels

·         That the border crossings will go smoothly, especially crossing to and from Ghana

·         Praise God that I have been given the opportunity to visit IJM’s offices in Accra, (www.ijm.org) and pray that it will be an incredibly worthwhile time.

·         Pray that I will be able to relax and recuperate after my six weeks of working.

Making a List

I am aware that I have an incredibly sheltered and privileged existence, and there is an enormous list of things that I hate about Togo, but as I savour the end of another day, it is nice to reflect upon what it is that makes this place so special:

·  Every day is an adventure. The unexpected sights and sounds and smells, although frustrating and sometimes overwhelming, mean that I am always encountering the unexpected, whether that is trying bizarre tasting food at the roadside, cramming through stalls full of shampoo and fried herring at the market, or trying to persuade the adamant Ghanaian that I do NOT want to give him my number.

· The sunsets. A liquid ruby orb swims in the sky each day on my way home, and reminds me how wonderful it is to be alive.

·Everyone speaks at least three languages. Languages and cultures and accents and backgrounds are all woven together; locals skip seamlessly between French and Ewé every second syllable. There are so many stories to be heard from people who have walked such far-flung corners of the world.

·       ·  I am finally beginning to communicate. It feels liberating that one of my closest friends here does not speak any English and I do not (yet) speak any Spanish. The gift of a second language means that we can connect in French!

I love also the sense of satisfaction that comes from the face of a disgruntled taxi driver when I refuse to pay Yovo (white man) tax, and manage to bargain my journey down to Amiyebo (local) price.

·         ·At weekends, I love being able to poke my finger on a map and say: “Let’s go here.”

I love the adventure and hassle that comes from trying to navigate a new place, and discovering that suddenly  there is a lake that needs to be crossed by punt and that this is actually a funeral that I have just invited myself to. Each horizon is brand new.

·       ·  There is something wonderful about finding that despite many differences, there are ways to connect with local people. Bringing my flute has turned into a massive blessing, as it means that I can connect musically. Even if I cannot connect with a common background or language, there is an undeniable bond that comes from creating an extra thread in the rich harmonies that weave and swirl into a tapestry of sound.

·      ·  I love eating with my hands again. There is nothing better than laying aside cutlery, and wrapping my fingers in warm, doughy Fufu lathered in spicy sauce.

Choosing a strange string of words on the menu creates a feeling of anticipation as I wait to discover which bizarre concoction will be dolloped onto my plate this time.

·      · Everything has so much more flavour. In Togo no on needs to pump nutrients back into shrivelled fruit that has been dragged half way around the world: here it was harvested a few hours ago.

 There is no sense of disappointment as I take my first bite of fresh mango or papaya: a shockwave of juice explodes in my mouth and runs down to my elbows. Blandness does not exist in Togo.  

·         ·I love having my vision of “life” turned on its head. Even the simplest things, like my idea of politeness, or how to cross a road, have now been flung out of the window. I no longer know where to even start on the fundamental questions, let alone the profound.

It feels completely refreshing to have the cobwebs of complacency brushed aside as I am completely rethink my ideals.

Every day is a rollercoaster ride where one minute I have to stop myself dancing down the street, niftily dodging the open drains, and the next I am clamouring to get on the next plane home.

However, my time here increases, and the feeling of being an incapable toddler is fading away, I can feel myself deeply connecting with this place. The everyday chaos is beginning to make a strange kind of sense.

 I am glad that I am only staying for two months, as this is a culture that I think I could fall in love with.