Having lost 12 hours and a substantial amount of money when I had to buy a new ticket from Istanbul to Addis Ababa, I nevertheless made it from Bulgaria to Togo. It was entirely my fault that I missed the bus and subsequently the flight. Despite the nerve-racking experience and 2 sleepless nights, I arrived in Lome feeling quite upbeat. I took the taxi to the hotel where I met with the people with whom I would be traveling through Togo, Benin and Ghana. I washed the road dust off myself, did my laundry and hang it to dry outside the room, had a good dinner at the hotel’s restaurant and went to bed in the late evening. I fell asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow and woke up 9 hours later refreshed and ready for new adventures.
By morning, the entire group assembled in the hotel. It consisted of 14 people of different nationalities, a mix from all parts of the world. We got into 2 minivans and drove to Akodessawa market, the largest fetish market in the world. The goods there are used as talismans and medications.
After visiting the market, we went to the House of Slaves Museum. For two hundred years, this stretch of coastline served as a source of Black slaves for both South and North Americas. Captives seized from the African interior were transported to the ports of Togo and Ghana, where they were held in places like this one until the arrival of the ships that would carry them westward. The museum was a small building with living quarters on the main level, while the slaves were confined beneath the floorboards.
The cellar ceiling was so low that one could not stand upright. I jumped down through an opening in the floor through which food was tossed down to the slaves. The room was tiny, however it could hold up to two hundred people. It is impossible to imagine enduring such conditions for weeks on end. Only about half of the slaves survived long enough to board the ship; many more perished later during the voyage. We would encounter this grim chapter of history again, further along in our trip at other locations.
We returned for the night to the same hotel, Robinson Plage, on the shores of the Gulf of Guinea, and the next morning we set off for Benin. We will return to Togo after Benin to do more traveling in the northern part of the country.
