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Since my last update, I travelled along the coast from Lome in Togo to Cotonou in Benin which is where I am now.I really enjoyed Togo and it is definitely one of the best countries ive visited so far.After I left Lome I went to Agbodrafo and checked in to this nice quiet place on the lake shore, I was once again the only tourist there.It had nice round bungalows spread out through palm trees and a great view of the lake and Togoville in the distance.The manager was very friendly and once I had put my stuff in my room sat down for a drink with me.I stayed there for two nights.The next day which was Friday, I wanted to go to a town called Vogan where they have an interesting weekly market on Fridays.To get to the main road from the hotel was a 10 minute walk, then I had to hail a shared taxi to Agbodrafo which was a couple of kilometres away, then from there I walked to a really nice hotel where they had a beautiful bar and swimming pool and from there I caught a pirogue (small canoe like boat without a motor) to Togoville.It was pretty quiet in Togoville so I got a shared taxi straight to Vogan which took about half an hour.On arrival I saw the market being set up and asked the driver to let me out here, he said 'no, I want you to see the gare routiere (bush taxi station), togo is suffering, especially this village', so he drove me to the station which was only a block away and I got out, he then wanted to help me shop for something in the market but I told him I was just looking.The market was still being set up so I went in to this store on the edge of the market where they were selling CDs and DVDs, I didn't really have any intention to buy anything, but once I got talking to the man there I started to get quite interested, he had a good selection of CDs from all over West Africa so I asked to listen to some Togolese music, the CD turned out to be a DVD and I watched some of it with the guy.It was really good, the singer was dressed as a voodoo priest and there was some great dancing and the music was pretty good, it was cheap so I brought it and I also looked at some others but none of them were as good so I decided to just get the one DVD.After that I wanted to find the hotel (there was only one in town) to have a drink and some lunch before coming back to the market, a man kindly walked me there, it was quite far away, but the hotel didn't have any food they only had some drinks so I had a drink and I was taken to sit in this lounge area with the manager.He was very friendly and interesting to talk to and repeated what the taxi driver had said about how Togo is suffering, he explained that it is because all of the Western countries stopped sending aid to Togo because they believed the last elections had been rigged and since the aid had stopped it had really hurt the people of Togo, also because of Togos political problems very few tourists go there, in 2005 there was rioting on the streets of Lome and hundreds of people were killed and I think that scared all the tourists off.In October this year they had elections again which went smoothly and the hotel manager believed that the aid and tourists would start coming back to the country now.He was really proud of his hotel and gave me a tour, it was really nice and the rooms were so cheap!!I wished I was staying the night there but getting some food may have been a problem and I had already paid the other place.After my tour the manager asked me to let any other tourists I met know about his hotel which I agreed to do.I walked back to the market which was in full swing and spent the next couple of hours walking around checking it out, there were lots of interesting things for sale and lots of interesting people going about their business, I brought some food off some ladies and walked around eating that, the people there were really friendly, everyone greeted me and smiled at me and no one tried to hassle me or tag along with me, they all seemed quite amused that I was eating the local food and they all wanted to know if I thought it was good (it was).At the back of the market were the fetish stalls where they had voodoo dolls, monkey skulls, leopard skulls and skins, dead birds and rodents, turtle shells and skulls, skins and skeletons of all sorts of animals.When people go to a voodoo priest to ask for something (like to have healthy son; or good health for their family or something like that) the priest gives them a kind of prescription of things he needs so they will come to the market and get what the priest has asked for, so that could be 1 monkey skull, 2 lizard skins, 4 frogs legs - or something like that anyway, then they take that stuff back to the priest and he will use it to create the fetish which is like a charm or talisman to bring them their wish or request.That's probably a really bad explanation of what the fetish market is there for but you get the general idea.One guy wanted to make me a travellers fetish so I would have good luck, but when he tried to charge me 10,000CFA I quickly declined, the price then came down to 3000 but all it was was 2 pieces of rock tied together with rope, it looked quite boring and I didn't really want it, the man looked like he was going to burst into tears when I got up and walked off, I felt bad but I really didn't want it, plus it wasn't worth 3000cfa.I took a couple of photos of one of the fetish stands so if I ever find fast internet I will put them up.I then went to the animal market which was full of baby goats, pigs and chickens. Two men approached me and they wanted to know where I was from and if I was a journalist, they seemed a bit disappointed when I said I wasn't, but regardless, asked me to tell everyone about Togo when I get back to my country, tell everyone how they are suffering and how they have no aid, and how even though they are struggling look at how the people were still cheery and happy, and they are hard workers and don't deserve to be struggling so much like this.They said they need more tourists to come and bring money into the country and they wanted to know if I liked Togo and if I would tell people at home how it is a good place to visit.So I agreed and then they went on their way, it was quite bizarre, the taxi driver, the hotel manager, then these two guys, and also the hotel manager at the hotel I was staying at near Agbodrafo was telling me how an overland truck company (Dragoman) used to come and stay at his hotel for a couple of nights a few times a year but now they don't come anymore and there are very few tourists that come to visit Togo and his hotel. All of these people had told me of the situation without me asking (although once we got talking about it I had many questions) and they all really wanted me to go back home and tell everyone to come to Togo, they are desperate for the tourists and the aid to come back into the country, it was quite sad, small businesses that rely on tourism are obviously really struggling as are the rest of the population as they are no longer getting the much needed aid.People are really optimistic about the president though and believe that things are looking up from here, I really hope so!Togo has lots of interesting history, voodoo traditions and such friendly people, it was so nice to be there and be able to walk anywhere and be able to say hi to people and not have them take that as an invitation to join you, people were more than ready to help when I asked for it, but otherwise left me alone which was a huge change from the other countries ive been to so far.In the afternoon I went back to the gare routiere to wait for a bush taxi back to Togoville, after waiting for about an hour one left, I was sitting in the back next to a guy that had come to the market from Lome to buy a goat to eat for a family celebration, I asked what the celebration was and he said it was his mothers funeral.Funerals are really big here, and they really are celebrations!!The baby goat was alive and lying on the floor under my seat with its legs all tied together, I felt so sorry for it!!When I got back to Togoville I had a bit of a look around but it was pretty deserted, Togoville is the historic main centre for Voodoo in Togo, and you could see white flags flying which meant that was the house of a voodoo practitioner.As I was walking to the pirogue mooring a man asked me to have a look in his shop so I said ok thinking I would just go in and out quickly.But it was the best artisan's workshop I have seen so far in West Africa (apart from some in the Dogon country), I wanted to buy everything!!In the end I just brought a voodoo mask though.Got the pirogue back to the flash hotel and since they had a well stocked bar and the place I was staying didn't, I got a nice cold drink and enjoyed it on the balcony overlooking the lake.The bar girl and the man who rowed me in the pirogue decided to join me, the girl was really sweet and giggled when I asked questions about her husband.I make a point in every conversation I have with a man here to bring up the fact that I have a "husband" and this time was a perfect example of why, when I asked the girl if the pirogue man had a wife she said no, he wants to marry you, but you have a husband so he cant, I said my husband would not be very happy about that at all and they both laughed.When I meet men here the first thing they ask me is what my name is, then they ask if im married, I always say yes, then they ask where my husband is, I have come up with so many variations to that story!But he is usually always waiting for me in the next biggest city; right now my story is that he's meeting me in Douala when I fly there in 2 weeks.The pirogue man that wanted to marry me walked me to the main road and helped me get a taxi to the road for my hotel then I sat by the lake and had some dinner.The next day (Saturday) I left for Aneho near the Benin border.The lonely planet says it has a really interesting market and it's a really interesting town, but there was no market and it was like a ghost town!It was quite pretty though, but there was nothing to do there, I sat in the nice shady bar and read my magazines for the afternoon and had a beautiful seafood lunch!On Sunday morning I got a moto to the border, the lonely planet says that the Benin border officials are not friendly and can be difficult to deal with, but I found the man I dealt with to be very friendly!The crossing was easy and I found a taxi on the other side to take me to Ouidah.I shared the front seat with a man from Brazzaville in the Republic of Congo, he spoke good English and we had lots to talk about.In Ouidah I decided to walk to the hotel I wanted to stay at which took much longer than expected, after checking in I went to the Temple of Serpents, it is a voodoo temple where they have a snake pit full of Pythons and the snakes can just come and go as they please, so if a villager finds one of the snakes outside their house they just pick it up and bring it back to the temple, the snakes are well respected and sacred in voodoo religion, they only leave the temple to go and get food. So I let the man drape a huge python around my neck and he took a couple of photos of me.After that I visited the museum of history of Ouidah, the friendly guide told me all about the slavery history of Ouidah, it was a major slave port and the Europeans worked together with the African kings in Benin (the Dahomey kings) to capture slaves and sell them.My guide and another guide that was there both had Portuguese names, when the slaves went to the Americas they were forced to adopt the last name of their masters, so both these guys said that their great great grandfathers had been taken to Brazil as slaves and taken their masters names, then when they got released and came back to Africa they kept those names I think because they couldn't remember their original ones.The main guide offered to take me on his moto down the slave route, the 4km walk that they had to do from the fort to the ocean and the waiting slave ships, we agreed a price of 3000cfa and set off, stopping along the way at important historic sites.At one stop when I was taking a photo he declared his love for me which I tried to ignore, later when I was taking a moto back to town with a different driver I realised why he had said that, the moto I was on was charging me only 500cfa so I realised that for the tour I should have paid half as much as what I did, he had made a nice little profit out of me so no wonder he was in love with me!When we got to the end of the slave route there is a big monument for the point of no return, after having a look at that the guide left me and I went to a nearby hotel and had a couple of drinks.Back in Ouidah there wasn't much else to do so I went to a local bar on the side of the road opposite my hotel.There were big thunder clouds and it started to rain so I moved inside and was invited to sit with a table of men, one spoke English, they were lovely and it was very entertaining listening to their animated conversations!They brought me a drink and when I left invited me to have another drink with them later if I wanted to.The next morning I left Ouidah for Cotonou, checked into a hotel and spent all day Monday going to banks, airline offices, western union etc, I booked my flight from Cotonou to Douala for the 20th Nov, ive decided against going to Niger now unfortunately as there is severe flooding in the south and that was where I wanted to go, I think it will be too difficult to travel there at the moment.So im going to spend a month in Cameroon and then fly back to London on the 20th December.As I didn't end up doing any volunteer work in Ghana I was going to have 3 spare weeks at the end of my trip before I fly out, so I brought the date forward so I can spend xmas and new years with Greg in the UK.When I was planning this trip I really wanted to do some volunteer work in Ghana and when I was in Ghana I had an opportunity to work in a school in Cape Coast which was a nice town, it was the perfect opportunity, just what I was looking for, but for some reason it didn't feel like the right decision to accept it, so I didn't, I don't know why I felt like that, there was something about Ghana for me, I didn't feel like I wanted to stay there, I haven't felt like that about any of the other countries, its strange?!I also transferred the money for my Cameroon visa so that should come through soon and I finally found an ATM that would give me all the cash I wanted!That night (last night) I met a South African man at my hotel, I went for a drink at another hotel and he came and joined me so that was nice, funnily enough he had actually seen me at the Togo/Benin border crossing the day before, he had been there as well, that just shows how much I stand out!Today I took a shared taxi to Ganvie which is only about half an hour from Cotonou, it is a village all built on stilts about 2 meters above the water, it was quite amazing, I took a pirogue around the village with a guide.When the Dahomey kings in Benin were hunting for slaves, due to a religious custom they weren't allowed to go on the water so these people built their village over the water to escape the slave hunters and they still live there today!I took lots of photos which hopefully one day I will be able to put on my blog!Came back to Cotonou this afternoon and went to the post office to send the mask and DVD I brought in Togo to Greg so I don't have to carry them around, what a mission that was, it took 2 hours and I had to tip the security man who put a ridiculous amount of effort into wrapping them in a box!The lonely planet guide says Cotonou is a dangerous city where muggings at knife point are common even during the day, and the motos are dangerous and fatal accidents happen on them every day, so I was feeling a little nervous about coming here, but I actually quite like this city, I haven't found it threatening at all, the motos are a little hair-raising at times but so far ive been ok.Except for one time today when as I got off the moto my leg touched the exhaust pipe and it burnt a layer of skin off, it was sooo sore!!The skin peeled right off, it was really painful, I now have a big white patch on my leg!The moto driver was about to demand more money from me than what we had agreed to because even though when I got on he said he knew where to go, he got lost, and drove to the other side of town trying to find where I wanted to go and had to stop and ask people, I repeated where I wanted to go so many times, it is a main thoroughfare, I don't know how he didn't know it!So he was saying in French that I needed to pay more since he had driven all over the place, but I think when he saw my burn and that I was in pain he quietly accepted the agreed price and drove off!I was really relieved that he didn't make a fuss because I was in no state to debate the subject with him!As soon as I paid him I rushed into the shade and poured water from my water bottle on the burn, then I hobbled back to the hotel and ran it under the shower for awhile before putting a dressing on it from my first aid kit that was given to me as a farewell present from when I left my job at AMP in Wellington - so thank you AMP!!!Tomorrow I am going to take a bush taxi north to Abomey which was the home of the African kings in Benin - the Dahomeys.Dahomey was the name of the country until the president at the time changed it in 1975 to Benin.From Abomey I head further north to explore the rest of the country before coming back to Cotonou in 2 weeks for my flight to Cameroon.Benin is a really interesting country, it is nicknamed the Latin Quarter of West Africa because of its slavery links with Brazil.A lot of the architecture here is Brazilian that the slaves brought back with them when they returned to Africa. My next update will probably be from a town up north. Right now I am supposedly on the fastest internet in Benin and I can't download my photos, so I definitely won't be able to do it up north! I think I will have to wait until I get to Cameroon, hopefully I will find some good internet there!!Take care everyone!! xoxo
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