​I made it a point, every day, multiple times a day, to stroll the neighborhood where I stayed in Lomé.  I knew it was the only way to get any kind of feel for the neighborhood, a little taste of Africa.  I wasn’t sure how successful it would be, but the longer I walked, the more familiar the people were with the white man who wore a straw fedora in their midst. 
 
I thought the best moment of my walking tour was going to be at the front porch of the woman who sold hand-crafted brooms, baskets, fans, and other kitchen needs.  A man there took an interest in me and explained all of the items I didn’t recognize.  Well, there was one item, mysterious balls of clay, whose purpose he couldn’t communicate to me.  (The women at my hotel completed my Togolese education.)  I feared they might be balls of swamp dirt like in Liberia.  For some reason, pregnant women felt the need to lick them and eat them.  Nothing good can come from that kind of country medicine.  But, no, these clay balls were used to clean up, or touch up, clay coal pots (which are kind of like an African hibachi).  If your clay coal pot is dirty, scratched, or chipped, these clay balls are the go-to solution to fix them up.  Wet the ball and dab a little more clay on whatever needs fixing.
 

After my brief explanation of the hand-crafted goods, I was even allowed to photograph to my heart’s content.  That doesn’t always happen in big cities.
 
The following day, I returned to take a few more photos.  As I walked away, there was a beautiful white mural design on a red/orange wall.  I thought, “As soon as the two men behind me pass by, I’ll take a photo of that wall.”
 
They didn’t pass by.
 
They recognized the white guy with the straw fedora from the mural at the ambassador’s residence the previous week.  Yes, I stand out in a crowd while in West Africa.  They asked, in French, of course, about my muraling with Jean Koumy and the woman in red (who happened to be the US ambassador). 
 
Then, they invited me to come through the gate.  In this part of the world, homes have walls topped with broken glass or razor wire.  You’re only supposed to enter if you are welcomed.  One of these days, it is bound to blow up in my face.  In Morocco, I followed a person I just met and went up the stairway in the medina to meet his family.  I wasn’t sure if I should do that.  Well, I was fairly sure I shouldn’t do it.  But, it turned out to be the best thing I’ve ever done in any of my travels.  I met my Moroccan family that still keeps in touch with me.
 
In Fiji, I hopped in a cab with a guy I met at a souvenir shop.  He promised to take me home so I could drink kava with him as his local watering hole.  I slightly questioned my sanity when the cab left the city (and friends from Jamaica assured me that I should never do that on their island), but I had a very welcoming experience in Fiji as well.

I had forgotten what African heat was like.  Okay, honestly, I’m not good with heat anywhere.  Caribbean, Southeast Asia, Africa, or Ohio, it doesn’t matter.  I sweat more than any other person I’ve ever met.  My natural look anywhere in the tropics is completely drenched.  When I tried to photograph student art outside in the Philippines, I had to be careful not to drip on the artwork.  Meanwhile, in the Peace Corps, I remember waking up so hot at night that my skin would sting.  I’ve never experienced that anywhere else but Liberia.  I’d take a bucket bath and pray that I’d fall asleep before I started stinging again.  No, I don’t handle tropical heat well at all.  Lomé, Togo, was no exception.
 
For the week that I painted my mural at the US Ambassador’s residence in Togo, the mural was outside, but we had an awning for some shade.  As long as I stayed under its protection, I was drenched but comfortable (provided there was plenty of cold water to guzzle).  For a huge chunk of the rest of my week, I resided in what is considered the nicest hotel in the city, just around the corner from the mural.  I really didn’t have to set foot out of the hotel for any reason.  I could shop, swim, relax, eat, bank, communicate online (to some extent) and be entertained – almost all in air-conditioned comfort.  I did much more of that than usual, because there was whoLly Oppressive huMidity evErywhere!  LOME!
 
For my second week in Lomé, there wasn’t quite so much luxury.  I moved to the Hotel Galion, recommended by Peace Corps Volunteers in Togo when they head to the capital.  If you were never in the Peace Corps, most likely, you’d never stay at the Hotel Galion either.  My standards are not as high as most people I know.  I want safe, relatively clean, and again safe.  Toilets and showers may be down the hall.  But, this time in Lomé, I had my own toilet and shower (such as they were) and I opted for air-conditioning.
 
I just had to!

​The Ambassador’s Residence is located by the extremely lovely Independence Park in Lomé.  Togo did it right.  It’s a beautiful park.  But, it took me a while to find anything within walking distance of the residence, park, and hotel.  For the second week in the city, I wanted to be in a more convenient location for a hint of an African experience, which you just do not get at super luxurious hotels anywhere.  They are the same no matter where you find yourself roaming. They leave me wondering why people even bother to travel.
 
I limited my walking to daylight hours.  It doesn’t matter what city I am in the world. I stay in my room at night.  If someone wants to get mugged or face any multitude of problems while traveling, mix alcohol, crowded bars, and the cover of darkness with your trip.  I don’t risk those problems as I blog about my adventures in the evening hours, safely inside my hotel room.
​

The Galion Hotel is about two blocks from the beach where a beautiful palm-lined boulevard accentuates Lomé’s lovely shore.  And, one of the first things I remember hearing from the embassy staff was, “Do not go to the beach at night.  You will be mugged.”  I even read that if you walk along the beach, for added security, walk on the opposite side of the boulevard instead of the water side.  Guess who didn’t walk either shore there?
 
But, I did walk.  Every day.  Lomé has been called “the Paris of West Africa”.  I think it deserves the name.  There are several wide boulevards, and the streets are kept clean.  There is certainly a French influence with some bakeries and restaurants.  However, there is so much more traffic in Paris!  Togo appears to have a lot more motorcycles than cars at the moment.  It was never so hard, or life-threatening, to cross the street.
 
A word of warning to the wanderer in West Africa – you have to look down much more often than you look up and around in big cities.  Sidewalks have uneven surfaces, gaping holes where manhole covers should be, and various other traps to trip you up but good.  It just so much easier to walk on dusty paths in rural villages.  But when it rains, it’s no fun walking anywhere.
 
As I walked the same neighborhood a couple times a day for several days, my face became a little more familiar.  White guys wearing fedora hats stand out a little in West Africa.  And, I particularly enjoyed it when I start to recognize faces like the man who made custom furniture next door, the guy at the fish shop, the woman at the corner stall who sold me cold water, the taxi driver who hung out by my hotel, and the woman whose patio was stuffed with hand-crafted brooms, baskets, fans, and kitchen needs.
 
However, my favorite face was the little woman closer to the shore who made beaded necklaces.  I had absolutely no need for a necklace, but that didn’t stop her from luring me into her shop no bigger than a bathroom.   And, one necklace caught my eye.  Of course, she wanted to sell me two or three, but my eye was captured, and I just needed the one. 
 

If you’ve ever been to Paris, or had a wonderful French teacher like I did in high school, you may have had escargot.  No French experience?  No fine dining in Paris?  Well, they’re snails.  And, snails just are not much to write home about, even when you eat them in Par-ee!  But, my little necklace maker in Lomé made chains with snail shells.  Finally, something useful to do with a slug!  I found it very resourceful and had never seen this in any of my world travels.
 
As I wandered every day around the blocks near my hotel, the neighborhood streets off the boulevards were sandy and so much more interesting.  A variety of things were sold on many street corners.  The pictures I’d never thought I'd get were people collapsed in the corner of a building or atop a bench with a cloth over their faces, trying to escape the heat and humidity.  I understood so very well how it wiped every bit of strength from the body.
 
Every time I walked, whether 15 minutes to find a cool drink of bottled water, or 45 minutes to get a feel for my neighborhood, I came home drenched and drained, sapped of any and all energy.  On record heat days in Liberia, I took five bucket baths to cool down.  That never happened in Togo because I had running water and a shower on this go around.  The Hotel Galion was still a Peace Corps dive, but it was way better than what most volunteers experienced on their sites.
 
Staying in this neighborhood provided me exactly the kind of African experience I hoped for during my extra week in Togo before heading back to Ohio.  Sad but true, I will never get use to wHolly Oppressive huMidity evErywhere!  But, no matter how far off the beaten path I wander, there really is no place like HOME! ​

The day started off a little rough.  The Public Affairs Officer asked if I could go to the Ambassador’s Residence in order to show the people who were going to put up an awning the exact location.  I rushed there immediately!  But, I learned something.  It isn’t a good thing to go to the Ambassador’s Residence without your identification.  The guards didn’t know who I was and certainly didn’t trust me.  I simply wanted to show them the mural location on an exterior wall, but it required two guards, their supervisor, and finally the Diplomatic Security Special Agent to get the job done.
 
Then, I came back to the hotel to get cleaned up for a day of sweating in the African blistering sun.  And, it was an amazing day.

​I have a small list of things to do when I travel.  If I accomplish that small list, then everything else is extra dessert.  And, I love myself plenty of desserts.  I knew that when I came to Togo, I wanted to see the House of the Slaves, La Maison des Esclaves, in Agbodrafo – somewhere not so far from the capital city.
 
I scheduled the day with my regular chauffeur, Francis.  And, right away, he started out with some dessert.  I didn’t realize that Lomé, Togo, was right next to the border of Ghana until my driver took me there.  I was kind of hoping to get one foot over the border line.  Yep, just one foot.  That would make Ghana country number 103, a number that even impressed people working at the State Department.
 
When we arrived at the border, did I have a visa to enter the country? 
 
No.
 
Did I think to bring my vaccination card that proved I was protected from typhoid, yellow fever, and meningitis?
 
Another no.
 
Was there a snowball’s chance in the tropical heat of West Africa that I’d get across the border?
 
Surprisingly, yes! 
 
Of course, I first had to go to a back room of the Immigrations Office, but there I found a very friendly officer named Wilberforce.  He warmed up as soon as I mentioned that I worked with the United States Embassy.  He asked how long I planned to be in Ghana.  I said, “About fifteen minutes.”  That worked for my new buddy.
 
Francis and I walked into the border town.  Instantly, it was easy to see the difference between the two countries. There were not so many cars in Togo’s capital city.  There were a lot more motorcycles than cars.  But, traffic multiplied greatly on the other side of the international border. 
 
The town in Ghana offered nothing for tourists, but I really doubt if many tourists walked across the border.  We walked past the Don’t Mind Your Wife bar and then turned around.  A very nice young man asked if he could have a selfie and then a video with me.  That’s pretty much my highlights of Ghana, until I got back to the border station.
 
Wilberforce again greeted me warmly in the back office.  Among other things, I asked him what I should eat in Ghana.  Everyone, including my Immigration officer, always recommended fufu.  I don’t do that.  I don't do anything made from the cassava root.  But, it’s the national dish of Togo, probably Ghana as well.  If you imagine tapioca pudding mixed with instant mashed potato flakes, you sort of have fufu.  You pinch a glob, swirl it in a soup with your fingers, and then swallow it whole.  I just sits in your stomach for a while, if you don’t throw it up immediately!