Lome circus
Hi BoBers,
With my poor little introverted self feeling quite exhausted by the constant company, I left Accra after a tearful goodbye with the family, followed by one glorious, solitary night camping under a mango tree. After five mangos for breakfast, I crossed the border to Togo (totally straightforward) and arrived at Alice’s aunt’s friend Caroline’s place in Lomé.
She’s spent the last 14 years of her retirement there and, now in her late sixties, her house is a little oasis in the city—both in nature and French culture. The garden was dense with plants and the interior packed with art; tiny sculptures and paintings lurking everywhere. The walls were covered with a new exhibit she was preparing on the history of clothing for the local museum, her desk with cartons of cigarettes, and each room had a jam-jar ashtray filled with water. My occasional social smoking accelerated massively during our after-dinner conversations on the terrace (decelerating has been an ongoing struggle). We ate crêpes and cheese (!!), drank red wine, and bonded over a shared love of Terry Pratchett—she even had a custom miniature Discworld coffee table.
The closest I’ve come to being a tourist in a long time, we hired a tuk-tuk and toured Lomé. Full of vim and vigour, she chatted constantly with the driver. We shared an avocado sandwich on the beach and answered questions from a random guy curious about geography.
Caroline had close ties with the country’s only circus school which specialsed in stilt walking - a traditional performance art in Togo. We went to visit and they even let me have a go myself. The stilts flex as you walk, but by the end, sweaty and sore, I could manage a few small manoeuvres. Part of me wanted to drop everything and join the circus. Learning with your body feels far more natural than the dry study I do back home in front of a computer.
On my final evening, Caroline had a health scare that made it difficult to leave, but she insisted. With little time before the Voodoo festival in Benin, I hit the road—another separation from a fleeting, intense connection.
Enchanté,
J&BoB
