The Long and Winding Road

"A journey is like a marriage. The certain way to be wrong
is to think you control it."
- John Steinbeck

Last week I took my first adventure up north, traveling to the Centrale region to visit another volunteer living in Sotouboua. Transportation in Togo can be crazy long, and heading north from Kpalime is a hassle. The road to Atakpame is horrible, full of potholes, and it can take up to four hours to get there.

To begin my journey, I headed out in the morning to the station near the Grand Marché. After I found a van and secured my seat, I went to the station cashier, where I paid for and received my ticket. I like that Kpalime has a cashier who handles this, because I know I’m not getting charged more by the driver, ripping me off because I’m a white person. We finally left Kpalime at 11:40am, after waiting in the station for almost three hours. The car was loaded up with 16 people squished inside and lots of cargo on top.

There are two options to get from Kpalime to Atakpame. You can go on the Lome-Atakpame route or you can go up to Adeta and cut across to the Route Nationale, a road that goes from the capital, Lome, all the way to Burkina Faso. My driver took the shortcut to the Route Nationale. This is a dirt road full of rocks. The car constantly vibrates and makes you feel like you are sitting in a massage chair, but not nearly as comfortable.

Along the way we got a flat tire, so we had to get out to change it. The driver and passengers told me, “C’est l’Afrique d’Ouest.” While I was waiting, a group of Togolese children in the fields chanted “yovo, yovo, yovo,” for a solid thirty minutes. Fun times. During our break, I finally noticed how dirty I had become from the dust and filth flying around and coming in the windows. I used Kleenex to wipe my face and arms and it was solid brown. Gross. I also noticed that my right arm had gotten sunburned while sitting in the passenger seat. Lesson learned for next time.

I didn't reach Sotouboua until 6:30pm. The last part of the trip was in the dark, which was a bit terrifying. Taxi drivers here are pretty crazy about passing and swerving to avoid potholes. There were a handful of times when I thought we were for sure going to hit the car coming towards us! I was very thankful that I arrived all in one piece, ALIVE, and it was SO nice to be reunited with friends....making all the hassles totally worth it.