Ghana, Togo, Benin Day 2 and 3

 I woke up at 5am so that I could be in the dinning room at 5:30 and catch my 6am bus going to Benin via Togo. So I got on the bus at 6am, and nobody was really certain of the itinerary, so we made playful bets on how long it was going to take to get to our hotel.  There were some variations but the longest bet was 2 hours. Well, 4 hours later we cross the Ghana-Togo border, 2 hours after that we cross the Togo Benin border. We then spend 15 minutes in the places that made it seem like we were going to spend hours then finally at 8pm we get to our hotel. 14 hours later. I was not a happy camper, but I did get to call my parents on skype, I kinda bitched to them, but I was confined to a small seat all day.

But I did get to go to the Gate of No Return where millions of slaves were transported to America. I attempted to make a documentary on my Return to the Point of No Return, it was going to be a really powerful piece, but that was an epic fail. But I do have to say, we (as a people) have come a long way.

My ancestors crossed the Atlantic sub-human, packed like sardines and I return to Africa on a luxury cruiseliner having the time of my life.

OK that’s all for that day, and also Day 3 was another long day of driving, but we got to go on this village on stilts. That was pretty cool, I have tons of video and pictures so I hope to soon have that all up on facebook.

All in all this trip was really boring, and probably not worth the $350 I paid for it,  but I did get two and half pages worth of stamps on my passport for going into Togo twice and Benin once and back into Ghana.

One thing this trip showed me was the widespread poverty. I was on that bus for 24 hours of that 40 hour trip and an hour never went by where you would see shack after shack with no electricity and probably no running water.

I cannot believe that Ghana is the forefront in development in West Africa because it has so far to go.  There were times when we were traveling on unpaved roads, most of the time at night there was not a light in sight.  I can see the leaps of progression, but Ghana and the rest of west Africa still have a lot of work ahead of them.