West Africa Cruise: Togo (11.30.24)

Togo was a new country for me, my 118th!  It was also a very exotic place.  On November 30, 2024, we visited the tribal king who presided over 500,000 Togo residents.  We also met a voodoo priest and voodoo priestesses, visited a voodoo shrine, and watched voodoo dances.  The voodoo religion migrated, with slaves, to Brazil and the Caribbean, and even to New Orleans.

The tribal king held an audience for four busloads of Oceania tourists.  Togo now has a parliamentary national government, but the president consults with tribal leaders about important matters.  We learned, during our visits to West Africa, that West Africans, whether living in rural villages or big cities, identify with their tribes and the tribes' leaders.  

This scepter was given by Queen Victoria to the king to commemorate the end of slavery.

We visited a home and temple for voodoo priests and priestesses.  The priestesses arrived, dressed in white.

The voodoo priest joined the line of priestesses.

During the day we witnessed several "welcome" ceremonies, which involved adding liquids to a gourd bowl and then pouring them out on the ground.

At the voodoo temple, we visited a shrine encasing an idol worshipped by the people.

The voodoo dance performance involved watching whirling grass "creatures." Later in the dance, strange idols were retrieved from underneath the "creatures."  The idols went back underneath, and then the grass "creatures" were overturned, to reveal that nothing was there!

A friendly woman in orange beckoned members of the audience to dance with her.  She was rewarded with tips tucked into her ample bosom!

I wondered which of these ladies was my age.

As usual, a visit to a fishing village was included in our tour.  I have now seen lots of African fishing villages, but I love them all, for their picturesque boats, landscapes, and people.

A beautiful woman presided over the smoking of the fish.

And, of course, I can never resist the African children.

West Africa Cruise: Sekondi-Takoradi, Ghana (11.29.24)

We spent November 29, 2024, in a small van with five or six cruise mates, heading the opposite direction from everyone else.  That was welcome, after spending most shore excursions packed into 50-person tour buses.  The main attractions near Secondi-Takoradi, Ghana, where we docked, were the Cape Coast slave castle and Kekondi National Park, with its seven-tier zipline through the jungle canopy.  We enjoyed those fabulous experiences during our 2023 West Africa land tour.  This time, we jounced off the main roads to another of the 40 slave castles along the West African coast--Fort Metal Cross.  We also wandered through a fishing village so far off the grid that it had no running water, although cell phones were everywhere!

The Germans began building Ft. Metal Cross in 1692, under the name Ft. Gross Fredrichsburg.  They sold it to the Dutch in 1868, who sold it to the English in 1872.  Throughout the 1600s, 1700s, and into the 1800s, it was used as a slave prison.  Ft. Metal Cross held slaves gathered in the interior of Ghana until they could be shipped across the Atlantic by slave ships cruising along the coast.  Germany, Holland, Britain, France, and Portugal all held colonies in Africa between 1600 and 1800, and they were all complicit in the slave trade.

A local guide showed us around the fort, including the wretched slave quarters, the opulent officers' quarters, and the roof of the fort, where cannons pointed out to sea.

We stood in the room where dozens of slaves languished, for weeks at a time, waiting for a slave ship to take them to the Americas.  The only light came from a skylight high up in the ceiling.

The view from the fort was now serene.

We visited a fishing village, where the boats had recently arrived back, after a few days at sea.  Throughout West Africa, our guides told us that local fishermen are worried about their dwindling catches, now that mammoth Chinese fishing fleets invade national waters either illegally or through buying fishing rights by bribing government officials.

I don't know why this boat flew an American flag, but it was a welcome sight!

We wandered around the village, accompanied by dogs, little kids, and a band of teenage singers, accompanied by drums.

Other teens looked on.

The little kids were absolute charmers.  This little guy looked as if he had been rolling in the sand on the beach!

This youngster ran beside the singers and drummers, resplendent in her (his?) pink shoes.

A member of our tour danced with the local children.  She asked me to join her, but I was not quite that free-spirited.

A number of the houses had sayings, in English, painted on them.  English is the national language of Ghana, following its British colonization.  Some of the West African countries, such as Senegal, are considering making a tribal language their national language, instead of a colonial one.  One problem is that there are many tribes within each country, each vying for prominence.

I don't know the significance of "One Plus One" and "3 Whys," but those sayings were important to this homeowner.

And what encouraged this homeowner to plaster American flags all over the house?  Note the satellite dishes on the roof.

This village showed the meandering path of African countries from poverty to the middle class.  The women wore Western dresses, there was a local bus, and electrical lines were draped from house to house, yet there were dirt roads and no running water.

A motorcycle, emblem of the middle class, was parked next to a fetid pool of water.  As we drove out of town, we passed women carrying jugs of water home from the pump.

As we headed for lunch at a resort, we passed girls playing soccer near their school.  

The contrast between rich and poor was emphasized by the elegant beach resorts that our tour guides found in the remotest places, with their gardens, palm trees, and rich food.

Jollof rice is eaten all over West African, in many varieties.  I've tried to cook it at home, several times, but I can never get the taste and texture quite right.  Next time....

The traffic jams were so bad, in Secondi-Takoradi, that we were led out of town, in the morning, by a police escort.  When we got stuck in a traffic jam returning to the ship, our guide called for another police escort to dash ahead of us, blowing his siren and motioning cars and trucks out of the way!