Ghana, Togo and Benin
Ghana is a stunning country
After a night spent free of charge in a beautiful Catholic mission close to Abidjan, I enter Ghana. At the border, I notice I have a leak at the oil seal on my right-hand stanchion, probably caused by a nasty puncture picked up on the Taï road. Fixing that will be a priority when I get to Togo!
Ghana is a stunning country. As soon as you arrive there you feel surrounded by positivity and an urge to celebrate, while music can be heard everywhere. I spend a few days in Ghana, in the city of Accra, and the thing that struck me most was the spirit of its people.
But I have no time to waste in reaching Togo, where extensive bureaucracy awaits me and I will need to obtain a number of visas. One of those is for Gabon which, ideally, I would not include on my route, as the final part of the country is hugely difficult to cross due to mud and potholes. The alternative, however, is Congo, where for 800 km fuel can only be found in villages. My choice, then, is to venture through the mud of Togo, rather than taking the risk of a can of the wrong fuel damaging my motorcycle irreparably.With Accra behind me, I head for Lomé in Togo. Crossing the border at Togo is a fairly stressful and fraught experience, as there is always the risk of leaving something unguarded long enough for it to be robbed on such occasions.
What’s more, I am unable to find my hotel and find myself in the dark in Lomé without a safe place to lay my head for the night. Every day presents new difficulties to overcome, but that’s another part of the African experience.
Here in Togo, in Lomé, I take care of a number of tasks: I find an ATM to pay for my stay, and I obtain my visas for Gabon (2 days of waiting and 60,000 CFA) and for the Democratic Republic of the Congo (3 days of waiting and 50,000 CFA). As if that’s not enough, I also have to wait here for parts to repair the right-hand stanchion of my motorcycle, where the oil is leaking. Luckily, we are able to make it good as new before moving on to Nigeria.
After Togo I move on to Benin, where I am greeted by the “Door of No Return”, a commemorative arch in Ouidah. The concrete and bronze arch stands on the beach, in memory of the thousands of enslaved people who were put on ships right here to be taken to work on Brazilian plantations.
In Cotonou, I am hosted by two young Nigerians living in Benin, giving me a unique opportunity to visit places I’d never have stumbled across by myself.
Thank you, my friends, for making me feel at home and treating me as a special guest… I will never forget Benin!
