Lomé To Cotonou: NOT!

I had reservations with Emperor Tours for a CFA 6000 (US$12) bus to Cotonou, Benin for the 10am minibus on Wednesday. It wasn't exactly what I wanted, but close enough. I wanted a bush taxi that leaves in the morning because the Lonely Planet says Cotonou starts getting dangerous in the late afternoon--at least that's when you shouldn't be walking around. It's supposed to be about a 3 hour trip, so that would put me in about 1pm. Plenty of time to make it safely to a hotel and do a little exploring before the 5pm knives comes out.

But this day was not to be one of those days that goes according to plan.

I loaded myself up with all my gear and started the long walk to the Emperor Tours office close to where the Circular Boulevard hits the beach. About halfway there there is my usual internet cafe which is the best one I found in Lomé but whose computers aren't able to let me use my fly-by-night email client (webmail.mailtrust.com). About half the internet cafés let me use it fully, one quarter let me receive but not send, and one quarter puke even on the receiving part. My intention was to just check fivethirtyeight.com for my latest reality check. But I decided to check my email as well. I only had a few minutes but maybe there would something interesting.

Oh boy! A problem. Elena had asked me about a week ago if I could renew her insurance on my secure laptop so she wouldn't have to enter information into a cybercafé computer. I still had a few days in Accra and the Busy Internet cafe has a Laptop Alley where you can connect your laptop and be as secure as you want to be. I agreed. But that was with 3 days left in Accra. Now I was already 3 days in Lomé and Lomé ain't Accra. It's like comparing Kelowna with Victoria. I had no way of sending email. I had to write on Elena's facebook wall, but I wouldn't know if she would look at her facebook so I had to ask people to send her an email to look at her facebook. Yikes. The problem is that her insurance would expire in 2 days and the email warning her of the impending expiration said she had to renew before it expires.

I was all flustered. I left my sunglasses there by accident and headed to the bus station. I got there and put down my stuff. I asked if they knew when the bus would come. Actually not until about 10:30. Whew! I was sweating like a pig and about 3 blocks away is a place called Festival de Glaces which is AC'ed to the max inside. I had time to get a pastry and a coffee and let their AC suck all that heat out of me. And I had extra sweat because I was worried about Elena's insurance. I know that she isn't in internet connectivity heaven either and I hoped she wasn't counting on me to be able to be able to help her. I cooled off a bit and went back to the Emperor tours office. There the woman told me that there are 2 buses--a big bus and a little bus. While the little bus is CFA 6000 (US$12), the big bus is CFA 16000 (US$32) and only the big bus was coming today. Oh my. CFA 16000 normally gets you all the way across an African country. But the trip to Cotonou is like a 3 hour trip. I took it in and sat down. Did I misunderstand? Maybe she meant CFA 1600 (US$3.20). I asked. Nope. She added that you get food. Food? For CFA 16000 I better get a Pastis as an apertif, a shrimp cocktail as an entrée, a steak as a plat--with a glass of French red wine, and a dessert like Crème Brulée with espresso. I asked if the CFA 6000 bus would leave the next day. She said it would. I said that the CFA 16000 was way to cher and I'd be back tomorrow.

So I walked back to the Hôtel du Boulevard. I got back and had a little trouble explaining that I had actually checked out already, but that I wanted to cancel the checkout and extend my stay one more day. I was by now sweating like Niagara Falls. I got out a handkerchief and wiped off the drops of sweat that were falling on their desk. I got my key back and went back up. They hadn't cleaned it yet so it looked like before. I put my soaking shirt on the underpowered fan and tried to dry it. Not to much avail. Then I went down. The girl who works there teased me a little bit because my passport picture (235 lbs.) looks so different from the current me (150 lbs.). That's a kind of teasing I can take. :-) An sustained 85 lb. weight loss is something to be proud of. I went out.

My goal: find a better internet cafe with better computers to see if I could help Elena. I tried one. It was actually one of the worst cafe clients ever. You can't even minimize windows without lots of rigmarole to get them back--which wouldn't be so bad with Firefox tabbed browsing but sucks monkey balls with Internet Explorer's one page per Window. The next cafe was similar to the one I usually go to but worse. It was obvious that Elena was going to have to renew her insurance on her own.

Finally I gave up. I stopped at a place right by my hotel called Nopegali Boulevard or Nopegali V.I.P. I'm not sure if they are the same. I sat a long time before a firl came to take my order. Then I sat a long time before deciding to give up and left without ever receiving my water and beer. And I wanted a beer to calm my nerves because I didn't know if Elena would get to a computer in time to renew her insurance. I was pretty sure I told her I could help if I was still in Accra, but that was a week ago.

I went back down the street to Brochettes sur la Capital and got 4 brochettes and a beer which I knew to be ice cold--and it was. I had another.

I walked by a book store and got an old l'Express and Paulo Coelho's Le Démon et Mademoiselle Prym. The Nigerian guy from the day before was there. We chatted briefly.

Then I headed to the Bena Grille which is a German restaurant attached to the Marox supermarket (actually a bit less than a Seven-Eleven except with a butcher). The menu of the Beni was in German first, then French, then English. The waitress spoke some English and asked if I was American or German. I wonder if my accent doesn't identify me as American. When I hear a German speak English, I know he or she is German. Same with French. But people in Africa often don't recognize my accent as American or they pretend not to. I got a veal in sauce. When it came it looked like the meal I had at the Come Inn in Gambia. But this meat didn't have the consistency of shredded tires. It was tender. But it made me think back to that night of projectile vomiting after the Come Inn beef stroganoff.

I had plans for that night in The Gambia. I wasn't just disappointed that I lost a night to projectile vomiting. I was disappointed that I lost a golden opportunity. I had AC for the first time in a long time, and more than that, I had a pillow similar to an American pillow. American pillows differ from African pillows. The main difference is that an American pillow is basically the size and shape of a human torso. You can cuddle with an American pillow. You can hold the pillow as you would hold a girl who you like. You can close your eyes and turn the pillow into her. You can squeeze her and feel her. And lose yourself in her. The Carlton Hotel in Banjul is one of the only places in Africa that has pillows that fit that use. And my 3 bouts of projectile vomiting cost me that opportunity--an opportunity not had since then.

That ended the night. I walked home rather uneventfully except for seeing a woman carrying a 4' diameter tray on her head loaded with stuff. Two feet in diameter is nothing. Three feet in diameter is a little adventurous. But a four foot diameter tray balanced on a woman's head is just spectacular.

Thursday, October 30, 2008 21:37 Benin local time