And Her Reward Shall Be Chickpea-based

Good morning, Lomé.

And goodbye.

That's it, my time in Lomé. Overnight. I read through my guidebook, concluded I wanted to see the Ganvie stilt village and the voodoo town in Benin, and mostly, I wanted to enter Nigeria on Sunday. I considered getting my Gabon visa in Lomé (and later learned I should have), but was more interested in getting past Lagos on a Sunday than in visa acquisition.

I had dinner after dark in my hotel in Lomé, breakfast in the morning, and I got a taxi to the shared-taxi center, a dusty ramshackle area along the coast. The Atlantic glistened at me from beyond the beach, across the road. Lomé has probably seen better days—much better days—but the ocean doesn't mind. I did later learn that the Underwear Bomber was from Togo, but his home isn't quite on the tourist circuit. A missed opportunity, perhaps.

My taxi driver found the Cotonou vehicles quickly and deposited me in one that was now full. That means I got the center seat in the back, but it was okay. There were only three of us in the back, and one passenger, a laptop-case-carrying man in his forties, in the front.

I was flanked by a couple that slid into their seats after I got in. The woman noted the windows, where were all down to create a breeze once we started driving, and immediately slipped off her wig, placing it in her handbag.

So many women wear wigs in this part of the world. Their hair is buzz-cut underneath, like a schoolgirl in these parts. Initially, I'd wondered about the perfectly straight, even bobs with a splash of purple or red, but the Sleeping Camel owner had set me straight.

Dead Man Dreaming

Ghana didn't get a lot of my time. I didn't have the patience to scour the countryside for craft villages around Kumasi, and I didn't go to Mole National Park at all. I don't regret the latter—I lived in Murchison Falls National Park in the summer of 2005 and it's hard to follow up that kind of access to wild animals with a safari in an area without a lot of game. I do like looking at animals, and if the chance comes up further south, I'll take it. But I'm not going out of my way and spending a lot of dough to do this.

I do regret not having more time to see Ghana's sights and cities, but I was getting anxious. I'd intended to be in Brazzaville at the end of April to meet a friend who was there working on a story, and I was a week late. I probably wasn't going to make it. And I was keen to get through Nigeria already. Nigeria has such a bad reputation that I was nervous. I wanted to get in and out into Cameroon and have the part making me nervous be behind me.