This is part of the Seventh section of our around the world trip.
Complete Trip Overview & Map

Coming from  Benin
 

1/2/01 Togo has a beach feel as the road parallels the water on one side and people growing vegetables in the sand. Water drawn from shallow wells and hand watered by watering cans for km's alongside the road. These fresh vegetables make it to the capital market in Lome where a market eco system feeding on itself seems to exist. There always seems to be more sellers than buyers. But on closer scrutiny the sellers are also buyers. The shoe shine man buys polish from the vendor who buys his lunch from the mobile kitchen who buys her pots from another vendor who buys from a coffee seller who buys his cups etc. Little money escapes the clutches once it has entered the market. This includes people who have moved to the city to be disappointed with no work. They walk the street selling for bigger vendors, belts, clothes, foods. Having no belongings they sleep in the street and eat street foods feeding the system. The mother of invention is everywhere with new imaginative ways to make money honestly or through scams being invented and rapidly copied. No doubt there is an underworld of crime hidden from us, as exists everywhere.

2/2/01 Being such a short country across the coast, just 56 km, to see more we headed inland to Kpalime in the mountains, before crossing the remote border to Ghana. It seems to get rid of the "brothers in law hangers on" who were promoted for that reason, they send them to remote outposts. Luckily we were relaxed or the blood would have boiled with the slowness to record our documents in the mammoth books. Incredibly friendly yet hopelessly inefficient.
 
 
 

Move with us to Ghana
 

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