Togolais Diaries....contd

Le 4th Avril 2009

Bonjour

After a late night, I had a headache and due to lack of eating much last night, was extremely hungry and after sleeping in a wrong position, had pulled the muscles of my neck this I woke up at 7:30 after just 4 and a half hours of sleep to not a very pleasant morning. Though the prospect of discussing work with Ismael did excite me and I had a meeting with him at 9 for which I did make it on time inspite of my moto taxi breaking down in the middle of the road. After some fruitful discussion with Ismael and lounging about for an hour and a half, it was time to visit the market along with Babs and Dorienke to buy a present for Samuel. There was a minor mishap on the way as Babs’ moto taxi banged against a guy as a result, she fell of her moto taxi, injuring her legs in the process. Thankfully it was not very serious though and we did manage to reach the market soon enough. The market of Lome is an assault on one’s senses not in a positive nor in negative way but for the want of a better word, lets just say in a ‘different’ way and the definition of this different I guess will be fully framed after a couple of more visit’s to the place. Narrow, intersecting one-lane streets and even mud lanes swarmed by stalls covered by colourful umbrellas or having a tin roof over them, selling everything under the sun, from African handicrafts (presumably rather over priced for foreigners like us), to movies (from hindi, to English to porn), clothes (football jerseys were clearly the ones dominating among those in men and among women as usual I wasn’t much interested: D), run over by vehicles and motorcycles and people in an indistinguishable mix, dotted with rather pursuant shopkeepers and mobile vendors (on foot) and even theatres showing porn movies in good measure.

Finally due to the lack of any feasible option, we finally resorted to buying him a shirt from Wrangler. After finishing this off, we grabbed some drinks at the same boulevard which we visited last night, of course there were no 'anti-social' elements in the evening. Also met up with Dorienla's host family whom we commonly joke is stricter than Adolf Hitler's regime in Germany coz she has all kinds of restrictions and rules to follow! As usual, they were extremely extremely sweet and greeted all of us very nicely! So finally after a quick dinner, i headed home, for the first time alone at night and t'was no problem as such. Tired after an extremely exhausting day, as usual i crashed!!!