january 28. 2012.

Bear with me as I start up my blog. These are all late entries. Just a few stories or observances in the past couple weeks. Enjoy!

First story to tell (of what I'm sure will be many) in Togo.  A few of us wanted to go to Greenfields for pizza (they are supposed to be great, have a wood-burning oven).  A few turned into many more as the invites spread around so nobody would be left out. By the time we headed out, I turned around to see a giant mass of Mercy Shippers following.  There may have been 35-40 of us. Everyone stopped at the gas station and tried to figure out what to do.  As you can imagine, most people who come to serve with Mercy Ships are pretty independent. Everyone was attempting to lead and make decisions so we wouldn't all overwhelm one small Togolese restaurant.  We split up eventually and a group of 7 of us grabbed a taxi to Greenfields.  The cab driver told us he could fit us all in but would charge us 4,000 CFA (approximately $8.00) instead of 2,000. Being naive Yovo's (white people/foreigners), we all agreed and jumped in.  It was the driver, a girl and guy in the front, then 5 girls in the back (two were on laps, including me).  Keep in mind that every time you take a taxi you negotiate the price depending on distance before you get in.  You also need to do this in French or Ewe, of which we understand very little.

Back to the story... so we are driving along, holding onto whatever we can to weather the bumps. We pull over at a place the driver thought we wanted to go to (it had a green sign on it).  It was not Greenfields. He got out and asked someone for directions. When he hopped back in to continue, the car wouldn't start. One of us got out to help push and then two Togolese men ran over to help us push. While rolling, the car started and off we went into a roundabout, where the police started yelling at us, but we didn't know why.  Our driver did not stop, just kept driving.  Later, we saw the police following us on motorbikes until we pulled over.  For the next 30 minutes (which felt like even longer) we sat, the 7 of us, sweating, scrunched in the small car which was idoling so that it would not die on us again.  The police proceeded to yell at the driver, who yelled back. It was in French but we knew enough to know that we were not supposed to have so many people in a taxi.  He received a fine of 5000 CFA, which of course he wanted us to pay.  We refused, as we were told to (we are not supposed to pay off the cops ever).  He wanted us to pay the 5000 for the police and also the 4000 for the ride but would take us the rest of the way.  After maybe 15 minutes of back and forth in broken pieces of French, we just agreed to pay 5000 total and he took us the rest of the way on back roads to avoid further police.  We made it, and we enjoyed our belated meal.  Needless to say, we took 2 separate taxis on the way home. And we had an exciting story to tell.