Duking it out in the hills of Kpalimé

The two of us have just returned from the Kpalimé area where we were accompanying a school 'Duke of Edinburh program' expedition. Really called 'The International Award for Young People' or something like that outside of the U.K., it has really taken off this year under the supervision of my colleague Guy Colborne. He had done this in England and brought those skills to BSL, where there are about 45 students enrolled this year. So many that the first (practice) expedition had to be split into 6 groups on 2 separate weekends. So yesterday morning, the last 23 students met at the school at 7:30 am and loaded onto two school buses. Accompanied by Guy's 4X4, we headed north of Lomé for 2 and a half hours and unloaded at the side of a road well up one of the few signicant hills in that region. After a last check over, which revealed several students wearing pull-on Vans-type shoes and what looked like delicate Italian loafers, we headed up the hill, to the probably confused looks of locals. What on earth would you come all the way up here and haul a load in the blazing sun if you didn't have to?? Silly yovos.








As predicted, the going was tough for the students. They are not used to carrying a pack, not used to exertion and not used to moving on uneven terrain. Put it all together and they were struggling early on, looking for any excuse for a stop. I spent a lot of that time adjusting packs that were not set up well or didn't come close to fitting them.

The real challenge was the heat. Even without a pack myself and early on in a 3 hour ramble, I was feeling pretty overheated. The ground was not steep, but it did take a little attention to avoid stumbling. We passed by patches of cultivated corn (actually a tougher form of maize), manioc, bananas, yams, coffee bushes and taro root. There's always something to see here, particularly if you are interested in culture or nature. Which we are, being a biologist and an anthropologist by training!

At stages the vegetation got thicker and the trail wound deeper through ravines. Near hilltops and ridges, there was a welcome breeze.



At one point we passed this hillside covered in felled palms.
They are cultivated and harvested for the making of palm wine and sodabey ( a sort of moonshine, brutal stuff which I tried our first couple of days in-country). It is made from the center of the palm trunk and fermented and distilled. Apparently it is usually too concentrated to sell legally.

We took a 15 minute break after about an hour and a half. The students asked for food and I asked if they didn't have lunch supplies with them. A couple said they had something but all the others said they hadn't been given anything. So after eating all the other snacks (mainly junk food like Pringles chips that they bought at the supermarket), we headed on.

Things like crossing a 6-inch-deep stream were a novel experience for these kids, most of whom have spent their entire lives in urban environments, usually insulated through wealth from any sort of struggle or wilderness experience. I had to help out one student who was feeling light-headed and stumbling. After taking her pack and plying her with lots of water, she slowly strengthened and we caught up to the others at a water break. As we approached our real lunchstop, I joked with the students that we had another hour and half to go after lunch. They were horrified but then happy to find I was teasing.

Later, when we stopped in a village for lunch, Guy couldn't believe that they had not pulled out the food that they had been given. Whole loaves of bread, cheese, jam, chocolate, cans of corned beef and tuna. So they pulled all that out and filled themselves.

Then it turned out we DID have another hour plus to go. And this bit was a bit nerve-wracking as we had another medical situation. One boy started having an asthma attack. Which didn't seem to be resolved through use of his inhaler. So I would make him rest for 5 minutes and then head on very slowly, but it would keep coming back. Even had him take a Ventoline pill from the first aid kit. Guy found out later that the boy didn't know how to correctly use his own inhaler so he was getting very little of the drug into his system that way.


As we got back onto a road 5 minutes from the pick-up, a young goat like this one ran out of the bushes in front of us. and dodged into the undergrowth, with what was obviously a leg-hold trap attached to its foot.

It seemed to have just been injured moments before and when I went looking for it, found the goat crouching down beside the road. It made no effort to run from me, and it must have been in terrible agony. I slowly reached underneath it and tried to disengage the two large jaws. Difficult to do under ideal circumstances, but with a terrified animal not clear that I was trying to help and the trap being rusty AND hidden out of sight under the goat... Amazingly I managed to squeeze the mechanism open and release it quite quickly. We debated taking the goat, getting aid for it and keeping it as a pet but Guy pointed out that it belonged to someone local and they would eat it promptly under the circumstances. Not a happy ending but he was right that we didn't really have the right to take someone's 'property', much as I don't like that term applied to sentient creatures. At least we took the trap away so it couldn't be used again, on wild creatures or domesticated.

We then drove on to an old German mission on a hillside, where we set up camp in their clearing. The kids struggled to set up multiple types of tents, some unfamiliar, in the dusk. Then they cooked basic food like ramen noodles on 'Trangier' alcohol stoves.

The night was long, with both of us not sleeping much, Julia because of the very thin foam pads and myself because of the hot humid conditions. Just lying on top of the sheet bag with nothing on was too hot, even with the doors open.

Next morning we all had basic breakfasts and got packed up for the second hike. I quickly collected a huge seedpod from a baobab tree at the site.

As we put sunscreen on, we noticed that we had been bitten dozens of times by tiny black flying insects, not mosquitos. You don't feel them and they don't itch so suddenly you notice tons of big red spots just appearing like this:
Julia had them all over both arms and her neck and face.

Down the hill to the village below, where a replacement van was waiting (one of the school vans died the day before, just as we got to camp). We were run to another village where we hopped out and started another walk along roads, then through fields and forests again for about 2 hours. Past lots of cocoa trees, which are very weird with their big pods growing from any part of the trunk or branches. Even just an inch above the ground.

The countryside is all semi-developed. Even the areas that look like 'jungle' are often semi-cultivated. The original trees are mostly gone, the teak and the mahogany. Replaced with avocados, grapefruit, cocoa and coffee. Not in a totally regimented style that looks like a farm or orchard. The other plants are still there, growing among the planted ones so it looks natural. Unfortunately, there is very little wildlife anywhere. Nothing bigger than a lizard, other than birds. and even they are mainly small flitting birds. The rest has been eaten. Monkeys are known here as bushmeat. I haven't seen any sign of any for sale, but then you can't catch what has been driven to extinction (locally, so yes it's actually 'extirpation'). You DO see kids holding rodents up by their heads at the side of the road, huge cane rats I believe. And skewers of cooked snails, giant land snails covered in local red sauce. Apparently tastes like pieces of rubber with red sauce, not unlike escargot anywhere!

We finally finished that last part of the hike and got out to the vehicles on the other side. Celebrated our accomplishment with cookies and banana bread, courtesy of Auntie Comfort in the school kitchen. Back into the vans and headed for Lomé, stopping for a cold soft drink in one of the roadside bars. Within 15 minutes the students were almost all dozing, wrung out from 2 days of heat and carrying packs.

Back in town, we stopped at school where the students had to finish sorting and returning all the gear. Which Julia and I were excused from. We rushed home to cold showers and fresh clothes.

Then I tended the garden a bit and cut down the last of one of the bunches of bananas.

The adventure doesn't quite end there because, being Togo, the power had been going out throughout the day. We decided to treat ourselves to dinner at Le Lotus, the Vietnamese/Chinese restaurant in our neighbourhood. The power went out again as we arrived, and then went on and off 3 or 4 times during our 20 minute wait for take-out. Back at home we had power but the water pump seems to have gone on the blink so we can't get any water, flush a toilet etc. BUT... during dinner a heavy rainshower started, complete with thunder, so we are catching some rainwater in a tub in the garden. The same tub we usually use to catch our shower water and use to water plants in the garden. Ironic.

Time to Skype family and do marking. Then early to bed, I think.