Saturday 14 February 2009

Travel through Togo

The following morning, we had breakfast at 6am. We were meant to be on the road by 7am, but the minibus didn't arrive until nearer to 8! Our numbers had increased further to 14 as we were joined by people from Nigeria, Benin, Cameroon and Togo. The minibus wasn't exactly the most comfortable of vehicles, so the next 9 hours was a bit of an endurance in the heat. We stopped every 3 hours for a very welcome legstretch, and had a packed lunch in a nice spot under some trees. Most of the journey was fairly flat, passing by villages of thatched mud houses, teak forests, and cassava. The last leg brought us uphill quite a bit, along a windy road. We passed about 3 or 4 overturned lorries on a relatively short stretch of road, their goods covered by tarpaulin. One was a petrol tanker, which seemed to have been involved in an incident involving a number of vehicles, as we discovered when we were able to pass by and see the rest of the carnage. It was frightening to see a man collecting the spilt petrol that was running down the side of the road, so soon after the horrific event near Nakuru in Kenya, in which over 130 people were killed in a fire at a similar scene

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