Paradise was always over there, a day’s sail away. But it’s a funny thing, escapism. You can go far and wide and you can keep moving on and on through places and years, but you never escape your own life. I, finally, knew where my life belonged. Home. - J. Maarten Troost

30 September 2019, Tchébébé to Sokodé, 69.6km
Central Hotel 13,000XOF (R325)
 
“Bon arrivé” (welcome), is the call we heard most often today, how nice. And few if any calls for “cadeau” (gift).
We awoke to a puncture on my bike; luckily Charl had mended all three tubes from yesterday’s horrible series of punctures, so he quickly got us on the road. We bought deep fried dough balls for breakfast and left town under a gloomy sky. Just 7km out, it was clear a storm was coming, and when we saw an autocyclist take shelter under a tin roof, we joined him there to sit it out. It lasted long enough that we unpacked our Trangia stove and made coffee for us and our fellow refugee. It was still mizzling when we left the shelter of the tin roof, and continued to do so for the next 13km or so, keeping us wonderfully cool.
At some point, our good-quality road ended and was replaced with a road in less good nick, but OK.
We saw three women pounding cassava (or yam, perhaps) in a large wooden mortar, taking turns in quick succession to raise their pestles high and hammer them into the gooey mass. And we bought four grapefruit and one unknown, cricket ball-hard fruit, from a roadside stall. The stall was unmanned, so we stood at it hoo-hooing until the sellers came running from their homes to serve us. A wonderful element of honesty and trust we have encountered since Angola. Later we ate two of the grapefruit with cubes of sugar seated under a thatch roof at a village shelter. Every village seems to sport a communal area with several seating areas under thatch.
We saw “lifestyle” billboards, one comparing hard labour to an education and better job; another promoting single-partner relationships to avoid AIDS; one proposing autocycles carry a maximum of two people, not four. We saw our first agricultural machine in forever, large and modern and undoubtedly efficient. And our first silos in forever, these standing unused. And for the first time we saw okra growing, though we have seen it often at stalls or sliced and laid on the roadside to dry.
Women here, more often than not, dress beautifully in bright fabrics. Seldom in trousers, usually dresses or kaftans or skirts, the latter often simply a sarong with a simple hitch on one hip holding it up. They might accompany the skirt with a fit-n-flare blouse, or T-shirt. Many wear chiffon headscarfs, airy and lovely, testament probably to their Muslim faith.
There have been considerably fewer roadblocks in west Africa than we had grown accustomed to in central Africa. Outside Sokodé was a seemingly permanent block comprising four alternating double rows of tyres, each filling a lane, forcing vehicles to slow and zig-zag past them. A young man in an army uniform, a large but rusted gun slung across his body, flagged us down, but did not seem quite to know what to do with us once he had done so, especially as he spoke no English and we very little French. In the end he waved us on with a smile.
We booked into the Central Hotel on the south side of town and really enjoyed our dinner at their lapa restaurant: spaghetti bolognaise for me; a burger for Charl.

For today's route see below photos
For overview route, click on ROUTE tab above…