Not quite a travelogue

I hadn’t been on vacation since 2019 and I was way overdue for a break. I had a trip all planned out for Spring of 2020, and well, we know what happened. Thankfully I was able to change that flight and go to Lomé, Togo last month to visit a very dear friend, Cora, and her family.

Togo is a beautiful country, filled with amazing artisans and the people I met were so kind and delightful. With that said, there is a lot of poverty and people struggling. I don’t want to ignore the challenges this country is facing.

I was also lucky to be staying with my friend Cora, who is an awesome guide. We went out to the countryside for the weekend and stayed at La Ferme écotouristique Yaka Yale where we got a tour of the farm, ate some delicious food (all grown there-and they make their own tofu), and drank some sodabi, a palm wine, with the locals.

I had no idea that it took 18 months for one pineapple to grow! Or that the plants looked like this.

We explored Lomé and I bought too much fabric. I made my own batik. We made recycled art with a Togolese rapper named Yao Bobby.

I learned so much about how the villagers grow their food and also their medicine. It made me see how removed we are from the the land and where we get our food.

It was an absolutely wonderful trip and I got some much needed downtime. I realized part way through the trip as I was attempting to speak French and surrounded by other languages that I’ve let go of a lot of control, especially when it comes to traveling. I remember being in Madrid, Spain and getting lost and wandering through the streets. Madrid is a medieval city and so it is easy to get lost in the tiny twisted streets. I panicked a bit, but then I stopped, had an aperitif, chatted in my really bad Spanish with some locals who directed me back to the main street. From there I was able to find my way back to where I was staying. But that moment of wandering those medieval cobblestone streets in the heat, then sitting and cooling down with a lovely drink, has become a core memory.

Being in Togo and surrounded by French I often lost the thread of the conversation, especially if I was in a group of French speakers. But it was ok. I would pick it up, or get the gist of it and continue on. Even though my French isn’t that great, I still tried. I think people appreciated that I tried. I often got verb tenses wrong, or had to describe something because I couldn’t remember the right word, but the more I tried, the better my French got.

I’m grateful for the experiences I have had while traveling. It has helped me slowly learn to let go of the need to control everything, or over plan everything. I once showed up in Paris at my hotel, but I had booked it for the next night and still needed a place to stay that evening. The hotel was booked up that night, and while I was trying to think of plan b, the hotelier was very kind and called the hotel around the corner and got me a room. Keep in mind this whole conversation happened in French, but I figured it out, with the kind help of a the hotelier.

I remember being annoyed with myself for getting the date wrong, but not feeling panicked. I had faith that some sort of solution would present itself and I’d find a place to stay.

That ability to let it go and not panic when my best laid plans fail, has taken a few years, and some therapy and life coaching. I’ve slowly let go of my need to control things and it has made my life more pleasant, and I’m sure people having to interact and deal with me, would agree it’s made being around me much more pleasant.

Next post, I’ll talk a little bit more about why we have the need to control things and a little bit about what we can do to start letting go.

I carry a vintage camera and people were always interested in how it worked.