Marijke's Trip 2012: Kpalime Trip

So this weekend was a little bit different than the other ones. From Friday to Saturday I stayed overnight in a city more north. It was an awesome experience. To much happened during the entire trip to tell everything about it, but I will try to pick out some of the most interesting adventures.
We left the ship early Friday morning. A day worker who used to live in Kpalime came along for the trip, so we had our own tourguide. First business to complete was find a taxi. There were 6 of us, and legally a taxi with 5 seats is allowed to take 5 passengers along, but we were with 6. No problem with the driver, till we got pulled over. Yelling match with cop ensued because the cop asked for $4 bribe so no trouble would be made, but the driver did not feel inclined to give $4. In the end the driver ended up paying and we continued on driving. The taxi did not get us all the way to Kpalime, we had to go on another taxi. There was fierce competition over who got to drive us, and we finally settled on one taxi. We had all climbed in, ready to go, but somebody was blocking our way because he did not agree with which taxi we had picked. Driver went out to argue. While the driver was talking, another guy slyly slid into the driver's seat and asked us innocently, Kpalime? When the owner of the car returned he was quite surprised to see someone else sitting in his seat ready to take off with his car. After another yelling match the intruder exited the car and we were finally on our way. But we definitely did not go straight there. The guys who were offended that we had not picked their taxi to chauffeur us around had called to Kpalime that the taxi-numberboard had more than the legal amount of people and was coming that way. So we switched over to another taxi, and that taxi stuck around for the rest of the day, touring us everywhere.
Kpalime is in a more mountainous area. It is absolutely beautiful out there, with all the green tropical forests. We hiked to two different waterfalls, hidden between a huge variety of trees and plants and insects.
Another experience which I really enjoyed during the trip was our visit to the dayworkers mother's village. We were invited to a fou-fou party. Fou-fou is made of cassada, tasted and looked similar to mashed potatoes, and accompanied by fish. We drove to the village on the back of a motorbike, three on each motorbike. As we entered the village the children crowded around us already, all wanting to hold our hands and touch and talk to us. They are so incredibly cute, I want to take some of them home! They do have bigger bellies, and the nurses were saying it is probably worms or malnourishment. We were led to an open space underneath some trees, and there we were served with our meal. It was a good meal, although my tastebuds probably don't appreciate it as much as the Africans do. After our meal we got a tour of the village. The village really reminded me of how some museums look back home. Everybody was the dayworkers family, he mysteriously had many brothers, although when I asked him before he only had one sibling. Chickens scurried around, some old people were sitting in their huts, two boys were making palm oil, an old man was weaving a mat. It is so hard to relay the experience, it didn't even feel real to me.
We had many more adventures, but it is too much to write about.