Bushveld Utopia

We have been in Benin’s Northern game park called Penjari, for two days now, it is the true outdoor experience. We are camping in very basic locations where we seem to be the only people around, actually we have only heard one car this morning and nothing since. The camp we are at overlooks a spectacular dam and the sun is about to set. The Fish Eagles are calling and there are flocks of Bee Eaters and Hamerkops flying around (yes flocks, amazing!).

We have spotted plenty Elephant, hippo and crocks along with a plethora of local buck all similar to our own but slightly different from Impala to Roan Antelope, I feel like I am back in Botswana when we were 4x4'ing around and you were simply allowed to camp out anywhere with nobody else around... absolute bliss.

We had a very awesome evening last night when we set up in a spot that we weren’t sure we were allowed to be and around 20h00 a vehicle pulled in with their headlights focussed on us (oh hell have we done something wrong and is there another bribe, fine luring??). It ended up being 5 folk living in Benin, (a family of 4 chilled Frenchies and a local Benin friend from the village where they are working for a year) TOTALLY LOST, no fuel and no water!! We helped them out and they spent the evening, a truly spectacular time under a tree with bats that would fly in from time to time to pollinate the buds, everytime the bats arrived it felt and sounded like rain fall as they swooped amongst the branches and then off to feed on another tree to conclude the cross pollination.

Camping in the school yard

We ended our time in Togo with a day tour of the Tata houses up North which are miniature castles built in mud. Their religion  is anamalism/ voodoo so there are fetishes outside the entrances for hunting, protection, curing of snake bites and fertility. Each mound has normally got blood and some sort of sacrifice (piece of a goats ear, guinea fowl parts etc.). We arrived late and were accommodated in a local school yard (what and awesome chilled out headmaster).

The Tata: You enter through a small door which can house chickens and a grinding mill, then through into a larger open area where the animals are kept at night and then upstairs to the living quarters and you can overlook the landscape for enemies from here. The round towers are silos for grain, nuts, and oil etc. We cant believe they still build the same fortresses and live in them. The initial design was based on a hollow Baobab tree and they then used the fortress to forge off predators and try to fight the westerners who wanted to take the strong males and females for slavery. A very informative and well worth visit. The main road through Togo is bad and very slow, plenty of potholes and trucks (Benin’s road structure seems to be in much better condition.

On a personal side we are loving the little villages and random places, however have had enough of the general understaning that the foreigner and specifically white man will provide and MUST provide... no mater what we are doing there is always a hand awaiting some sort of handout, even stopping on the side of the road in the most desolate of places we can find, we suddenly are encountered by one or two locals staring at us which eventually turns into a wanting hand... not happening on our side as it never ends...