Always Shake The Right Hand

In the morning that I was making my way back to Ghana I remember thinking I will have nothing to write about that evening. I imagined a long boring bus ride all the way back to Accra, checking into the same hotel I had already slept in several times, perhaps I would do some reading or washing before going to sleep.

Well, it didn’t work out like that at all.

I took a share taxi shortly after sunrise. Again I was wedged in the back seat between two very large women.

From Cotonou to the Togo border we were stopped constantly by the usual bribe-seeking cops. They would open the trunk and half-heartedly feign a search until the driver would slip 2000 CFA in their hands and the boot would promptly shut again.

Somewhere along the road we stopped for a toilet break. The three men from the front of the car lined up right beside it and started to pee, I was busting but no way was I pulling my jeans down right there.

“Toilette?” I asked one of the women I had been pressed up against for the last couple of hours. She nodded and led me across the road. I had hoped she knew of some secret hidden toilet but instead she finds two small wiry shrubs. It will have to do. I walk off to the farthest one leaving the closer one for her.

It was clearly a popular little bush as many, many people had done their business there as well. I tried to find a place for my feet, not stuck in inches of shit yet close enough to the bush to adequately camouflage my white butt. I had just dropped my daks when I was joined by the woman. Call me prudish, but I like a bit of privacy when I do my business, clearly she preferred company. I didn’t want to offend my guest so I crouched ready to pee. I was busting to go but nothing came out. Her presence had scared it away.

Only a few steps in front of me she hitches up her robes and tucks them under her pendulous breasts. She squats down and her big, black vagina is staring me in the face.

I still can’t pee… but she can.

She smiles at me warmly and her urine trickles onto the ground and rolls toward my feet. I am not sure of the etiquette in such a situation so I try to be subtle when I wriggle my feet out of the way of her oncoming stream.

And still my pee is scared away.

I silently will it to come out.

“Come on, come on, come on” I chant.

Still crouching in front of me, still peeing, she looks down at my vagina. She stares waiting for it to come and this makes me even more anxious and makes it even harder to go.

“Relax” I tell myself. “Relax and let it come out”

Finally it does and she flashes me a big congratulatory smile.

Her flow had ended and with the palm of her left hand she rubs at her vagina and strokes in her crack still only inches away from my face. She raises her dripping hand and shakes it flicking away the urine.

She stands pulling the robes out from under her breasts and waits for me to finish. I gingerly pull some tissues from my pocket and dab at myself, acutely aware of how perplexed she is about this.

Back in the car she holds a bag of dried banana in her left hand and eats them with her right. She holds the bag out for me to take one and I politely decline.

We cross the Togo border with no hassles at the check point – to my surprise the border guards don’t even ask me for money. It seems Togo’s police take their checks a little more seriously then police in Benin. Several times before a check point the driver made us all get out of the car and walk past the police only to have him wait for us far ahead. I can only assume that he was not licensed to drive a taxi and had to pretend he was a regular driver.

I realised peeing with someone was a bit of a bonding experience for me. Every time we were asked to get out the woman and I would walk side by side, even though she was very slow. We didn’t say a word just occasionally smiled at each other.