Maybe I'm just a moron, but it wasn't until I set an actual foot in West Africa that I had any idea that there is a country called Togo. Soccer fans may remember Togo as a 2006 world cup qualifier or know the Togolese soccer star Emmanuel Adebayor, who according to my outdated lonely planet guide plays for the English team Arsenal. Togo is a small strip of land sandwiched between Burkina, Ghana, Benin, and the Atlantic Ocean. Generally better off than Burkina (but not as well off as Ghana), the Togolese per capita annual income is a little less than the value of an 8GB iphone (around 380 USD).
Togo is your basic West African country struggling to grow into democracy in the wake of colonialism. First and most cruelly occupied by Portuguese, Togo earned the nickname "The Slave Coast". She was then briefly a German protectorate before being divided into British and French colonies at the end of WWI. When European imperialism finally went out of vogue in the early 60s, British Togoland was absorbed into the newly independent Ghana and French Togoland became Togo. After independence in 1960, Togo had several military leaders ousted in both bloody and bloodless coups until finally settling into a 38 year dictatorship. While Togo is technically now a democracy, free and fair elections are hard to come by in these parts and Togo is perennially on the UN shitlist for human rights violations (yet continues to enjoy diplomatic support from France!).
Our arrival into Togo was pretty bumpy, literally. We crossed over from Ghana at a minor (and possibly not entirely legitimate) border crossing at Wli, in the eastern Volta region. The border guards were two extremely cranky women who kept one eye on Brazilian soap operas while looking over our passports. In between Ghana and Togo is a half kilometer no man's land that belongs to neither country and no cars pass. We carried our bags over to the Togolese side only to find that no cars run from the border post to the nearest village 15k away on Sundays. The only option was to hitch a ride on zemi-johns, which are guys you can pay to let you sit on the back of their motorcycles while they drive way too fast on steep winding roads and and you precariously balance all your worldly possessions on your back and you watch your life pass before your eyes and hope that your family knows that you love them and realize why helmets were invented. After a long day of transport we finally arrived in Kpalime where we had to stay in a brothel and eat stale cookies.
In my snap judgment, Togo seems to be a pretty nice place. People seem kind and quick to laugh. The literacy rate is 60% (compared to 13% in Burkina), which makes getting around easier since more people have been to school and therefore speak French. So far we have done some hiking through the coffee and cocoa hills in the western part of the country. We are now in the capital (Lome) spending way too much of our precious time eating pizza and surfing the internet. Tomorrow we head to Togoville, the voodoo capital of west Africa. The better known Haitian voodoo was brought to Haiti by slaves taken from this area. If you need to hex anyone, drop me a line between now and tomorrow and I'll see what I can do.
Pictures: Kid with a sugar cane gun in Wli, Ghana; mating millipedes in Kpalime, Togo; and myself with some friends in Loumana, Burkina Faso.
Togo is your basic West African country struggling to grow into democracy in the wake of colonialism. First and most cruelly occupied by Portuguese, Togo earned the nickname "The Slave Coast". She was then briefly a German protectorate before being divided into British and French colonies at the end of WWI. When European imperialism finally went out of vogue in the early 60s, British Togoland was absorbed into the newly independent Ghana and French Togoland became Togo. After independence in 1960, Togo had several military leaders ousted in both bloody and bloodless coups until finally settling into a 38 year dictatorship. While Togo is technically now a democracy, free and fair elections are hard to come by in these parts and Togo is perennially on the UN shitlist for human rights violations (yet continues to enjoy diplomatic support from France!).Our arrival into Togo was pretty bumpy, literally. We crossed over from Ghana at a minor (and possibly not entirely legitimate) border crossing at Wli, in the eastern Volta region. The border guards were two extremely cranky women who kept one eye on Brazilian soap operas while looking over our passports. In between Ghana and Togo is a half kilometer no man's land that belongs to neither country and no cars pass. We carried our bags over to the Togolese side only to find that no cars run from the border post to the nearest village 15k away on Sundays. The only option was to hitch a ride on zemi-johns, which are guys you can pay to let you sit on the back of their motorcycles while they drive way too fast on steep winding roads and and you precariously balance all your worldly possessions on your back and you watch your life pass before your eyes and hope that your family knows that you love them and realize why helmets were invented. After a long day of transport we finally arrived in Kpalime where we had to stay in a brothel and eat stale cookies.In my snap judgment, Togo seems to be a pretty nice place. People seem kind and quick to laugh. The literacy rate is 60% (compared to 13% in Burkina), which makes getting around easier since more people have been to school and therefore speak French. So far we have done some hiking through the coffee and cocoa hills in the western part of the country. We are now in the capital (Lome) spending way too much of our precious time eating pizza and surfing the internet. Tomorrow we head to Togoville, the voodoo capital of west Africa. The better known Haitian voodoo was brought to Haiti by slaves taken from this area. If you need to hex anyone, drop me a line between now and tomorrow and I'll see what I can do.
Pictures: Kid with a sugar cane gun in Wli, Ghana; mating millipedes in Kpalime, Togo; and myself with some friends in Loumana, Burkina Faso.
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When Mike and I were trying to figure out where we wanted to go in Africa in '05, we originally had planned on a Benin/Togo/Ghana trip, possibly with a side trip up to BF. But then M's parents wanted to go and they wanted to go to Kenya, and since they offered to pay for our flights and lodging...well, we decided Kenya wasn't so bad!
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