The end is nigh

Well, here we are coming to the end of our time here in Togo. All the seminary teachers, most of the students, and various others have gone to a meeting, meaning that we are pottering around, generally lazing. For example, as I sit here, our cook, Clarice is doing the washing up. So I guess that gets me onto point number one of tonight’s lecture and that is….

It feels very un-English having someone do the housework for you. Neither of us really felt that we could issue orders, and as a result she got away with murder. If you do ever get round to reading this, Clarisse, even though we do not know what it is, we know exactly how much ‘Eau de Javel’ costs, but your food was just so yummy...

One should always punctuate a lecture with a witty anecdote in order that one may spot the sleepers as they do not chuckle, particularly useful in English lessons.

So here goes. As part of the course, the students are being taught some hymns by an American, from America, called Jonathan. Apart from being American (hey nobody’s perfect) he is good company and has taught us many new and fascinating ways to say old words, and also a killer new card game. But aside from that, a couple of days ago, he started to get some spots on his hand around the webbing where the thumb is attached. Over time the condition continued to worsen and so we consulted our copy of ‘Where there is no doctor’, decided it was an allergy with nothing to be done, so went to bed. Fast forward to now, and the rash has quite clearly been caused by shaking hands with the guys here, which one does maybe 100 times a day. Surprisingly, given the bad behaviour of his hand, Jonathan is not racist in any way, shape or form.

Moving swiftly on before I get myself in trouble, the difference in behaviour between boys and girls becomes apparent in slightly surreal experiences such as living in one of the poorest parts of the world (although one does have to wonder how they measure ‘nothing’ to decide that there is more of it here than elsewhere). On Saturday, Joanna went shopping, whilst Edd relaxed watching old Westerns on video. When I say shopping, she was accompanying Charlotte, the wife of Basil and one of our new friends here, to the hospital because she had malaria, couldn’t go to the toilet, and was just being in general very sick. This took many days, and many miles of walking in the heat, as the healthcare here is atrocious. Basically, you have to pay for everything in advance, the problem being that they decide what you need as they go along, so it is not just once that you need to pay, each time involving queuing or waiting which is great when you are sick. Then they prescribe you with something that has lost its effectiveness (for example she was given quinine) or something utterly useless and unhelpful (such as cough medicine, great to drive those tiny little parasites out of the blood) along with an unnecessary injection. One can’t help but suspect that the doctors are incompetent, and prey on the ignorance and cupidity of the people here, who really cannot afford to pay. However the clinic was not really as bad hygienically as one would have supposed.

An example, another friend’s wife was told she needed an abortion immediately or she would die, sentence being duly performed. We are still none the wiser as to why she needed the abortion, suffice it to say that they are subsidised here (all charities are good, no?), our friend and his wife could never have afforded it themselves, and they are both very upset about what has happened.

But what really struck me in all of this has been the gratitude of the people we have helped (other people have thanked Jo as well), all for a measly 5 dollars. And having done it I don’t care if they get dependant. I would rather they rely on us for prophylaxis than sit at home, quietly dying as the drugs are too expensive (Basil already skips meals as he can’t afford to feed his family).

As James is here again, Espoire, a protégée showed us round some new churches in inaccessible places on Sunday. One of the cute things about the villages we go to are the children, with their little pot bellies, sticky out belly buttons that could remove your eye from 20 paces, and stick thin arms. Visiting the churches, one is always struck by the joy exhibited by the people, for example the old doddery lady dancing up the aisle to put her mites in the collection, bum wiggling furiously in the Moba way (Jo got in on the action this time too), and the welcome we get. We are always well fed, this time with rice patties, pintard and the best Sauce Arachide (not related to Arachne in case you are worried) we have ever tasted. But it does sum up the people here that whilst they themselves can’t afford to eat meat, and suffer as a consequence, they give it to us with joyful abandon.

Seriously though, I have been learning how rubbish history, as we are taught it anyway, is. I had always thought that Napoleon went to Egypt because of something like an insatiable greed for power, but now I have been corrected. Napoleon took his armies to Egypt in order to chisel the nose off the sphinx. You see, it had been made by black people, and so had a black mans nose. Napoleon was properly scandalised by this, and so in order that people not realise that black chaps are capable of actually doing anything performed the most famous act of nose mutilation in history.

Anyway, sometime during our rides out to churches, our walks to the hospital or our re-education, we suddenly realised that we shall miss this place, with its beautiful desolation, and its hospitable and dignified people. I think one day we may well return.

Allow me to end with a poem…

Oh Chapaleau, we love you.
When we first met, you were not nice
As you tasted of silage,
But now you taste sweet
And make us wobble on our feet.
Oh Chapaleau, we love you.

Kara

So our passports arrived and we finally made it to Kara, a small town a few hundred kilometres south of Dapaong. We also found out why it took so long for our passports to return. It turns out they were stolen but, not wanting to worry us we were not informed. Not that it would have made much difference, there is no British embassy in Togo.

The buses in Togo are interesting, with collapsed suspension, wrecked body work and windscreens shattered to an alarming extent (occasionally, admittedly, no windscreen). They were one of the reasons we flew to Ouaga in Burkina Faso and not to Lome in Togo. We could avoid the buses over the mountains (benches down the middle to cram more people on, no rest stops, feet in the air to avoid the wee sloshing around and a somewhat lethal road on which the trucks crawl at 1 or 2 mph in case of break failure)! So it was with relief that we spied the new post bus shiny, yellow and new, and like many things in Togo, a Chinese import and barely a month old. Tickets were booked, and off we went.

Kara is greener than Dapaong and also felt slightly cooler, but we still found a hotel with air conditioning which remained on for the duration of our stay (baring power cuts). Size wise Kara is similar, but the market is busier, smellier and more chaotic and the restaurants are excellent. You can also buy Pringles in some of the shops. Heaven! Once we had dumped our stuff we wandered round, trying to find a camera memory card (as we had left ours accidentally in Dapaong – unbelievably we succeeded) and deciding what to do, eventually settling on lunch. The problem here is that there is no tourist infrastructure, so you may want to go somewhere, but how would you know which dirt road is the right one, or which path needs to be walked down? There are taxis for hire - not that they would try (and succeed) to scam us, and they are completely unroadworthy (basically, a West African will destroy anything new in a few days/weeks and then keep it running for decades on string, paper and metal derivatives). Then we saw a sign for tours, and in we went and organised two days for only marginally more than it would have cost us to hire taxi.

The first day was to the Tamberma valley, a UNESCO site via what we thought was a walk up the highest mountain in Togo (but which was actually a drive by), a museum and numerous tourist shops. A Tamberma is a fortified house which spirals upwards (those who want a spiral staircase in their house should get one of these) and is geared to trapping your enemies inside and then shooting them with arrows, proof that nothing changes (apart from the method), and we had a guided tour to one of them. It was pretty nice. It had three bedrooms, one for each parent and then one for the kids, a bathroom, kitchen, grain stores and a room for the animals.

We were also shown a baobab tree which the locals sleep in occasionally.

The thing that struck us here was the amount of sacrifices; blood and feathers were evident in numerous places (the conversation probably goes ‘I fancy pintade for dinner.’ ‘We can’t afford it.’ ‘Hmm, you’re right. Anyone died recently, any gods we have forgotten, anything we want to happen?’ ‘Not sure, we’d better sacrifice a pintade just in case.’) 

The second day also consisted of a trawl round tourist shops but this time with a walk to a waterfall (which was great, as the spray probably decreased the temperature by 10 degrees – ie only 30!). There is so little water here that just a drop turns the landscape into a green heaven - disconcerting after Dapaong.

We also saw our first child workers, making cloth in a local factory (for want of a better word), leading to mixed feelings of ‘they shouldn’t be here, it is outrageous making children work’, and ‘isn’t it great that these guys are learning a trade on a Saturday when there isn’t school which they shall be able to use to support their families into the future.’ I guess this is merely another example of our well intentioned western values turning out to be crap in this culture.

Our second day of touring finished early, and so after a spot of lunch which consisted of bread and ‘kiddy’ chocolate paste (yummily sickly) we went to the hotel Kara, which had a swimming pool. This may not sound as exciting as it actually was; the reader must realise that swimming has been a recurrent fantasy for a while now, ever since the cold tap water rose above body temperature. Sadly, swimming was an optimistic term as the pool was full of:

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  people who couldn’t swim and who blocked all access to the shallow end, complete with floats, rubber rings and all the other paraphernalia associated with swimming lessons.
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  UN election monitors – hey, gotta keep them busy somehow;
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  white American girls showing great cultural understanding and flirting with muscle bound African hunks (ie ‘feel how sunburnt my legs are’ – pout);
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  muscle bound African hunks, flirting with the white American girls and generally showing off;
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  and one Chinese guy with goggles.

But we sat in the pool for a while, and enjoyed the cool water, whist watching the muscle bound hunks ‘relieve’ themselves in the outdoor showers. Needless to say, we showered at our own hotel…

Anyway, our time in Kara passed all too quickly, and soon we were on our way back, on the glorious new shiny yellow ‘Golden Dragon’ post bus, which crashed – hey we said that the road was lethal. Basically, the wheels on a truck coming the other way locked and he swerved into the side of our bus, taking out the wing mirror and hitting the bus about a foot behind the driver, before jack knifing off the road. Fortunately our bus stayed on the road (although many more people were wearing seatbelts when we did eventually got going again). Thank God, nobody was hurt (what would one do? Do you think the locals would/could help… I am a scout first aider don’t you know) although the truck driver was writhing around beside his truck so much that you could easily have confused him with a Spanish footballer (ie too much movement to actually be hurt, probably worried about being lynched).

Our bus suffered a buckled wheel, you could clearly hear the air escaping, and almost see the tyre loosing pressure. Eventually the police arrived, to direct traffic (for a bit, a mate arrived and they were soon chatting, leaving it to passengers) and to get out a measuring tape. Forensics lesson; you can work out how fast cars were going by measuring the skid marks (in the UK anyway, where the tyres are not completely bald), looking at debris by the road and where the skid marks start will give a reaction time, either before or after an impact. You can then estimate whether a driver was drunk etc. Our policeman measured things such as the width of the road and the length of the bus, ie nothing that one would have thought was useful (although I am probably being unfair). Two hours later we were on our way again, although they hadn’t bothered to change the wheel.

Basically the lack of road safety is down to truck owners who are able to ignore road safety laws with relative impunity (in Kenya they are the politicians) and insist on their drivers covering improbably large distances in too little time – leading to stimulant use (that’s intoxicating drugs to you and me).

I think that the next few days shall be spent chilling in Dapaong.

Suffer(age)

At breakfast here in Togo we listen to the BBC World service, which weirdly only works in the morning. Probably too hot later in the day. They have started a new slot, ‘President for a day’ where people from Africa give what would be their inaugural speech if elected as president, which cheers us up immensely. The first speech was serious and worthy, regarding investment in children, as children are our future - yawn. Fortunately they have rapidly gone downhill (read ‘got closer to reality’) and are getting daily more cynical. Today’s speech was from a Guinean ranting that he would have to raise taxes as he needed to repay the loans taken out to dish out money, beer and free t-shirts to ensure that he got elected. Yesterdays regarded all the new cabinet posts which would be needed to ensure all the new presidents children and mates would have a plum post. We find it sad that there is such cynicism regarding our wonderful system of democracy here. On a more positive note, the president’s new palace in Dapaong is very nice. (erratum notice, since writing this I have been informed that it is a residence for his wife so it’s okay – the guy said one of his wives but I assume that is merely a mistranslation on my part).

But talking about new presidents, there is an election coming up in a few weeks time. We are expecting phones to be down, and the borders to be closed for a few days, but don’t worry, the serious violence is likely to be in the South. Anyway, along the roads here are numerous billboards. I can’t remember if I mentioned that it was a poor area, but if you think that locals can afford to advertise on these billboards you can forget it. They are filled with worthy adverts sponsored by altruistic aid agencies with slogans such as ‘would you let this man sleep with your young daughter? THEN WHY ARE YOU SLEEPING WITH YOUNG GIRLS?!?’ and pictures of soldiers holding condoms – ‘ Operation high protection’, or ‘whenever I travel with my poultry birds I keep them in cages’ (that one, brilliantly, in English). Over the last few days political pictures have started going up, but only of the current president – but then he is the only one currently in a position to, erm, ‘borrow’ the money. This has led to the opposition using more imaginative measures which are rather fun – i.e. brass bands on top of minibuses. But anyway, once you add the beer, t-shirts and money dished out to all and sundry you start to have a serious monetary problem.

   

Another thing which has been disproportionately amusing is the sheer amount of EU election monitors who have descended like a swarm of locusts on all the plush hotels in their (you guessed it) shiny new 4x4s attempting to impose ‘free and fair’ elections and Western style democracy on one of the poorest country’s in the world, when we all know that the vote was brought a long time ago. One also has to wonder if it is the best use of EU resources, we see so many children with sores and swollen bellies that we think not.

Actually I am probably being a little unfair. Mr Faure’s father was a dictator and when he died the army put Mr Faure in power (one can only assume they thought he would make a good puppet – he still has to struggle with the old guard appointed by his father). One of the first things he did was hold elections, and I understand that things have greatly improved under him. The man seems genuinely popular and you see more green Faure T-shirts than yellow, red or orange ones (although there is a layer of cynicism just under the surface of everyone we speak to). Let us just hope that there is no violence this time.

We have not done too much over the last week, on account of it being a flat desert here, with daytime temperatures exceeding 40 degrees (scarily 35 degrees is now becoming pleasantly cool) and the students having exams so we have had no lessons. Our plans to go away fell through as our passports are in the capital, 600km away having the visas renewed, which we have to do monthly, so we have amused ourselves by pottering around Dapaong, going for walks, and sitting around sweating.

 

A short history lesson: in the 19th century the Chokoussi Empire invaded north Togo imposing a feudal system and taxes which the Moba rather resented, starting a period of guerrilla warfare. In order to protect themselves and their possessions from these greedy and stealing African precursors to Gordon Brown, the Moba built a grotto - a small cave toward the top of a big cliff containing silos for storing cereals and a small sleeping area, and it was to here we headed on the back of the motos of Dr Dongo and Rev Koutia. Not knowing at this point where we were going, it was short walk to the top of the ridge (with Dr Dongo panting at the back saying he was going back or roaring to scare off lions every few meters), 300m above us, before our arrival at a door set right on the edge of a cliff (which looked exceeding odd, but turned out to have a ladder behind it to which Dr Dongo said I am not going down that).

Here we had to pay money to various locals who were representatives of local chiefs before the door was opened and we were allowed to descend the ladder (of which the locals just went down the side totally ignoring the door). Rather optimistically they are building a hotel near the ladder, to enable easy access to the grotto. The reason we say optimistically is because we were such an unusual sight that people who passed us on the way to the market ditched their stuff to follow us and so we had a small crowd of locals (11 of them) to show us around after a short discussion on the price of a ‘pintard’, all of whom wanted their photos taken with the silos. Sadly, they have cottoned on to the fact that they can see the photos on the camera, so you can’t even make clicking noises to keep ‘em sweet, but hey ho. It was a lot of fun, and our skin changed colour with the sweat and the dust which rather revolted Jo, but got Edd very excited.

Other news – James May arrived, and he has bought CHOCOLATE.