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.