Nothing like a weekend in Lomé to generate an even deeper appreciation for my lovely Kpalimé…and to remind me both how poor and underdeveloped Togo really is, but also why I love this country so much.
Lomé is filthy. Open sewers line the dusty streets, clogged not only with human and g-d knows what else’s excrement, but plastic bags, cans and months (if not years…) of an overpopulated city’s worth of garbage. Driving past the lagoon you almost have to hold your breath, the smell of waste and rot is so potent…and just across the street, children run around barefoot (or naked if they’re not so lucky,) rilfing through heaps of trash in the hopes of finding 100CFA buried in the sand or a piece of scrap metal or broken electronic to resell. Everything moves. Everything makes noise.
Life in Lomé is twice/three-times as expensive as in any village or town in Togo. Life is difficult and dusty and dirty and hot. And yet everyone wants to come here, live here, be able to tell their frères and soeurs that they live in the capital. Like much of the world, the city reek of opportunity, growth, modernization and purpose, but Lomé is a bizarre paradox of these qualities, having crumbled to its knees in the past 20 years due to the pathetic loss of all foreign aid. It is tragic in the full sense of the word, it is hard to see and it breaks my heart.
Because the pride is still there. Everyone is always smiling and life moves goes on with laughter and love, pure joy, of life. Togo is a special place and despite my continually rising cynicism for international development, the culture of aid and “good governance,” I will never give up hope for the Togolese people – because they are the most wonderful and resilient that I have ever known. Despite my increasingly angry intolerance for the “Hiss Yovo VA!” (Come here white girl!) and gangs of voleurs and bandits that burn holes in my backpack with their eyes…we should all take a few lessons from the Togolese on how to enjoy life and good plate of fufu. And they know it! They take pride in their “accueil” (welcoming) and take the corruption of their government and society, which trickles down to every radio emission and every sale at the marché, in stunning stride.
Sometimes I completely freak out about what I am trying to do here…the fact that I went to get my recepissé from the Minister of Decentralization and his aide, M. Honore, who walks with a limp and an overconfident flicker in his beady eyes, with whom I left the complete file 9 months ago, hasn’t even looked at it yet…but agreed to take a peek if I gave him 15,000CFA (about $40) and, if I was really interested in getting a receipt for this, I should slip another 10,000 in there for good measure.
The fact that uploading this very blog is such a production…which I am writing in word while waiting for the page the upload…ever so slowly…I am at one of the cyber cafés in Kpalimé right now (the only one worth paying for…haha), just finished waiting out a “baisse de tension” aka the opposite of a power surge where all of the computers go down and we wait patiently (or not so patiently…) for them to first turn back on and second for internet connection to come back…
But those are only material, immediate things. It is difficult to be so deeply enmeshed in my project and my field work knowing that I am here only for a month, that my other life is waiting for me (and important work and contacts and projects and emails and proposals and applications and meetings) and that this duplicity is constantly pulling at me. Obliging complicated and painful thoughts about the true meaning of commitment and success of this venture.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment