Togolais diaries

Bonjour!

le 29th Mars, 2009


The last night transcended into the next ‘day’ if 1 am can be called that. A bath and last minute scurrying around later, moi parents, moi soeur et me were off to the airport. Through some contacts I had the privilege to cut through all the queues at the airport and yes it was a big privilege parce que all the queues were big! Security checks were done soon enough and I had more than 2 hours to roam about in the duty free shops at the airport. There wasn’t anything much apart from perfumes, liquor et eateries. After 2 and half hours of tedious wait the boarding was finally announced. And so I headed off for my Africa-no sojourn. Pretty Ethiopian airhostess greeted us inside. Seriously Air India can take lessons here! :p
After an utterly disgusting breakfast consisting of some mumbo jumbo which I failed to comprehend and due to the general prevalence of good sense didn’t bother to ask and an extremely tiring 5 hour flight due to the lack of sleep, the plane started to descent and I got my first view of the lands of Africa! Green plains with lakes with a picturesque view of the hills greeted my landing in Ethiopia. Bole international took me by complete surprise. It was multi layered with a cool glass façade with a glitzy white appearance, truth to be told it beats the Mumbai airport by a long long margin. Time for collective shame people because India is said to be a rising power. Well!!
I had to wait for 2 hours at the airport to catch my connecting flight to Lome. After a 6 dollar bill to make a one minute and 28 seconds back home and a couple of enlightening hours later, I was ready to catch the next flight. I say enlightening because at the airport I had the privilege of seeing a white kid strike up a friendship with a kid from Oriental origins and soon an African kid who I guess was a Togolaise joined in and they did make a pretty good triumvirate! The white kid had the good sense of offering the candy, which he had to the other two kids before he ate his own. The three of them played in a happy manner together never letting the ‘difference’ distort the fun, which they had. Maybe it was because they were too young to notice or maybe it was because they just did not care. Seriously made me wonder that après we grow up and become ‘educated’ where does the empathy and kindnesses of most of the people disappear? How is it that after that we are supposed to become wise there is absolutely no initiative on our part to engage the less privileged? Surely many of us can learn so much about simple humanity by just watching these children. Just wish that the grown-ups had the views similar to those of these children. Many of our problems would definitely get solved then.

After this extremely uplifting experience, with renewed vigour I headed off to catch the next flight to Togo. Maybe it was my impatience to reach Lome and my extreme fatigue or maybe it was the delay but nonetheless the flight seemed to be stuck up in the air for like forever. It was great dismay that I noticed that the sign for fastening one’s seatbelt just wouldn’t come on! Endless wait later it did come on though and we were finally descending! Green fields and a lack of any manmade structures greeted me as the first sights of this small country. Finally we landed at the airport and I was completely taken aback by what I saw.

Accustomed to the large sized airports, which I was coming from like the ones at Mumbai and Addis Ababa. The airport of Togo in complete contrast was extremely small. The terminal of arrival was only as big as the arrival terminal of the Srinagar airport as I remember from my memory. It was then I started realizing the obscurity of the land and its general lack of integration with the world. The airport had no A.C and merely had fans and only two counters for immigration. This would be really unthinkable in many countries and most of the people who travel frequently. The airport was named after the ex dictator of Togo who ruled the country for a whopping 38 years, Monsieur Geonssigbe Edymeyn. He died in 2005 and then his son was ‘democratically’ elected as the next president of the Republique des Togolaise.

After standing through the snaking queue, the immigration was finally done. It was here that I experienced my first problems relating to the language, as I was unable to comprehend quite a lot of what the official at the airport was saying. This did lead to some tense moments like when my passport wasn’t released because the official wanted to know who my contact was and I was not able to comprehend French. After sorting this out, I proceeded for customs and security check. And I had my first encounter with corruption here. In spite of my baggage being cleared by the customs, I was made to open in twice and after inspecting the baggage on both the occasion the officials wanted a ‘service charge.’ It did leave a bitter taste in my mouth, as I had to part with 10 dollars right at the beginning of my trip as bribes! Certainly not a very pleasant introduction to a new country that was completely alien to me. Though Alain and my host Sammuel greeted me rather warmly at the tiny airport and in no time we were out of the place. I then started to what I call ‘discover Togo.’ It was evident from the scene right outside the airport that I had taken a challenging internship as the country was in a state of relative poverty and India was way more advanced than this place. This fact was accentuated by the fact that Lome, which is the capital, is itself a demonstration of lack of general well being of people, one can logically conclude that the condition in the countryside would only be worse. It was the first time I saw a wood log being used a support to the bonnet of a car. This taxi, which alain and me hired was a Toyota and ironic as it may seem it, was in a car of foreign make that I went out to discover the sights and sounds of Togo. Small houses made of mud lined next to the streets, two lane streets often without a divider, cars of foreign brands often like many places in the world of Toyota, people sitting outside their homes seemingly free, roadside small café’s serving liquor, sounds of African beats, a group of people laughing joyously attired in extremely colourful dresses in bright colours like yellow, green, blue, people selling football jersey’s which hang on trees greeted me as I made my first trip across the town. Honestly, it was an experience for me of a completely different kind. Being an Indian I am not oblivious to poverty, having seen it at close quarters but to see the major chunks to capital city in this fashion was something completely different from what I had experienced or seen before. The Togolaise people take a lot of pride in their country as the government has made it compulsory for every car to have a number plate which has the flag of Togo inscribed on it. Even apart from in most of the cars I peered into I could not help buy notice the flag of Togo being installed at he dashboard.
Straight from the airport I made my way to the beach. Being a major tourist spot of the capital it was extremely surprising that there was not even a permanent road made of tar in place, there was in fact a mud road surrounded by farms in place.
The beach was one of the best I had come across, maybe after the one I saw at Pattaya. Sorry Goa. Sparkling water of the Atlantic ocean, or what the locale’s call it Gulf de Guinea surrounded by virgin white sands made this beach an absolute heaven!
The entire AIESEC local committee of Lome was here on a picnic. Met quite a few of them, as my granddad was telling me the people were very friendly an did not let me feel like an outsider. Though language was a bit of the problem, it worked out just fine and I even got a chance to play in a beach football match and got to see first hand the natural skills of Africans at football. Boy they are pretty talented and in fact I could not help but just feel a little stupid at my absolute lack of any kind of soccer skills!
This was followed by a trip to the best university of this country, Universite de Lome. A sprawling campus with open air classrooms with the presence of all the departments you could possible think of are the hallmark here. (Please don’t go into BMM and stuff though! :p)

After meeting a few more people, I was finally led to the place where I would be staying. It was a humble abode where one more of the Aiesecer stayed. The house can be reached only after taking confusing turns through the narrow muddy narrow lanes full of houses and even shanties. My room is a compact one measuring not more then 12 feet by 10 feet with a bed and a table. The room has no fan and the bathroom cant be closed properly though people do have the good sense to peep though! (not yet at least :p). In spite of this it is very evident that this is one of well to do families of the country, it is a startling reminder of level of hardships faced by people. After a quick shower and dinner consisting of rice and local made tomato gravy made very kindly by Sam’s mother, an extremely affable and a kind lady though completely unaware of English, which is a problem even then nothing to take away from her extremely jovial and good nature and apparently like all the other people in Togo she too LOVES soccer and Emmanuel Adebayor, Togo and Arsenal striker, is the apple of everyone’s eyes here, yes sir, that includes even her mother who was telling me with a lot of concern in her voice and eyes in French about the injury sustained by Adebayor which kept him out for three months, I crashed to sleep!!

P.S.
Some might wonder like my parents especially after I described the conditions here that why did I decide to come to Togo or am I comfortable here. Well truth to be told even though this is just the beginning but I absolutely love my stay here! Maybe it is because of the extremely kind nature of the local people here, right from my host Sam, to his Mother or to his nephew Michael, about 7-9 years old who very kindly washed my plates though I didn’t let him do it the second time, or brought me water and is forever smiling at me and people like Alain who have tirelessly accompanied me everywhere helping me out. Or it might be because I am getting to experience life in a completely new city, country and a new environment, where Togo beating Cameroon in a football match a day before was a cause for national celebration. Or maybe it Or maybe I am getting to see first hand the resilience shown by people when poverty stares right at their face and how a win in a football match, a cultural week by some school or just the smallest of reason is the cause of major boisterous celebration. Or maybe because I do know that at my age there just couldn’t have been a better case study for my studies in Economics. Or maybe because I am just in love with the idea of the kind of potential this place holds regarding the work, which I can do in villages etc. Or maybe because it is my dream realized to come to Africa and notice their life first hand untouched by the tenants of what the ‘developed’ and the more knowledgeable people refer to as modernization which is more often than not involves opening ones soul to money.
So till now all great. In spite of some physical discomforts, the other factors more than compensate. Looking forward to get an experience of my lifetime here!