I dreamed. Mosquitoes buzzed all
around me. I threw my eyes open to find it was no dream. I swiped at the
mosquitoes which whined eerily out of danger. Sasu, my six-year-old son, squirmed
between me and my wife Viviane as the mosquitoes feeding on him zoomed off
startled by the blows of the cover cloth I beat the room with.
“Have they cut off power already?”
Viviane asked drowsily.
“Yep.”
“Thank God the weather is cool,” she
said and soon began to snore softly again.
I swung out of bed and squeezed out
of the tiny bedroom. I beat the room some more and soon the shrill sounds of escaping
mosquitoes ceased. I dragged to the adjoining bedroom, large enough for a bed,
two dressing-cupboards, and a one-meter walking space. I
killed more
mosquitoes here whilst my eldest son, Yema, 15, and his sister, Christine, 10,
stretched happily in bed.
I cursed the leaders of Togo—my country—and of
Africa. How can’t they realize that carved up as we are by the colonialists at
the Berlin Conference of 1884, we have no chance to survive? At the 9th
ordinary AU meeting in Accra, the capital city of the neighboring country of
Ghana, African heads failed to set up a continental government for the creation
of a United States of Africa. Not surprising. Most are not patriots but people
interested only in power. Some of them had come to power through coup d’états
and practically all manage to hang on to power through sham elections and intimidation
or elimination of political opponents.
For the past nine months we have
been experiencing power cuts. When it began in August 2006, the government assured
us that everything will return to normal by December. Ghana, from where we get the
power, said the situation could continue up to June this year. June is gone and
matters are worse than before. From 12 hours of power a day, now we are
receiving barely six. This is where we find ourselves after almost 50 years of
independence.
The water level in the Akosombo dam in Ghana
has been going dangerously low in the dry season for the past 10 years but nobody
thought of building another dam or installing other means of power such as
solar energy (despite plenty of sunshine year round), wind power, nuclear power
(we prefer to sell the uranium mined in Niger—our neighbour to the north—to France)
or gas turbines (Nigeria, not far away burns off its abundant gas reserves)
That is Africa for you!
When the European adventurers came in the 15th
century, we engaged in trade with them, which they soon turned to their
advantage, taking away gold, ivory, diamonds and
selling us
cheap and nasty goods such as mirrors, beads, outmoded Western clothing, gin,
and gunpowder. Then came slavery in 1445. For over 400 years, Africa—especially coastal West Africa, Central Africa, and Madagascar—lost millions of its
young children and healthy adults and the opportunity for development as no one
could procreate or carry out any economic or social activity in an atmosphere
ruled by violence and fear. When the capture and sale of Africans ended, Europe
devised colonialism about two decades later to put us under their thumb again.
The new form of slavery plunged Africans into forced labor to extract their
abundant natural resources for the benefit of colonial countries. That
domination having come to an end in the 60s, Africans then found themselves
between the devil (the Western nations—mainly Europe and America—which control
the destiny of Africa in a neo-colonial system that dictates the prices—often
downwards—of Africa’s exports and orientates its policies: you are pro-West and
we support you; you turn elsewhere and we tear you down) and the deep blue sea
(our leaders who oppress their people, mismanage the economy, engage in bribery
and corruption, lord it over their citizens, or revel in obscurantist policies).
This is the background against which our predicament must be viewed and not
some congenital inability to progress.
After drawing water from the well in the center of the courtyard and having
my bath, I left 100 francs CFA (about 20 cents) on the dressing-table for each
of my kids for breakfast of cooked rice and stew sold by the roadside.
I am a part-time English teacher paid only for the hours that I teach. I
had worked in a German firm where I enjoyed fringe benefits such as company
accommodation and a car. With a view to working for myself, I had opened a grocery
shop run by my brothers. In October 1990, the slow fight for democracy exploded
and social unrest set in. By November
1992, a nationwide strike was declared to force
the President to accept multiparty democracy. He refused and the strike
continued. My employer opened a branch in Benin where I was sent. The personnel
in Lome which did not enjoy the same privileges as I resorted to backbiting and
my boss decided to halve my salary. I refused and he fired me. I seized the
courts whose decision came three years later. I had then borrowed more than my
severance pay. Meanwhile my shop situated in Be, a zone unfavorable to the
President, was ransacked by rampaging soldiers who used all means to kill the
people’s resolve for liberty. I went bankrupt. Africa is maybe the only
continent where one can easily tumble from a summit to an abysmal depth
overnight and where also with the right political connections one can spring
from rags to riches.
“Bonjour,” I greeted my
co-tenants, crossed the courtyard where their children played noisily and
stepped out into the dusty streets of Nyekonakpoe.
Nyekonakpoe is one of the earliest settlements in Lome, the capital city of
1 million inhabitants. It is bounded on the west by Aflao, the border town in
the Republic of Ghana; on the east by Hanoukope; on the north by Tokoin where the
university hospital which has become a place for people to die is situated; and
on the south by Kodjoviakope where thieves are loaded with blocks and dumped
into the sea.
I nodded to the young men in front of the shack where a woman sold sodabi—the strong local gin ‘Kill me
quick.’ They nodded back. One man with a bloated body leaned against the wooden
wall and dozed. Such moments offer them the occasion to complete the sleep they
snatched on verandahs or in courtyards.
These drunkards have given up all hopes in life. They often go at dawn to
wake up the sodabi seller to—as they
refer to the first shot—wash their face and brush their teeth. They
dawdle here all
day sharing shots of drinks till midnight when they totter home to sleep on
empty stomachs or whatever little food somebody left them. Most of them became
drunkards after losing their jobs or on finding none. Often they are at
loggerheads with their families who reject, neglect, or ignore them.
Two houses away, the congregation of the Lord’s Salvation Church, made up
of almost 90% of women, rocked with fiery prayers after vibrating with joyful
singing. Some members spend all their time at the church. Loud all-night
services and frequent fasting are the lot of the congregation, most of whom are
poor.
Only traditional churches—Catholic, Presbyterian, Anglican, Baptist,
Assemblies of God—were authorized in Togo until 1990. Thanks to religious
liberalization and the economic crisis which followed, new churches sprang up
in each vacant lot and hall. People who became pastors, evangelists, and
prophets overnight promise the congregation miracles and wonders. Some members
claimed miracles in their lives. The pastors became wealthy from collections,
thanksgiving, harvest, and tithes especially. Most of the members of the congregation
however still wallow in poverty.
The pungent smell of marijuana hit me as I got to the first intersection.
The storey building on the right is a skeleton of the Grains Board that it was
two years ago. Such symbols of state were destroyed by angry youth when the
results of the 2005 presidential elections were announced, giving a landslide
victory to the ruling party’s candidate against the sole candidate of the six
opposition parties. The military, who had been positioned at strategic points,
intervened with weapons of war. A human rights defense organization announced
over 1,500 killed. A UN commission of enquiry declared 532 killed. A national
commission of
enquiry found 153
killed. All three bodies proposed judging the culprits. Up to now none has been
arrested.
“Grand-frere—” Elder
brother—Amuzu, the head of the gangs occupying the hollow building said, “going
to check the town?”
“Yes,” I said. “How are things?”
“We thank God for today.”
Amuzu is a victim of a failed home where a dad was absent and the poor
mother struggled to look after the numerous children. True to his word Amuzu
has not returned to jail since he left it for the third time eight years ago.
Before reaching the tarred road, a group of young adults and adolescents quietly
played cards for cash. Often tempers rose here; then fists, knives, clubs, or
stones flew. The devil really finds work for the idle hand.
Yet among this group are university graduates, informal sector workers, and
carpenters, masons, electricians, and auto mechanics. The problem is high
unemployment and underemployment among the 20-40-year age bracket. Such groups
can be found all over the city, lending credence to the assertion that a high
percentage of the youth are unemployed. In the absence of statistics nobody
knows their number. These able hands still live with and are fed by their poor,
aged parents. For girls, the result is more dramatic, culminating in rape,
unwanted pregnancies, HIV/AIDS, prostitution, and early marriages.
I walked up rue Adjololo and at the next intersection ate breakfast by the
roadside where a pool of stagnant water threw up horrible smells. Lome is a
city below sea level. A drainage system is almost non-existent. So anytime it
rains, the city becomes waterlogged. The standing waters breed mosquitoes and
turn muddy. When the rains cease in a few weeks,
it is dust that
the wind and storms will blow our way. The cheapest breakfast now is corn
porridge and bread or doughnut. With 20 cents (10 cents of porridge and 10
cents of bread) I am okay. To feel like having eaten to one’s fill, some people
first drink a mug of water, slurp 10 cents worth of porridge and bread, and
drink on another cup of water. They do the same when they eat 20 cents worth of
beans and oil mixed with gari—a fried
cassava meal—for lunch and 20 cents of kenkey,
a vapor-cooked corn dough meal, with fish, and at best without, as supper. Fifty
cents a day instead of the World Bank’s one dollar a day would best describe the
poor here.
I flogged a motorcycle-taxi called Ole
yi a?—Are you going? Using motorcycles as taxis began in the late 80s in
Cotonou, Benin. The country had been ruined by President Kerekou’s obscure
Marxist policies. Taxis were few. People began to use motorcycles for
commercial transport. Very soon zemidjan—come
let’s go—became popular.
Togo, whose economy was flourishing under a pro-Western government, began
to experience a downturn when the regime resisted attempts at democratization. Zemidjan soon appeared here under the
local name Ole yi a.
“I’m going to the central post office,” I told the rider.
“Two fifty,” he said.
“Let me give you two hundred,” I said.
The rider shook his head, revving up his engine. “Two twenty-five…”
I shook my head and he zoomed off.
The second also refused. The third one accepted the 40 cents and I hopped
onto the shiny, Chinese-made Sanya motorcycle.
Businesses first began to sell secondhand Yamaha Mate 125 motorcycles. As
many people preferred zemidjan to
taxis, the selling price shot up from $500 to $1,500. Then the Chinese
introduced their brand new Sanili motorcycles at $450. The Ole yi a exploded. As many people became riders youth crime also
reduced dramatically. A situation appreciated by the women traders at the
Central Market who often fell victims to the idle youth. Therefore, when the
government tried to outlaw Ole yi a,
it was these powerful traders who stepped in and wrenched official recognition
for it.
“The Ibos have woken up to their scam business again,” the garrulous rider
said as we passed by a cybercafé. “How do you call it, patron?”
“Four-One-Nine.”
“That’s it!” he added gleefully. “How they are stealing white people!”
It is true Nigerians have earned a bad name for their Internet frauds which
consists in making foreigners believe they have a fortune to take out of their
country but they need the collaboration of someone having a foreign account to
do so. They promise the unsuspecting victim a commission running into millions
of dollars if he could help repatriate the funds. Attracted by an easy gain,
the foreigner agrees. The Nigerian soon asks for money to bribe officials of
the Ministry of Finance to obtain the permission to transfer the funds. The
foreigner sends the money. Soon the criminal demands more money for other officials.
The victim soon realizes that he is being duped. By this time he has lost
hundreds of thousands or even a million dollars.
Why this? The first explanation is that citizens of an oil-rich country are
reduced to crushing poverty. Whilst Nigeria
(the 6th largest world exporter and the N° 1 in Africa),
makes huge receipts from its vast oil reserves corrupt politicians and economic
mismanagement do
not let the citizens feel the effect of the money. It is estimated that
Nigerian politicians have stolen some $400 billion dollars since independence.
Where is this money kept? In Western banks!. Thus they are abettors. What about
the victims of the 419 scammers? The fraudsters often inform them that the
money belongs to a former politician and the government is trying to freeze it.
Although unfortunate, why should one cry, when a dog eats a dog? I myself
receive 419 scam mails. When I once answered one of them that I was a poor
struggling African businessman from whom he couldn’t get a single cent, he
replied: “Sorry, brother, it’s the slave owners and colonialists who are paying
their debts.” When I said that I didn’t agree with his method, he told me to go
to hell. That is what the neo-colonial system has made of us.
The motorcycle rider slowed down. “How can they block this busy road?” he fumed
at the intersection of the Lycée français, the French high school.
“Don’t you know who they are blocking the road for?”
The rider sighed.
Togo became a German colony when the German explorer Gustav Nachtigal
signed a protectorate agreement with King Mlapa of now Togoville in 1884. At
the shores of the now Lac Togo, Nachtigal had asked people where the King
lived. “Togodo,” –Behind the
lake—they said. Nachtigal called the territory “Togo.” The Germans lost Togo
after the Second World War and the United Nations placed it under French
protectorate to guide it to independence.
The fight for independence pitted those who wanted independence now against
those who advocated a gradual evolution towards it. The colonial powers opposed
the first group and supported the second. But the people stood behind the
nationalists. Thus, Sylvanus
Olympio defeated
the conservative group in the first elections held in 1956. The French
reluctantly handed over authority. From far, they controlled events in Togo. A coup
d’état, master-minded by them on January 13, 1963, led to the assassination of
the President. France gave its full support to the military regime. To show its
appreciation for the French support, the regime does everything to please
France. Blocking the road for French school children is one of them.
“Silly,” the rider said as the policeman finally signaled us to move. “Why
don’t they direct traffic for the children of the Ecole Primaire Evangélique de
Nyekonakpoe?”—a local primary school an intersection away.
“Are they French?” I said.
“So our children have to face dangers unaided?”
“That’s the order of things.”
The rider shook his head, zigzagging into the road.
Someone honked hard behind us.
We turned to see a taxi bearing down on us.
“Are you out of your senses?” the rider shouted when the driver came
abreast.
“Your parents are out of their senses,” the driver yelled back.
“Look at this illiterate,” the rider shouted.
The driver swerved right, jamming us into the dusty sidewalk.
“Take it cool, man,” I yelled to the rider who chased the driver.
He slapped his handlebars. “I wanted to teach that son-of-a-bitch a
lesson.”
“Which of you can get hurt in a confrontation?”
“You’re right, patron,” he said.
“Hadn’t it been for this crisis who’d ride a zemidjan with a university’s degree?”
It is not uncommon to find taxi drivers and motorcycle riders fighting.
I don’t think the harsh economic environment is the only cause of such confusion.
The African world is a hell of confusion. I had secretly but painfully been
agreeing with those who interpreted this as some congenital inability to be
orderly until specialists began to explain the psychological disorders of
American soldiers who fought in Vietnam as a result of the horrors they lived
there. If atrocities over a relatively short period could have such profound
effects on the psyche of American soldiers then what can be said of the psyche
of Black people from the centuries of cruelty inflicted on them?
Africans on the continent have gone
through traumas which disorganized their social, political, religious, and
economic systems. For people attached to society imagine what the separation of
kith and kin by slavery might have done to the African left behind and the one
slavery yanked away. Imagine the shock of the African trying to build his life
again after slavery and then in less than a generation being thrust into colonialism.
No doubt political independence brought such high hopes. But without economic
independence Africans soon felt as frustrated as a bird released from a cage
and which took to the air only to be yanked back by a rope tied to its feet.
Add poverty, hunger, diseases, dictatorships, brutal civil wars, exploited and
mismanaged economies and the confusion becomes apparent. How can a people
subjected to centuries of such brutalities be expected not to exhibit ‘strange
symptoms’?
The same is true of enslaved Africans. Can these people marked by forced
separation, degrading travel in the dungeon of a slave ship, sale on a foreign
market, slave labor, lynching, Jim Crow laws, and racial discrimination be
themselves again? Somewhere,
something will go
wrong in these people’s psyche. No doubt, a great confusion also reigns in the
African world in the Diaspora of North America, Latin America, the West Indies,
and elsewhere. We are a people bent beyond resiliency. It’s amazing how we’ve
managed to remain intact.
“Patron, are you going to the
post office itself?” the rider asked, butting into my thoughts.
I jumped. I hadn’t realized we’d come so far. The only thing I’d been aware
of occured at the red light at Nyekonakpoe where a child strapped to its
mother’s back bawled and rocked its head from the acrid fumes pouring out of
the exhaust pipes of the motorbikes. Many people buy their gas from the illegal
roadside sellers who get their stock from pilfered gas smuggled from Nigeria.
People have been sensitized to the dangers of the roadside fuel such as fire
outbreaks and the bad quality which poses threats to health, the environment,
and engines but the high cost of fuel at the gas stations and grinding poverty
make people reason otherwise.
“I’m going to a cybercafé behind the post,” I said and the rider slowed
down and swerved into the middle of the road without even a peek in his rear-view
mirror. I glanced behind. Luckily there was no danger. Zemidjan riders have been known to cause the most stupid of road
accidents because of lack of knowledge of the Highway Code. “Yes, take this
road to the mosque.
“Slowly,” I added as the rider wanted to cross a flying zemidjan.
The other rider flashed his headlight. At our side, he raised his hand as
if to strike my rider. “Fool,” he shouted as mine dodged.
“Mad dog,” my rider shouted.
I shook my head.
. “Why are most of the riders so rude?” I asked.
“Because they’re villagers,” he said. “If these useless impostors hadn’t monopolized
power who’ll do this work?”
I didn’t respond to that. It is dangerous to discuss politics in Togo if
you don’t know who you are talking to.
Despite the harsh single party rule of the Rassemblement du Peuple togolais (RPT) having
ended in 1993, they still behave as before relying on France, the tribal security
forces, an electoral commission independent only in name, and a biased
constitutional court.
In the café I bought time—60 cents for an
hour—and realized there was no connection. I sat there fuming at this Africa.
“The connection is back,” the cybercafé clerk soon
said gleefully.
I clicked the yahoo link to the homepage but
the connection was crazily slow. Through several refreshes of the page, I was
able to send only a message in half an hour. I left in a huff to buy ‘Daily
Graphic,’ the Ghanaian newspaper.
I took the avenue de la liberation towards
downtown. The roads department laborers have cleared the gutter of silt.
Anytime it rained, this road became a lake. A contract was awarded to someone
to construct a gutter along it. A shallow ditch up to knee length was dug and
the sides and the bottom haphazardly laid with concrete. When it was finished,
it was a gutter with crooked sides and an uneven bottom which was covered with
concrete slabs which cave in when vehicles run over them. When the rains came the
gutter couldn’t evacuate the water. Most of the slabs covering the gutter broke
into two when the roads department laborers pried them open with metal bars.
When they shovelled out the dark silt, the laborers
left the
smelly mounds full of plastic bags and household rubbish by the side of the
road to dry before being carted away. Sometimes new rains wash them back into
the gutters.
On the road running along the northern edge of
Fréau Jardin, hordes of zemidjan riders
argued over the headlines in the independent newspapers. Sometimes they fight
over differing political opinions. Inside the park, idle people dozed on the
concrete benches. Children on holidays played football.
Across the street from Fréau Jardin, now
renamed Place Anani Santos, is the crumbling basketball playing ground for the
youth. Maybe it hasn’t been sold by corrupt politicians like the state reserved
lands in the other quarters because it was too well known. Because of the disposal
of such lands, one can count the city’s parks on the fingers of one hand.
On the rue des Champs des Courses, another
contractor was busy on a shoddy work to be called a gutter.
I once asked a national development planner why
projects carried out just after independence (and even before!) are still
intact while those being executed now hardly last a few years.
“The reasons are bribery and corruption on one
hand,” he said, “and on the other the lack of mastery of trades and lost of
pride in a good work done.”
“I see.”
“Projects are financed with loans. When they’re
granted, the Head of State dips his hands into it; the sector Minister does the
same; that ministry’s officials award the contract to unqualified companies belonging
to friends or relatives. The contractor looks for his share; the workers on
site steal the material; wouldn’t shoddy work be done?”
I nodded. “But there’re inspectors.”
He laughed. “The contractor fills their pockets
and they produce complacent reports.”
“Jeez!”
He nodded. “And then nowadays people do not
take the trouble to master trades before beginning to work. So we have
half-baked artisans on the job.”
Ahead of me is the headquarters of the Togolaise des eaux, the water
corporation, which is one of the state-owned enterprises privatized under
opaque conditions. These corporations—especially the utility ones—rendered the
people essential services. But by graciously serving the Managing Directors (who
are often not the right people at those places) they went bankrupt. The World
Bank ordered such enterprises privatized. But the desired results did not come.
This is where these bodies carry some of the blame for Africa’s woes. For
example, when they ordered the withdrawal of subsidies for education, health,
and water under the Structural Adjustment Program, among other social ills the
illiteracy rate rose and diseases eradicated resurfaced.
As I got nearer the Central Market the zemidjan riders and the taxi drivers
honked incessantly at each other and at pedestrians obliged to walk in the
narrow street alongside cars parked left and right because wares flow from the
stores right up to the sidewalks and the little space left is also occupied by traders.
The further I went the denser the crowds
became. Around the market, young ladies carried imported goods on bowls
balanced on their heads, carried in their arms, or displayed on trays. Some thrust
the goods right into one’s face. Children, who should be at school, sold wares.
At the market intersection, we crawled. Here
reign the Nana Benz. Years ago, mostly men worked in the civil service. The
women did trading. Soon they became powerful. Despite their financial capacity
and business acumen nobody advises them to go into industry.
The town center is littered with plastic
carrying bags and other packages. Two- and three-storey office buildings are
replacing historic buildings which belong to mulatto families.
In 1835 enslaved Africans in Brazil rebelled
against the slave owners who chartered ships and returned them to Benin and
Togo. They became importers of European cloth and tobacco and exporters of
copra and palm kernels. Unfortunately their great-great-grandchildren are
giving up their Portuguese style houses in order to push back poverty.
Also caught in the mirage of defeating poverty
are the youth elbowing pushcarts. Seeing the energy they put into the work, I
wonder if they aren’t killing themselves slowly.
The ‘Daily Graphic’ was sold out. I hopped on a
zemidjan. On my left, at the Togoese
border post of Kodjoviakope, despite warnings, fines, signs, and civic
education, people still ease themselves at the beach at night and urinate there
during the day. Behind a recently-constructed public latrine, people have begun
to dump rubbish.
I showed my national identity card to the
Togolese police who are in charge of immigration matters and walked past a
group begging to be allowed to cross into Ghana instead of paying the bribe of
$1 per head for not possessing any travelling document.
“Where are you going?” the Ghanaian immigration
officer asked me at the other side where a large number of travellers was held
up.
“To buy a newspaper, sah,” I said respectfully.
“Your passport?” he asked gruffly.
“Oh, sah,
I just want the ‘Graphic.’”
“See the boss.” He jostled me towards a
counter.
“Yes, sah,
I want to go and buy the ‘Graphic,’” I said through the wire mesh.
The boss stared queerly at me. “Are you
Ghanaian?” he asked finally.
“No. Togolese brought up in Ghana.”
“Then you’re not Ghanaian. Ten thousand
cedis.”—the Ghanaian equivalent of $1.
“The newspaper isn’t worth half that much. I prefer
to go back.”
“Okay, go.”
I gave him a military salute.
Colonialists created such problems for Africans
when they drew arbitrary lines on the African map in their scramble for Africa
at Berlin in 1884. The same ethnic groups, clans, and even families found
themselves on either side of borders and assumed different nationalities. For
example, the people of Aflao Gakli in Togo bury their dead in Ghana because the
colonial border running across their land left their ancestral cemetery in
Ghana.
Sub-regional economic groupings like the Economic
Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has abolished visa requirements for
their citizens travelling to each other’s country and also instituted the free
movement of people and goods in the region. Yet going across any border is a
harrowing experience. The Nigerian border at Seme is so rough that even
Nigerians holding valid passports have to pay bribes to leave or enter their
own country! To cross Ghana into the Ivory Coast at the Elubo crossing point,
the Ivorian officers extort $4 from people with passports and more for those
without. In Benin it is $1. Immigration officials collect bribes openly with so
much impunity because when the top is corrupt, the bottom can also afford to
be.
On walking home from the border children
taunted each other in the streets and giggled childishly. I wondered what
future awaited them, remembering an article which claimed that Africa now is
poorer than it was 35 years ago. We scattered from the street as someone honked
harshly behind us and a Hammer 4x4 vehicle with black windows zoomed past,
raising a cloud of dust.
“Thieves!” a woman selling roasted corn on the
cob sneered.
I walked past an army truck dropping soldiers
with Kalashnikovs at strategic points to patrol the streets. But when night
falls they will erect roadblocks instead and demand ransom from zemidjan riders and anybody not carrying
an identity document.
Soon I was sitting in my candle-lit apartment
with my family, the mosquitoes buzzing around us despite the mosquito coil
which is supposed to kill them.
“It only dazes them,” Viviane said. “Watch out
for malaria.”
I wondered why a vaccine has not been found for
malaria which kills millions of Africans each year. But then I remembered that this
is a continent where a solution is hardly sought to any problem; instead chaos
is left to reign supreme.
