Crossing the Border

I could have had a better start. The night before my trip ached painfully on as I tossed and turned between clouds of anxiety and pitiless mosquitos; all the whilst clogged in a layer of treacle-like humidity.

 The previous week’s waves of furious organisation and total paralysis finally reached their crescendo at half past four, with the ringing of my alarm. Shouldering my rucksack, I crept out the house with the first fingers of dawn sneaking over the rooftops. I hailed a bleary-eyed motorbike driver, and off we sped towards the border, the city stirring in our wake.

At the border, I found myself tossed like a fish between the jaws of predatory taxi drivers; each one plying their trade with terrifying insistency. Once I had finally succeeded in shaking myself free, and dodging swiftly between the currents of hand carts, market stalls and overladen trucks disgorging their produce onto the pavements, I plunged through a wall of air-conditioning, and into the Ghanaian border office.

As I had expected, they were far from pleased with my slab of cash posing as a Visa. I had been informed that what I was doing was technically legal: I was buying an “Emergency Visa”.

 Even so, I remembered to breathe only after my passport had been stamped. I was even handed a receipt.

Stepping over the border, feeling as secure as the wafer-thin scrap of paper that “legalised” my entry, I made my way to the nearest Accra-bound bus. Speaking English felt incredibly foreign. There was something equally bizarre about fixed prices and actual tickets, not to mention an entire seat to myself. I had grown accustomed to the Francophone chaos.

Waiting for the journey to start, and fighting the urge to dash back over the border, I reminded myself of why I was doing this. There was a tangible desire to fill my mind with new horizons, not to mention the empowerment that I felt as a young white woman exploring Africa alone.

However, my main motivation for visiting Ghana, and stepping further still out of my comfort zone was three letters: IJM.

I first heard of this charity four months ago.  I had been reading a book on prayer: completely unrelated to Human Rights or charity work, yet it contained an interview with a lawyer who worked for the “International Justice Mission”.

 Intrigued, I found their website. I discovered that they work with governments all over the world in order to help them transform their justice systems. Over the course of several decades, the poor suddenly receive inquests following a burglary of their land or property: rapists are condemned; child-traffickers are criminalised.

With IJM’s help, justice stops being a luxury.

The day after this discovery, during a car journey, my friend suddenly started talking about charity work; a topic that we had never previously breached. She informed me of an amazing charity called IJM that she was fundraising for, and raved about their success in drastically reducing child sex slavery in the Philippines.

Slightly disconcerted by hearing about this unknown charity two days in a row, I decided to put it to the back of my mind. Later that day, I picking up the topmost magazine lying on the coffee table and aimlessly flicked through it. A page fell open. It was an article written by the head of IJM.

I definitely prefer accepting things as coincidences; life is so much simpler without God sticking His nose in and making things exciting. Even so, there was something divinely fishy about the fact that three days ago I had never heard of IJM, yet it was brought to my attention from three consecutive events from three unexpected sources.

 When I discovered that IJM’s only West African office was located in Accra; a four-hour drive from where I would be staying in Togo, I knew that this was not something that I could ignore.

Telling God that He better be a good reason for all of this, I wrote IJM a letter to ask if I could pay them a visit.

Returning my mind back to the minibus, and the cacophony of sounds at the Togolese border, I suddenly felt very small and very overwhelmed.

 Although I knew that there were some incredible sights to visit, I had been dreading travelling to Ghana. This felt way too far out the safety net. The border crossing from Togo to Ghana was almost impenetrable (the Emergency Visa was the only way that I could cross). No Togolese person would be able to find US$150 to come over and bail me out of an emergency. Besides, I did not have a Ghanaian phone to call them with.  I did have the number of a friend’s Ghanaian business acquaintance, but other than that, I was very much on my own.

I had also been forewarned that travelling to an English colony could not differ more from travelling through a French one: visiting Ghana would be starting again from scratch.

My eyes returned to the window, and I realised that we were on the move. Backing out was no longer an option. Hugging my rucksack against my chest, I told God that He better know what He was doing, as I certainly did not.

Benin

I began my travelling feeling emotionally exhausted and craving a few days’ peace. The town of Ouidah, in Western Benin, gave me no such respite. No city that has its foundations soaked in blood: its streets carved by the footprints of millions upon millions of slaves, can ever be a place where hope and joy abounds.

Upon exploring the empty streets; a lone Yovo in a Beninese world, I was met with accusatory glares rather than welcoming smiles.

There is the perception that poverty leaves Africans with an intense inner joy: the simplicity of lifestyle; lack of “worries” in a family-orientated community somehow produces contentment and fullness of life. We Westerners, with our security and technology and vaguely stable futures, are the ones missing out.

This ideology was not something that rang true in Ouidah. Life seemed bitterly hard; most jobs involved either waiting fruitlessly in empty restaurants for non-existent tourists, or selling produce at the roadside that was so cheap I had no idea how it could ever equate to the price of household bills.

I had come to Ouidah for the “Walk of No Return”: the final 4km of the slaves’ epic exile out of Africa.

At the half way point, I arrived at the mass pit for the countless thousands of dead and dying slaves who had no hope of even reaching the shoreline. After months of trudging through the unbearable heat, they would be “fortunate” enough to die in their homeland.

What I found almost as horrendous as the mindless slaughter of thousands of innocent men, women and children, was the grave itself. The only commemorative efforts were a large slab of concrete and a tacky tiled plaque. The Beninese government simply did not the money to sufficiently honour their memories. This felt like tragedy upon tragedy. Has Benin not been able to move forwards in all of this time?

I progressed to the “Tree of Forgetting” which men walked around nine times and women only seven. This was a ritual to “forget” their past African lives; to forget that they were ever considered as human beings. From this moment on they were reduced to servile beasts.

Reflecting upon all of this, I had no idea why their hearts resolutely continued to pump blood around their exhausted bodies; why each foot was determined to carve yet another small imprint on the unrelenting path before it. The past, their freedom, was now an unattainable memory, and each new day brought with it a fresh onslaught of nightmares. Yet, despite full knowledge of this, countless millions continued their desperate existence.

During my walk, a memory from my taxi ride to Ouidah resurfaced. My stunned brain had discarded it; refusing to accept it as truth. However, as the series of events bubbled resolutely to the surface, their absolute clarity forced me to readdress them.

On this particular roadside stop, (which up until now had either been for food or to tip a bottle of something that I hoped was petrol into the fuel tank), we were met by a round-faced girl. Looking at her, I nostalgically remembered my own awkward pre-teen stage; where my body stubbornly clung onto childhood, whilst at the same time propelling me at terrifying speed into a great unknown, which I could only assume was what others defined as “womanhood.”

This poor girl was trying to bridge the gap by wearing a bra that was several sizes too large, which clashed magnificently with her baby face. Bless her, her bra was also falling out of her top. Why had her mother not pointed this out? Especially at her age, I would be so embarrassed!

Her full attention was fixed on the driver. Swivelling my head from one to the other, I suddenly felt incredibly ill. There was something far too deliberate about all of this.

With a look of greedy expectancy, the driver heaved his sweaty mass out of the car, and the girl dutifully followed him. They disappeared for around ten minutes. Inside the car, there was absolute silence.

After what seemed like an age, the girl joined a group of other girls chatting at the roadside, and a hawk-like woman swooped in from nowhere to collect the cash: 3000 Francs (£3.90).

As we drove off, my driver’s jubilant mood was expressed in the energetic church service played the radio; the Virgin Mary swaying enthusiastically from the rear-view mirror.

The swamps and villages turning into a blur, I clung to two thoughts. The first, was that at least this girl was a little better off than Togolese prostitutes, where sex only costs 2000 Francs (£2.50).

My second thought; this one riddled with shame at my utter uselessness, was that I was incredibly glad that it had been that young girl at the roadside and not me. It seems absolutely ludicrous that for some freedom and consent come free with their birth certificate, yet for millions of others, those two words have no definition.

That girl’s plight had a strange parallel with my friends’ journey back from Kpalimé, a Togolese rainforest region, where we had spent the weekend. Stopping at the first checkpoint, the policeman informed their taxi driver that he wanted either one of the white girls, or some money. The driver duly paid the bribe.

As they continued, the driver explained that he did not have enough money to cover the next checkpoint’s bribe, so one of the girls would have to go with the policeman. My friends calmly objected; explaining that sex was consensual: their bodies were for the people that they loved rather than tools to get through checkpoints! The driver laughed, and said that coming to Togo involved trying new things, like motorbikes and Fufu (a local dish) so surely trying a black man was just another part of the experience!

This discussion continued up until they reached the second checkpoint, where the policeman lazily waved them through, without even blinking an eye.

By the time that I had reached the Beninese shoreline with its majestic arch covered in staggering slaves marking the Point of No Return, I was a wreck. Gazing out at the azure blue sea; void of all but tumultuous waves crashing against a fringe of golden sand embellished with coconut palms, I sat down and cried. Tears fell for the barbarism that had taken place in such a paradise: for the fact that millions of lives had been hideously lost for the sake of rolls of cotton and sacks of cane sugar.

The deepest pain; welling up from deep below my lungs, was the knowledge that slavery never died with its abolition. Despite all of the museums and history books, there are more slaves alive today than there ever has been in the course of human history: innumerably more than during the time of the Slave Trade. This brutality, which we heap upon our ancestors with cries of self-righteous outrage, exists under our very noses.

 The next day, I prayed for joy. I wanted a day that required no emotional energy. No frenetic debates over prices, no objectifying men; no unexpected challenges.

I managed to hitch a ride into town with a lovely Beninese/French family, and it made an interesting start to the day to discover their experience of bridging the two worlds, and how they thought that Benin had changed over time.

Upon being dropped off at the motorbike rank, I made an exciting discovery. Here in Ouidah, motorbike drivers wore official vests with official numbers! This might actually suggest that the drivers knew how to drive!

In Togo, the government assumes that if you are intelligent enough to blunder over to the side of the road and buy a motorbike, then you are clearly adequately equipped enough to be unleashed onto the roads.

Consequently, during my six weeks in Lomé I saw four motorbike accidents, one with a dead body on the road, and I was in the fifth. Feeling far more at ease here in Benin, we set off, zigzagging through markets and crowded streets towards my destination.

Upon arrival, I had some hassle with the ticket officer who tried to make me pay for my invisible companion; clearly solo travellers deserve to be ripped off. Fortunately, I was saved in the nick of time by three Parisians who invited me to join them. Finding ourselves a pirogue (a wooden punt), we set out across the lake.

Yesterday’s angst dissolved in the open water: a bedsheet sail propelling us along. The water was full of pelicans and cormorants and enormous pied kingfishers. Waterways had even been constructed with woven palm fronds, ensuring that boats did not trespass onto private fish farms.

Our destination was Ganvié: a bamboo-stilt town- home to around 30,000 people. There was something almost comical about seeing Beninese culture transposed into a nautical setting. There were the same roadside peddlers, but this time trade was passed from boat to boat; there were the same bustling markets, and there was even a floating Family Planning Clinic!

I found real joy in lazing through the waterways and breathing in the atmosphere. I was incredibly grateful that I was permitted to gawp in amazement at their bamboo paradise: an explorer drinking in yet another man’s world.

The Accident

I always knew that motorbikes were not safe. Weaving between psychotic taxi drivers who seemed to think that their rear-view mirrors would be better served as TV screens, the eclectic collection of mopeds and motorbikes and long-suffering bicycles perilously lug babies and old men and even double mattresses, through the crowded streets.

I could not really describe my driver as “calm and collected” either. We belted along the roads as though constantly pursued by a herd of irate buffalo; ignoring traffic lights, racing through petrol stations in order to avoid that inconvenient roundabout.

 I decided that the best thing to do was to trust him. Aside from the fact that I secretly really enjoyed our journeys, and could not honestly say that I wanted to go any slower, I told myself that what was good enough for the Togolese was good enough for me. If I wanted a booster seat and a fwuffy padded jacket, then I should have stayed in the UK. 

I did at least possess the intelligence to always travel with a helmet.

This evening, it rained on our journey home. Shutting my eyes against the driving rain and feeling my cotton top and skirt plastering themselves against my skin, I reminded myself that normally, I live in England. A true Brit forgets what life is like when it is not raining.

 I am not sure what it was that made me open my eyes. I suddenly noticed that the motorbike in front had just crashed into a car. I realised, in a strangely detached and logical manner, that we were hurtling straight towards them.

I surprise myself in the “Kairos”* moments. I can tie my stomach in knots over a social event or difficult conversation, but in the really massive moments, I always seem to have an overwhelming sense of peace.

My driver’s actions saved my life. Jamming on the brakes, the bike spun on the flooded tarmac, and we skidded sideways along the road. The detached and highly logical part of my brain told me that I had seen this manoeuvre in several James Bond films, but I had never expected to be slicing sideways on the back of a motorbike myself. 

Most of the time, I cannot say that I am gifted with common sense. The tattoo of bruises on my knees are a testament to my incurable clumsiness: the water bags that we drink from generally end up down my trousers or all over my face, as I have yet to work out the right way up to hold them.

Today, once the bike had finally skidded to halt and deposited us onto the tarmac, the only thing that crossed my mind was that I should probably make a list of the most helpful things to do in such a situation. I promptly picked up the wing mirror and walked off the road.

Praise God, the worst injury of the crash was a broken leg. I wanted to help the poor man at the side of the road, but I knew that whenever there is an accident between a car and a motorbike, the car always pays. Regardless of who is actually to blame, the chances are that the people in the car will be the ones with the cheaper medical bill.

We hobbled back onto our bike, and headed off home; the deceased wing mirror nonchalantly tossed into the bushes. With the wind whipping my face and oozing adrenaline, I could not contain an enormous “What-have-I-got-myself-into-now?” manic grin.

I cannot know why I walked away from that scene with nothing more than a swollen wrist and a couple of scrapes and bruises. I cannot know why it was a friend of a friend, not me, who was squashed by a truck in their motorbike accident last week. They were driving an identical motorbike on the same roads.

There are too many people who have been taken away too early; snuffed out in an instant. There are so many times when I have shouted at God, and told Him that even if He does exist I want nothing to do with Him, as I cannot understand how He can let these things happen.

Yet, there are also the people like me who get to walk away. People like me who just so happen to live next door to an amazing trainee doctor, and are friends with a qualified physiotherapist who can give any swollen tendons a full examination.

For me, the only way that I can respond is with gratitude. I can be grateful for my driver’s quick reflexes. I can be grateful that I walked away with almost non-existent injuries. I can be grateful for how well I was looked after. I can be grateful to be alive.

No matter how much security I try to create for myself in the form of money or intelligence or human connections, it is impossible to know whether today will be my last. I am so glad that as a Christian, death is not something to fear.

The only thing that I can do is live each day to the full, and as I go to sleep each night, I can thank God for giving me one more day to be alive.

*In Ancient Greek there are two words for time: “Chronos”, which is every day, commuting to work, scrubbing dishes, ordinary-little-things time, and “Kairos”, which is for earth-shattering moments like your wedding day, or the birth/death of a family member.

Finishing the Chapter

“England” is beginning to feel more like an invention than a reality.

Six weeks of stifling humidity and cloaking dust have made me question my memories of biting cold, incessant drizzle, and cloaking fog. Is there really a land where this exists?

Meticulous organisation seems equally like a laughable concept. I am not sure that I believe myself when I picture wide, concrete pavements free from the paraphernalia of goods that are peddled at the roadside. Is there really a world where everything has a non-negotiable price; where stopping in the middle of the road for a conversation would either result in instant death or an earful of expletives from a passing driver?

I am not sure if I would prefer to return to this imaginary land, or to remain in my current reality. Returning to England would give me the reprieve of not having my posh accent stand out a mile. My bizarre turns of phrase like “I’m up for that” and “nutty as a fruitcake” would be considered banal rather than worthy of mockery. England would be a land where everyone would speak my language and French would hardly be needed at all.

Yet at the same time, I am beginning to feel at home in this chaos, and flying back would create frustration and a fair amount of culture shock. Surely no country exists where vegetables are thrown away after two days, and where perfectly wholesome food rots in skips two streets away from impoverished council estates?

Plastic gloves and food hygiene certificates seem comical as I stand at the roadside for my avocado sandwich; complementary flies nonchalantly swatted away.

Through this process, I have begun to see myself as a chameleon rather than an ugly duckling who cannot identify with either culture. Being adaptable to a variety of countries and climates is a huge benefit. There is a great advantage in being equally comfortable with tossing a freezing cold bucket of water over my head as taking a scalding hot power-shower.

Fully aware that my rusty-orange chameleon skin may soon have to change to grey-blue in the transition back to England, I feel a definite twinge of sadness. Friendships from all over the world have been forged in Togo: it is bittersweet to realise that this may have been the only season where my path will ever cross with such a wonderful group of people.

On the other hand, there are things about my work at “le CACIT”, that I will not miss: the hours in front of the computer trawling through admin, the projects I agonised over that ended up in the Recycling Bin; the sinking realisation that a lot of what I was doing had been created to appease a white intern rather than to create change.

Overall, I am glad that I did the internship. I have definitely achieved my objective of  greatly improved French. I now have some understanding of how Human Rights Law works within a professional context, even if I do not feel that the Human Rights Situation in Togo is remotely different to how it was six weeks ago. 

I was pretty naïve to think that I could create change within such a short period: the Togolese have been fighting for ten years and have still not received a single Franc in reparation from the government.  

However, my time here has reinforced my suspicion that the source of Africa’s problems resides in my half of the globe rather than theirs. The reason that the Togolese citizens have not received reparation for being tortured by the armed forces in 2005 is because just like his father Eyadema, the current President, Faure Gnassingbé, is fully supported by the French. During the clampdown the soldiers fired French bullets at civilians from French guns.

All over Africa, the fortunes of the corrupt are comfortably stashed in Swiss bank accounts.

I was horrified to discover that the United Kingdom is the world’s second largest weapons exporter. We stand on our moral high ground and condemn the rest of the world, only to discover that our platform of piety consists of the bones of the nations that we have crushed.

If we want to change the lives of impoverished Africans, we first need to wash the blood off our own hands. We need to tell our government to remove the stranglehold of debt that the West leaves “developing” nations in: forcing them to always be economically dependent upon us. We need to stop buying 30p chocolate, and pay Africans a decent wage for our exploitation of their raw materials. We need to support African entrepreneurships. We need to stop throwing our clothes in the bin every time we get “bored” of them.

I always find a dark amusement in noticing the clothes of the passers-by. They are either wearing a kaleidoscope of multi-coloured traditional outfits, or an oddment of assorted western clothes. KFC uniforms are combined with Donald Duck pyjama bottoms. I had to blink twice as I walked past a scrawny child with a “Feed the Children” T-Shirt hanging off his bony shoulders.

These are all clear signs of what the locals call “Dead Yovo Clothes”. It is impossible for the Togolese to believe that the clothes that have been donated to them from western countries could ever have been taken from the bodies of the living. Which human being has that many clothes that they can give them away to others? The only logical explanation was that they were taken off corpses during the preparation for their funerals.

I do believe that the West can right their wrongs. One of my heroes is a man named William Wilberforce. For eighteen years he fought for the abolition of the slave trade. He was the constant butt of jokes as he was ridiculed by the British Parliament. They told him that his absurd ideals would bankrupt the entire British Empire. Even if they did free the slaves, surely the French and German Empires would just sweep in and claim them instead?  Besides, it was blatantly clear that the slaves actually enjoyed their bondage so why deprive them of such a pleasure?

 Undeterred for eighteen years, Wilberforce incessantly petitioned parliament for the abolition of the slave trade. He never let go of his desire to be a voice for the voiceless; an ideal that was formed within him when he became a Christian  in the 1780s.

In 1807, the slave trade was finally abolished, and in 1833, all existing slaves were freed within the British Empire.

Privileged Westerners could have come to Togo for six weeks and mopped the poor slaves’ brows as they were dragged onto slave ships, but that would have done nothing to change the fact that slaves were about to commence the most hideous voyage of their lives, where many of them would not live to see the American shore. For those Westerners, refusing to eat slave produced sugar and wear slave cotton would have been a far louder cry for change.

I do not regret coming to Togo. I feel no shame in admitting that this has been a time of personal investment, rather than a time of giving to others. The panic that I was initially consumed with as my aeroplane slowly descending upon Lomé, has now been replaced by the confidence to wanderer alone across three countries.  The fear that I once felt expressing my opinions has now been replaced by the fear of not wanting to appear too confident.  I have matured, developed and asked an enormous amount of questions. I have tried to understand other peoples’ perspectives and philosophies. I have learnt to trust God with the future, and walk with Him in the present.

Above all, I have learnt not to associate sensitivity with weakness. I strongly believe that if more people empathised with others as acutely as I do, then mindless torture would be impossible. No soldier, brutally aware that the rest of his week would be spent reliving the gunshots: the petrified faces of his victims seared into his eyeballs, would ever be able to break upon the front door. It takes great strength to be weak.

I feel equal exhilaration and anxiety as I consider the following chapter: adventuring through Togo, Ghana and Benin. There have been numerous times when the magnitude of what I am about to do has paralysed me and left me frozen in indecision.

However, the fact that I am currently on the other side of the world from friends and family means that I have no safety blanket to run to. I still have twelve days until my plane leaves, and I want to make the most of every last minute. I have dreamed of travelling through Africa for so long. Once the niggling details have been smoothed over, then I hope that the anxiety will dissolve as I embrace the adventure before me.

Discovering my limitations has also been extremely helpful. It is useful to know when to terrify myself, and when to hold back. I decided to abandon my trip to Northern Togo, as I realised that it would have created more anxiety than enjoyment. There is nothing wrong with having limitations. Closing one door often opens another.

I have no idea what I will see or who I will meet in the next ten days. I simply know that it will be an adventure, and that I will return home with plenty of stories to tell.

Things to pray for:

·         For safety during my travels

·         That the border crossings will go smoothly, especially crossing to and from Ghana

·         Praise God that I have been given the opportunity to visit IJM’s offices in Accra, (www.ijm.org) and pray that it will be an incredibly worthwhile time.

·         Pray that I will be able to relax and recuperate after my six weeks of working.

Making a List

I am aware that I have an incredibly sheltered and privileged existence, and there is an enormous list of things that I hate about Togo, but as I savour the end of another day, it is nice to reflect upon what it is that makes this place so special:

·  Every day is an adventure. The unexpected sights and sounds and smells, although frustrating and sometimes overwhelming, mean that I am always encountering the unexpected, whether that is trying bizarre tasting food at the roadside, cramming through stalls full of shampoo and fried herring at the market, or trying to persuade the adamant Ghanaian that I do NOT want to give him my number.

· The sunsets. A liquid ruby orb swims in the sky each day on my way home, and reminds me how wonderful it is to be alive.

·Everyone speaks at least three languages. Languages and cultures and accents and backgrounds are all woven together; locals skip seamlessly between French and Ewé every second syllable. There are so many stories to be heard from people who have walked such far-flung corners of the world.

·       ·  I am finally beginning to communicate. It feels liberating that one of my closest friends here does not speak any English and I do not (yet) speak any Spanish. The gift of a second language means that we can connect in French!

I love also the sense of satisfaction that comes from the face of a disgruntled taxi driver when I refuse to pay Yovo (white man) tax, and manage to bargain my journey down to Amiyebo (local) price.

·         ·At weekends, I love being able to poke my finger on a map and say: “Let’s go here.”

I love the adventure and hassle that comes from trying to navigate a new place, and discovering that suddenly  there is a lake that needs to be crossed by punt and that this is actually a funeral that I have just invited myself to. Each horizon is brand new.

·       ·  There is something wonderful about finding that despite many differences, there are ways to connect with local people. Bringing my flute has turned into a massive blessing, as it means that I can connect musically. Even if I cannot connect with a common background or language, there is an undeniable bond that comes from creating an extra thread in the rich harmonies that weave and swirl into a tapestry of sound.

·      ·  I love eating with my hands again. There is nothing better than laying aside cutlery, and wrapping my fingers in warm, doughy Fufu lathered in spicy sauce.

Choosing a strange string of words on the menu creates a feeling of anticipation as I wait to discover which bizarre concoction will be dolloped onto my plate this time.

·      · Everything has so much more flavour. In Togo no on needs to pump nutrients back into shrivelled fruit that has been dragged half way around the world: here it was harvested a few hours ago.

 There is no sense of disappointment as I take my first bite of fresh mango or papaya: a shockwave of juice explodes in my mouth and runs down to my elbows. Blandness does not exist in Togo.  

·         ·I love having my vision of “life” turned on its head. Even the simplest things, like my idea of politeness, or how to cross a road, have now been flung out of the window. I no longer know where to even start on the fundamental questions, let alone the profound.

It feels completely refreshing to have the cobwebs of complacency brushed aside as I am completely rethink my ideals.

Every day is a rollercoaster ride where one minute I have to stop myself dancing down the street, niftily dodging the open drains, and the next I am clamouring to get on the next plane home.

However, my time here increases, and the feeling of being an incapable toddler is fading away, I can feel myself deeply connecting with this place. The everyday chaos is beginning to make a strange kind of sense.

 I am glad that I am only staying for two months, as this is a culture that I think I could fall in love with.

Glimmers through the bars

Sitting in a cell surrounded by dust and cobwebs and crumbling brickwork, I was taken aback by the humanity of the people that I met. Somehow, standing in a circle with twenty prisoners, of all walks of life, nationalities and backgrounds: some innocent, some guilty of “crimes” ranging from abortion to murder, I felt safe.

The smiling eyes and warm handshakes spoke of familiarity and friendship: I could be at a dinner party, or a church service, rather than in one of Togo’s highest security prisons.

We discussed human rights and how they affected their daily lives; the topics ranged from self-control to prison guard brutality.

 All the while there was a cacophony of squawking chickens, whirring sewing machines, guttural shouts and clobbering hammers. All of this was amalgamated with the smells of pungent sewage and charcoal fires. It was very difficult to concentrate.

Holding hands, we prayed. Reverently unfolding their dog-eared copies, the prisoners read aloud from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It seemed to remind them that they were human; that they were valuable. Every now and again there was a ripple of hollow laughter as they recalled that basic dignity and humanity also applied to prisoners.

We heard how the prison guards took forty minutes to unlock the cell door when a friend of theirs was having an epileptic fit. The guards were blind to the thrashing, contorted body on the floor until the money had been found for the medical bill.

 Once their friend had been unceremoniously removed, they were informed that the prison’s only car had just broken down. With deepest regrets, their friend could not be taken to hospital after all.  When he was returned to them the next morning, their friend shakily recounted how the guards’ remedy for epilepsy was dumping him on the stairs overnight. Of course this required payment. The six thousand francs were not returned.

The night before our meeting, their friend Andre had suddenly started coughing up mucus, despite being perfectly healthy just a few hours earlier. He was taken away by the guards, and the next morning pronounced dead.

For the first time, shock and quiet despair bore deep into the lines of their faces. Their slack eyes were consumed by the middle distance as their minds paced across the same rocky path of unanswered questions and impossibilities.

The bonds of friendship created in this prison are hard to break. Here, the prisoners laugh together; share dreams together and collectively bear the brunt of their shackles. The shock of losing a brother; snatched out of the blue, was unimaginable.

We finished the meeting with the weary conclusion that yet another letter had to be thrust in the face of the Minister for Justice. Hopefully something would change.

Afterwards, I walked to a smaller cell, to interview several mothers who were imprisoned with their babies. There was something intensely horrible about a new-born, whose wide eyes drank in his surroundings and perceived “normality”.

 Slumped naked in his mother’s lap; dribbling lollipop in one milky, sludgy stream, the cell was this baby’s universe. The idea that there was a world outside the bars and padlocks and overcrowding was inconceivable.

The lady who I interviewed was pregnant. Her globulous eyes jutted out against her hollow cheeks; her lips twitching of their own accord as she revealed her miserable conditions in a hoarse, trembling whisper. She sank into a deep despair at the prospect of learning motherhood within the walls of a prison.  There was no family who could raise her child in her stead, and besides; her voice grew firmer and her eyes fiercer, this was her child. She would be his mother.

The small blade of light that pierced her web of misery was the hope that maybe; possibly, she would be released before her baby was due.

I felt pathetically useless as I left her there, in a flood of tears that I could neither wipe nor stem. I could do nothing but hope and pray for justice.

 The rest of that week, the prison came with me. I could not shake off the heaviness; the desperation that seemed equally prevalent in the life that existed outside the prison walls. Worst of all, the misery seemed needless!

I was shocked to hear that Lomé has the only deep-water port in West Africa; bringing in over (US) $1billion every day.  The glass- fronted, opulent Ministry of Finance seemed like a cruel joke opposite the decaying ruins of the Ministry of Healthcare.

These two factors betrayed the truth that the Togolese government can afford to invest in healthcare and education and basic infrastructure, but instead chooses to leave the population impoverished, in the hope that if they are consumed by the unending task of scraping together today’s meal, then they will have neither the willpower nor energy to raise objections.

Taking myself off the drug of innumerable torture testimonies, I began to climb back out of the darkness. There must be a way to bring change. Togo has seen some improvements over the centuries, even if Time does seem to have forgotten this small nation.

 The simple facts that everyday city-dwellers own smartphones and that Cybercafés are everywhere, show small signs of development. An ever-increasing number of Africans can now connect globally and access a world of information.

Change will eventually happen in Togo, but it requires an army of people who are prepared to dedicate their lives to facilitate it. It could take thirty, forty years for one governmental apology: breaking the choking web of corruption may take several lifetimes.

 However, even the smallest progress will have transformational results. Like the first trickle of water escaping from a barricade; the cracks of a scorched and abandoned wasteland will be saturated, and seeds will spring up; resulting in an uncontrollable flurry of life. Once the roots of change have broken through the barren bedrock, regression will be impossible.

This week, a glimpse of this brave new world was offered to me. Visiting the prison again, in the vain hope of interviewing another prisoner, I was embraced in the street by a stranger. Upon clearing the fog of French, I realised that this was one of mothers; she had just been released from prison. The slobbering baby with the lollipop now slept serenely on her back.

Her smile engulfed her entire face as she described reuniting with her husband and four other children after such a long time. Her new-born baby would be oblivious to his incarceration: the entire ordeal will never be fully formed in his memory. Incarceration would be nothing more than the wisps of a bad dream.

 I left the prison with lightness to my step. Despite the mountain of problems and daily struggles that exist everywhere, here was a living, breathing testimony of one happy ending.

Things to pray for:

Thank God that despite being told it was impossible, I can get a visa to Ghana

That God will bless the work that I am doing

That I will be able to invest in the relationships that I am forming.

That I will get high quality rest at the end of each week

Thanks guys! :)

( ).

Sometimes there are no words.

How do you force your lips and tongue to spit out the sounds that will inform an eight year old, orphaned boy that he is HIV Positive?

How do you make your fingers tap out a coherent sentence when it is the testimony of a new born baby who was held by the ankles and smashed against a brick wall, all because the woman who they assumed was his mother was not telling them what they wanted to hear?

How can you use lines and squiggles to remotely communicate the fact that a man was stabbed with red-hot machetes, tied to a tree and left with burning tyres around his neck? He was a doctor. He was walking home the wrong way.

I never want to be someone who does not grieve for other peoples’ pain.

Yet the feeling of having a knife searing open my chest and flattening my lungs, combined with leaden limbs and a liquefied brain, can be paralysing.

I try to turn towards the God, who these Africans love with everything that they are, despite their insurmountable challenges.

Yet how can I express my feelings of anguish, betrayal, horror, relief, adoration, disgust, anger, outrage, exhaustion; combined with question upon question upon question?

Sometimes there are no words.

Humble Pie

Sometimes, the best thing to do is to admit that you are useless.

A week of continuously scraping myself off the floor, although an excellent ego detox, does have the adverse side-effect of ridiculously low self-esteem.

Everything is new; wild, unpredictable. I have no idea how to navigate this world that seems so bizarre, and foreign and disorganised.

Walking to the shops feels like inching along a tightrope with a frenzy of motorbikes and taxis and cyclists and cars swarming below as one claustrophobic mass.

Even upon successful entry into the shop, I then have to make my tongue and lips spit out sounds that will vaguely resemble a sentence.

What makes it hardest of all; is that the pervading feeling of uselessness is just as apparent at work as on the streets. ( I am an intern at a human rights organisation called “le Communauté des Associations Conte l’Impunité au Togo.”)

On my first day, struggling to stand against the tidal wave of French, I tentatively agreed to do a Transitional Justice project, equipped with the vague knowledge that Desmond Tutu had done something along those lines in South Africa, and that it could be interesting.

Here came the catch. A Transitional Justice Project involves doing things. In French. Using an already well equipped and highly functional brain.

Entering a room full of highly professional French Law students, I spent the first week hating everyone. How dare they waltz gracefully through their fourth language, whilst my clumsy feet dragged mud across the floor in my shoddy attempt to communicate in my second? How dare they be intelligent and funny and confident and popular all at the same time? Worst of all, how dare they remain immaculately elegant all day, whilst the 90% humidity and stifling heat turned me into a dishevelled, sweaty mess, four steps out of the front door?

Eventually, I realised that something had to change. After a grovelling apology to God for my pig-headed self-pity, I decided to be happy that le CACIT had an army of proficient, talented models as interns. I also decided that I needed to get over myself.

I spoke to the director the next day, and told him that I was not academic or knowledgeable enough to do Transitional Justice. I then described the ounce of useful Human Rights knowledge that was floating around up there, and asked timidly if it would be more helpful to them if I went and joined another Human Rights organisation; one that was more practical, and less academic.

After having announced this to everyone in the staff meeting, the director then did something incredibly encouraging. He used a football analogy. He said that in a game of football, you do not put a right footed player on the left side of the pitch. You put them on the right side, to play to their strengths rather than exploit their weaknesses.

Le CACIT wants to reach out to the English speaking world, so I would be very useful to them in terms of translation.  Moreover, I might also be able to help start a project to help mothers, who are bringing up their children in prison, find a better option for their child.

Both of these things feel massive and scary and overwhelming, but almost; possibly doable.

My mind leapt back to my afternoon on the beach. The breakers, a pride of ruthless lions, have had nothing to sate their appetite since the shores of South America.  Gathering pace, gathering desperation, they eventually gain their first sighting of the Togolese shore. With an extra spurt of ravenous energy, they tear into the coastline; carving as much of it as they can into their insatiable maw; dragging it down into the deep.

Standing thigh high in the waves; muscles tensed, feet anchored, you stand and wait for the onslaught. Most of the time you are tossed up the beach like debris, with a few crucial moments when you can scramble away before the lion’s claws catch your ankle and drag you down with him.

Today, it felt different. Yes, I was in the water, filled with dread and fear and excitement as I waited for the lion to pounce, but this time I knew, that when the roaring mass of white water rushed towards me, I would not be consumed. My legs may strain; my knees may buckle, but this time I knew, that I would be able to stand.

Things to pray for:

For energy; physical and emotional

That when I visit the Ghana office this week, they will be warm and welcoming, and give me my visa with no hassle.

For building relationships with the people that I am with.

Yovos and Pickled Fish

It feels like I am two again.

Led by the hand; gabbling shoddy sentences and gawping at the kaleidoscope whirling incomprehensibly around me, I have never felt so utterly child-like.

Today meant plunging into a world of colour and vibrancy and bustling, sweaty life. It was a day of markets disgorging every conceivable item at your feet: so much that it became impossible to focus upon a single thing, which made it feel as though you were seeing through a blurred lens.

 Each stall valiantly clung to the edge of streets filled with customers and sellers and carts and rickshaws; all determined to sell you things, and run you over in the process.

I loved the sea. Its untameable breakers seemed outrageous juxtaposed with the frenetic market beside it. Looking out at the impossible mass of sapphire blue dotted with container ships chugging diligently along the horizon, my eyes were drawn to the jutting remains of a walkway stretching out from the beach into the waves. Its rusting remains reminded me of an old dinosaur bone.

I queried it with my adviser, Daphne. * Was it a pier? A Blackpool-like promenade, where in times of old there was a ferris wheel, a candy floss machine, and a magical mirror emporium?

No.

It was the walkway where the Germans loaded the slaves onto ships.

I tentatively asked why they did not remove it. Surely if the scars of the past are to slowly fade from the landscape, the stitches must first be removed?

Daphne told me that the Germans were the best oppressors that they had ever had. The walkway would be near impossible to miss, because when the Germans built something, they built it to last. She gestured to two German-built offices with wide windows and elegant columns, defiantly standing the test of time.

I asked about whether the French had built anything noteworthy here. [France took control of Togo after Germany's defeat at the end of World War One]. Daphne curled her upper lip. "Les choses que la France a fait: ça n’existe plus”.

Ironically, it does not seem as though Togo has been unable to shake off the colonials, even after its “independence” in 1960.

I asked her opinion of the Chinese.  She shook her head. “They are the worst.”

It did seem a little bizarre to me, that the Chinese oil refiner who I sat next to on my plane journey did not see any injustice the way that the profits were shared out. One third of the profits went to his Chinese company,

*The name has been changed.

 one third went to a Taiwanese company, and the final third went to the people of Niger. The remains of this life-giving reservoir would trickle down a shallow gully; filled with the greedy rivulets of bribes and the bureaucrats’ cavernous pockets. I hoped that a few drops of this would reach the bottom, and wet the tongues of the parched people down below.

This was yet another example of Africa’s wealth of resources being exploited by foreigners. The Yovo.

I told her that one of the things that I struggled with coming here, is that the Europeans started Africa’s problems, the Europeans sustain Africa’s problems (you cannot live a lifestyle that requires the resources of three earths without exploiting a large part of it) and now there are Europeans like myself, coming to Africa determined to “save” the poor underdeveloped people from all of their woes.

Daphne laughed and said: “Well at least you are honest.”

So are there any solutions?

She replied that she likes her job with Projects Abroad, even if they give her no medical insurance, and pay her less than her European peers, because it means educating the world about Africa, and creating unity.

She also felt that Africa needs to get over its differences and have a single currency: scrubbed clean of the stains of colonialization.

Reflecting upon this whirlwind of information, I was struck by how dignified and welcoming the Togolese are.

In Ethiopia, regardless of whether we were accompanied by an Ethiopian, or Habesha friend, we were always dogged by locals who were begging or shouting “Ferenj!”(Foreigner)

Here, I had one girl give me an ironic smile accompanied by “Yovo!” but that was all.

They seemed to like the English; under the impression that they had been half decent oppressors, as financially, Ghana and Nigeria ended up in a lot better shape than Togo and Benin, although rampant poverty abounds there also.

During our Projects Abroad football match against a local team, no hostility or enmity was conveyed towards us. This did not change when we promptly thrashed them.

Even the cripples do not ask for money; simply regarding you with longsuffering dignity, quietly accepting any money that you extend towards them.

I was flabbergasted by this show of welcome to foreigners. These are an exploited and down-trodden people, yet they have chosen to stretch out their scarred hands to clasp our bloodstained ones.

I wondered if they had won the postcode lottery, and their passports were British and mine was Togolese, whether I would be able to look at them free from animosity or jealousy and achieve the incredible: loving the unlovable.

Things to pray for:

·        That I would continue to settle in

·        To praise God for my generally okay health

·        That I would be able to get a visa to Ghana (vital!!), as the border has recently closed, and I really need to get across so that I can visit an incredible charity there (IJM) who work to combat slavery.

A Tentative Step

I had no idea how hard it would be to board the plane.

I was completely unprepared for the panic attack the day before. The ensuing wave of nausea made it feel as though I was on board a rocking, roiling ship buffeted by breakers.

The car journey to the airport was other-worldly; street lamps and empty motorways super-imposed with humid smells and impossible goodbyes.

There was a strange parallel between the 11^th of July 2016 and the 4^th of February 2005.

The main difference was that leaving Ethiopia felt like being forced into a straight-jacket; bundled over someone’s shoulder and stuffed unceremoniously through the cabin door. I was left to untangle the chords in the months and years that followed.

Today however, on my trip to Lomé, it felt as though my hand was being held. There may have been a slight encouraging tug every now and then, but the choice was mine. I chose to step into the plane.

The second difference; inconceivable eleven years ago, was found in four objects in my suitcase: an owl, a clay heart, a string of orange beads, and a book on dragons. Four tokens of the people back in England who are my world.

During those first few years in England, I got through the day with the knowledge; the certain fact that next year, or possibly the year after, we would go back home. One day mum or dad would walk through the door with those magical tickets back to Addis Ababa. England was not permanent. There was no way it could be.

Yet, eleven years on, here I am. I have not only survived in England, I have thrived. I found a way to call it home, which I never, ever imagined possible.

What is more, this journey to Togo is not without its pangs; for there are people who I am leaving, and there are events that I will miss. This is far from the escape plan that I spent years dreaming of.

God, in his wisdom, has given me four words for this trip, from three very unexpected sources.

The first came from a customer, whilst I was outside wiping tables. Completely out of the blue, he asked if he could pray for me. He said that when God looked at me, He saw a woman of strength.

On the plane journey there, feeling like a woman of vomit rather than a woman of strength, this was a word to cherish.

The second word came from the potwasher at work; an incredible Zimbabwean who had fled from Mugabe’s oppression ten years ago.

One lunch break we were talking about Africa, and he suddenly stopped and remarked: “You know, when you speak of Africa, you really have the know-how”.

Those two words are massive.

One of the many unanswerable questions on this trip is: Why am I doing this? Have I simply got “White Saviour Syndrome”; the feeling that the rest of the world is obliged to be “helped” by me, all because of my white skin and European privileges?

What is more, even if they do need help, am I really the one to give it to them? What do I know about Human Rights? What qualification do I have? A few A-Levels, an online course, and some research. Is that enough?

I need to cling to this man’s belief that I have the “know-how”. Somehow, somewhere, I will be able to make a difference to someone.

The final word is possibly the most profound. One break time, in the English school where I was teaching, I started chatting to one of my students; a refugee from South Sudan.

We were sharing stores about growing up in Africa, and the transition to England. He suddenly stopped, and with smiling eyes told me: “You are African”.

I could never explain to him just how much those words meant.

I had spent the last ten years agonising over who I was: feeling a little bit of both and an awful lot of neither. Yes, I had finally learnt how to play the part of the “English girl”. By now I could do it impeccably.

Yet I still come home after a party or a trying day at work feeling exhausted and like a fraud. There are so many things that I hate about English culture: how dare they not think globally?!

After all this time, I still cannot sit comfortably with the notion of being English. Yet am I African? Skin colour aside, it would be laughable to call myself Ethiopian.

I grew up in a sheltered, ex-pat bubble, and although I knew more of poverty than the average English child, my experience was a world away from the toddler in the shack next door.

“You are African.”

Those words mean that I can claim both; I cannot pretend or be ashamed of the fact that I am one of the richest 5% of the world, yet I cannot suppress my insatiable desire for justice, and the comfort that I feel eating foreign food, speaking a foreign language or being the only white face in a crowd.

It may be my first time returning to Africa in ten years, but I still cannot blow it out of proportion. Throwing hopes and fears and dreams at these two months: expectations that should only be thrown at God, will simply churn up more grief and disappointment.

However, I cannot dismiss its magnitude. I have spent years pleading with God to take me back; away from England. This is the day that the door has finally been opened.

Things to pray for:

·         For Christian support; people who I can pray with and for whilst I am there.

·         A real sense of calling: like I am doing something useful to help others.

·         That my French would quickly improve to the necessary level.

·         For self-confidence and trust in God through the overwhelming every day.

I really value the support of everyone back at home; I could not do this without you!