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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!