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.