Togo: Just Another African Dicatatorship

Jan, in front of our home in Lome.
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We left Grand-Popo on Monday, and headed West to Lome, the capital of Togo. Crossing the border is always stressing, especially when ALL your luggage is in the taxi while you're not, but we didn't get robbed nor stopped at the border so that's good.

Lome is not a very nice city. From what we saw it's a bit less chaotic than Cotonou, but the roads, oh my god are they in a bad state. The holes are so big and there are so many of them that the cars have no choice but to swirve from one side of the road to the other. Since cars coming in both directions do this, you can imagine the stress of driving in this city. But the drivers seem used to this... :) They told us that Lome is not getting any money from the government because 80% of it voted against the current president. So this is a punishment. And if someone complains publically about the situation, the army goes on the streets and terrorizes the population. People do disappear in Togo, just as they did under the many dictatorships in so many parts of the world.

It's the end of the world!!! Quick, let's kill a goat!!!

Solar eclipse, as seen by the camera.
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We didn't do much in the two days spent in Togo because I (Jan) got sick. I got malaria and some sort of gastro-enteritis (explosive diarrhea). I'm ok now. Malaria is very very scary when you hear about is from Montreal, but it's just a common cold here. If treated rapidly, as in my case, the bacteria (malaria is not a virus!!!) disapears from the blood stream and the individual is as good as always. :) And it will not come back again, contrary to general belief. There are four types of malaria, and only one of them is recurrent. So rodzice, i mama malgosi, it's not a big deal. :)

Jan watching the eclipse.
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One extraordinary event did happen on the West African coast today from 8h05 to 10h05: a total solar eclipse!!! We bought our protective sunglasses for 75 cents (they should have been free because 75 cents is food for 2 days for some), and went out on the beach to watch it . Amazing. But let's now think of all the people in this region of the world that have no clue what an eclipse is, and that suddenly saw the sun disappear... ?!?! Off course there were warnings on television and on the radio, but there must have been a huge proportion of the population that was unaware or that did not understand this phenomenon. How many sacrifices were made to see the sun again?!?! But the sun did come back, so the sacrifices proved to be effective... :)

Marge by the pirogue.
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People did not seem to nice in Togo, and this is a very general statement as we didn't get to meet all of them. Those we did meet were all weird or unpleasant. It's time we leave Togo. Ghana, here we come.