A short trip into Togo

I am on holidays between my two placements at the moment, so last week I decided to travel to Togo for a 5 day break.

In preparation, I filled my small backpack to the brim and spent around 30 minutes online, typing numerous phrases into an English-French web translator. With a page full of notes, I went searching and located the right tro-tro. 4 uncomfortable hours later, I reached Aflao, a border town in Ghana’s eastern region.

The Aflao border crossing into Togo is a busy place. The traffic crossing is mostly by foot and the effect is a constant procession of people, travelling between the two countries. It is dusty and there is little in the way of signage, making it easy to become disorientated. I only knew that I had crossed into Togo when a particular official started speaking to me in French. He switched to English – not without goading me for not knowing the language – and sold me the necessary visa, before sending me on my way.

(I'll note now: A very basic level of English is common in Togo and in nine cases out of ten, it was at a superior level to my French. Any conversations I refer to in this entry can safely be assumed to have proceeded in this way: Bonjour, Ca VA and we settle on English. If the other person could only speak French, the conversation always ended there.)

Lome, Togo's capital, which is located right next to this border, was my first stop and it was a very captivating place. Following almost two decades of political unrest, Togo’s once big tourism industry has all but collapsed and today, the city’s many colonial buildings and grand old hotels are worn and in dire need of a paint job. Across the city, new development is hard to come by. In the couple of days I spent there, the most recent businesses I came across were always the same: Total filling stations.

Lome’s roads are littered in pot holes and flooded in motorbikes, the main form of transport. The simplest way to get from A to B is to hitch a ride on one, which costs a couple of hundred CFA (or around 50c). Old paintings of Disney characters – like Scrooge and Mickey Mouse - advertise older businesses and at times, the city feels almost majestic, as though it has been preserved as a relic from the past. As you settle in however, any illusion of grandiousity quickly fades, as the reality of life in Togo sinks in.

In Lome, there isn't a whole lot on offer for the tourist. Once upon a time, the city would've been a very luxurious spot. The coast is beautiful, but today it is spoiled by a high crime rate. At night, locals and foreigners know not to go near it. Over my two days in Lome, the two main tourist attractions – a West African art museum and the Grand Marché – took only a couple of hours, and so the rest of my time was spent exploring the city. By the end of it, I’d seen enough.

My next stop was Kpalime, a couple of hours north of Lome. It is a city of around 50,000 that is surrounded by some of Togo's highest mountains and popular among Togo’s few tourists. I stayed in a pleasant hostel located across the road from a big old Catholic Church, close to the centre of town. Unlike Lome, the streets in Kpalime had a relaxed feel to them and this made it an excellent place to unwind.

I spent a few days there and my first was a Sunday. I was woken up nice and early by the church bell. For 15 minutes at 6am and again at 6.30am, the bell played a very loud tune that would've stretched across the whole city. With so much of the city busy with church (and for much of the day), walking around Kpalime that day felt like a country town – friendly, peaceful and in no way threatening.

At around 8am, I organised with a guide to see some surrounding sights. We hired a bike and rode to the top of a tall mountain (Mt Klouto) and visited a famous Chateau-ville (a grand old manor). Both were amazing sights and the Chateau-ville had some interesting history to it, but the more interesting part of the day was in talking to my guide, a 27-year-old Togolese man named Renauld. He spoke excellent English and was very eager to chat about what life is like in his country.

He put it plainly. For young people in Togo, the future doesn't hold out much hope. University is a distant possibility and if you have a business idea, raising capital is a long shot. Renauld’s income as a guide is totally dependent on the presence of tourists and he must compete with other guides for them. He sometimes works as a chef, but nevertheless, on the whole his income is unsteady – and this makes saving very, very difficult.

Renaud's long term plan for life was to do what he saw others around him doing: save up enough to start a business as a moto-driver. The price of a motorbike is around 400,000 CFA, or $800. The average GDP per capita of Togo is $1 a day, and while Renaud's income was surely higher than this, he could not see himself saving up the amount required. He hoped to find an organisation to support him, or a sponsor from overseas.

Whenever we spoke about the president as well, the talk slowed down considerably. Elections were supposed to be held in 2010 but were postponed and the current president, Faure Gnassingbe, has come to power against allegations of electioneering.

Togo is a tiny nation of around five million. Visiting it and witnessing the disillusionment and lack of opportunity facing much of the population contrasted greatly with life as I have seen it in Ghana, where the capital, Accra, is a city characterised by increasing development and optimism. Last Wednesday, Ghana drilled its first barrel of oil and the papers proclaimed it as a great day. Unlike Togo, Ghana has advertisements, cranes and people in suits – all marks of development and all things that until they are gone, you don’t really notice.

And some Togolese I spoke to referred to Ghana as a developed country, which is a description that I never would've dreamed of.

The political situation in Togo is uncertain, the population very poor and the youth have little in the way of prospects for the future. What happens next is anyone's guess.