See article below. I happen to live on the Route Nationale, the only highway in Togo. The one cut off from the capitol. The 100 km detour the giants semis are taking, yeah well, there is a tiny dirt track that cuts through my town and goes 51 km to the secondary highway that one can then take to the capitol. Imagine, semis laden Africa-style with literally all of the goods coming to and from not just Togo, but all of Burkina Faso as well add mud, lots of mud. They get a few km and tip over, it takes hours to get them out and there are hulks just sitting at the side of the path (for that truly is what is, usually used only by bicycles and motorcycles and people walking). The villages along this little-used track are freaking blown away. They have never seen so much activity. It took several interesting hours to travel 51km and all of my freshly-scrubbed ready for France luggage, etc. is COVERED in dirt. One good thing is the corn has been harvested and dried in whole area so the increase in traffic allows these people to sell their corn much more quickly and at better prices. A bowl of corn has gone from around less than $1 to over $3 because farmers can't get their product to market.
Not sure if it is good or bad that I am leaving right now, but I do know I don't want to make that trip again any time soon.
Oh, and the government said the bridges won't be fixed until around December/January. Gravy.
France assists Togo after floods kill 9, cut roads
Sat 2 Aug 2008, 13:41 GMT
By John Zodzi
LOME (Reuters) - French soldiers have been dispatched to Togo to help the tiny West African nation tackle floods that have killed nine people this week, destroyed bridges and raised some food prices due to disrupted transport.
No estimate has been given yet on the financial scale of the damage but one immediate impact was an increase in the cost of maize -- already high from the global food and fuel crisis -- as some agricultural areas are cut off from consumers.
"We have today nine victims and nine bridges down," Celestin Ekpaou Talaki, Togo's minister for public works, transport and town planning, told state television late on Friday.
The French soldiers from a peacekeeping mission in nearby Ivory Coast will repair a bridge north of the capital which has been destroyed, shutting down country's main highway, an official in the prime minister's office said.
The floods were caused by unexpected heavy rains in Togo's south, which have swollen the Hao and Zio rivers north of Lome.
On top of the roads, several sections of railway have been cut off.
Donors have held crisis meetings with the government and Togo's development minister said a way must be found to help the "thousands of people who are stuck in their homes".
Assistance from France comes after Togo's army began helping deliver food and non-food items to those in need.
Neighbouring Ghana has also offered military assistance.
Until the French engineers can help re-open the main artery to the north, transporters serving Sahel countries such as Burkina Faso, Niger and Mali will have to make a 100 km detour.
Escalating global food and fuel costs are hitting Africa's poor particularly hard as these goods make up a greater proportion of incomes than in other parts of the world.
A Reuters witness in Lome said the impact of the floods could already be seen in the markets, where the price of a cup of maize had nearly doubled, rising to 1,400 CFA francs from 850 CFA francs just three days earlier.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
France & USA - Oh my!
Plans are underway for the grand trip to USA & France! I will be in Paris from August 9-17, DC 8/18-22, Kentucky/Ohio 8/23-28, AND Maryland 8/29 to 9/14 then back to Togo on the 20th. Please email me if you want to get together and hopefully I will have a cell number to give you for the States.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Sunday, May 18, 2008
More Pictures!
Friday, May 2, 2008
Some pix finally!
I like baby goats - even in the rain!
Skin care is very important -- even in Togo. Trust me -- this climate is ruinous on a girl's complexion.
Ummm, my friend Jason brought over Budweiser in a can to a cookout we had last night. SERIOUSLY?! Budweiser in can?! Do you know how long it had been since I had seen that nectar of the American gods? Look at my face. No idea how he got it here. Doggon embassy and their goodies.
This is at Kevin's apt. Baltimorons, please note "Bertha's" sticker and Maryland flag on the fridge. Once a Baltimoron, always a Baltimoron. Even in Togo.
Meg & I at Mandingue, jazz club in Lome. Some residents call it the center of the universe. I have video of the band jamming the other night & Kevin on the drums, but given how long it takes to load a picture, well. That will have to wait.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
The Rain Comes
Oh glorious Togo rain! All of a sudden, the house completely darkens at 11 in the morning. I look outside and the air is full of violent dust and the palm trees are going crazy. Neighbors scurry everywhere to get their clothes off of the line and babies are crying. The temperature drops 20 degrees and rain falls. Thank god, the rainy season is here!
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Go Togo!
Please read the following article written by the President of Togo and published this week in the Washington Times. Wow! PS - Togo, not necessarily the fondest of their former colonizers. . .
Ending African 'history'
By Faure GnassingbeMarch 16, 2008
French President Nicholas Sarkozy addressed "Africa's Young" in a speech at the University of Cheik Anta Diop in Dakar, Senegal, on July 26, 2007. Africans widely and roundly criticized the speech, little noted by the U.S. media, as racist and condescending. Mr. Sarkozy offered up the "accepted" litany of difficulties confronting his "wounded continent" of Africa " wars, genocides, dictators and corruption. He asserted that it was not the slave trade and/or European colonialism that gave rise to these problems, but rather, he opined, "that the African has not fully entered into history," preferring to hold on to some "mythical past" rather than launch "himself towards the future."
It would appear Mr. Sarkozy chooses to end African "history," not like Francis Fukuyama in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall, but rather at African independence. He seems to argue that Africans missed this early universalization of Western liberal democracy and opted to pursue instead a return to a "golden age "of Africa that "never existed." Africans, he implies, chose Hobbes' "First Man" (solitary, poor, nasty, and brutish) over Fukuyama's "Last Man" (free, universal, just, and reasoning).
Mr. Sarkozy is curiously silent on the effects of post-independence African interaction over 50 years with the international system, including the former colonial powers. It is more in that interaction, I would argue, that we discover the genesis of the problems that Africa faces today. We, African leaders, must make an honest appraisal of this recent past, acknowledge its darkness and accept and/or assign responsibility for decisions made and/or avoided. Only then can we shine a harsh, but cleansing light on the continent's current state of affairs, permitting us to undertake necessary corrective action.
We must recognize that African states emerged from the colonial era with nascent political, economic and social institutions, an immediate and direct consequence of the colonial experience. The Cold War sent those institutions into stasis until 1989. The leaders of neither "West" nor "East" concerned themselves with the authoritarianism, corruption, stagnation or abuse that arose across Africa. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, however, Africans were asked to demonstrate immediately democracy, free markets and tolerant, open civil societies. African states were expected to emerge like Athena from the forehead of Zeus, full-grown and clad in armor " an improbable, if not impossible prospect.
Moreover, many of the challenges of the post-Cold War era African leaders are asked to address were not foreseen in the immediate post-colonial period. You need only consider the many and varied consequences of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, climate change and the globalization of trade and finance. Africa's national institutions were not, and are still not, as yet sufficiently broad, deep or flexible enough to deal effectively with this range of varied and complex issues in a systematic and timely manner.
But addressing these concerns is not simply a question of capacity building. While it is true that African leaders can affect change through coherent national institutions that bridge the gap between the state and society, providing necessary services to the people, this assumes the leader has this as an objective. All too often, African leaders, faced with the choice of building an integrated national political process and permitting it to mature or retaining personal control, have chosen control, submerging collective goals for the sake of personal advantage and interest.
Weak institutions are not in a position to constrain such a leader's ambitions and are more susceptible to facile manipulation. Many African leaders have been all too ready to resort to "neo-patrimonialism," using the institutions of the state to deliver personal favors. Rather than imbuing society with idealism and a sense of possibility and responsibility, some African leaders fostered self-serving sycophancy focused on posturing, personalities and egos without regard or concern for the nation. It is all too easy to understand why many African leaders have not seen Cincinnatus as a role model, but rather sought to cling to the perquisites and trappings of power.
Africa's greatest problem is failed leadership, in a moral not technical sense. No matter how many finely crafted International Monetary Fund/International Bank for Reconstruction and Development adjustment programs are put in place or how much development assistance donors pledge or how often "free and fair" elections are held, if this continent's leaders are not prepared to serve the needs of its people, Africa will remain Mr. Sarkozy's "wounded continent," unable to affect an exodus from its plagues.
Ending African 'history'
By Faure GnassingbeMarch 16, 2008
French President Nicholas Sarkozy addressed "Africa's Young" in a speech at the University of Cheik Anta Diop in Dakar, Senegal, on July 26, 2007. Africans widely and roundly criticized the speech, little noted by the U.S. media, as racist and condescending. Mr. Sarkozy offered up the "accepted" litany of difficulties confronting his "wounded continent" of Africa " wars, genocides, dictators and corruption. He asserted that it was not the slave trade and/or European colonialism that gave rise to these problems, but rather, he opined, "that the African has not fully entered into history," preferring to hold on to some "mythical past" rather than launch "himself towards the future."
It would appear Mr. Sarkozy chooses to end African "history," not like Francis Fukuyama in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall, but rather at African independence. He seems to argue that Africans missed this early universalization of Western liberal democracy and opted to pursue instead a return to a "golden age "of Africa that "never existed." Africans, he implies, chose Hobbes' "First Man" (solitary, poor, nasty, and brutish) over Fukuyama's "Last Man" (free, universal, just, and reasoning).
Mr. Sarkozy is curiously silent on the effects of post-independence African interaction over 50 years with the international system, including the former colonial powers. It is more in that interaction, I would argue, that we discover the genesis of the problems that Africa faces today. We, African leaders, must make an honest appraisal of this recent past, acknowledge its darkness and accept and/or assign responsibility for decisions made and/or avoided. Only then can we shine a harsh, but cleansing light on the continent's current state of affairs, permitting us to undertake necessary corrective action.
We must recognize that African states emerged from the colonial era with nascent political, economic and social institutions, an immediate and direct consequence of the colonial experience. The Cold War sent those institutions into stasis until 1989. The leaders of neither "West" nor "East" concerned themselves with the authoritarianism, corruption, stagnation or abuse that arose across Africa. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, however, Africans were asked to demonstrate immediately democracy, free markets and tolerant, open civil societies. African states were expected to emerge like Athena from the forehead of Zeus, full-grown and clad in armor " an improbable, if not impossible prospect.
Moreover, many of the challenges of the post-Cold War era African leaders are asked to address were not foreseen in the immediate post-colonial period. You need only consider the many and varied consequences of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, climate change and the globalization of trade and finance. Africa's national institutions were not, and are still not, as yet sufficiently broad, deep or flexible enough to deal effectively with this range of varied and complex issues in a systematic and timely manner.
But addressing these concerns is not simply a question of capacity building. While it is true that African leaders can affect change through coherent national institutions that bridge the gap between the state and society, providing necessary services to the people, this assumes the leader has this as an objective. All too often, African leaders, faced with the choice of building an integrated national political process and permitting it to mature or retaining personal control, have chosen control, submerging collective goals for the sake of personal advantage and interest.
Weak institutions are not in a position to constrain such a leader's ambitions and are more susceptible to facile manipulation. Many African leaders have been all too ready to resort to "neo-patrimonialism," using the institutions of the state to deliver personal favors. Rather than imbuing society with idealism and a sense of possibility and responsibility, some African leaders fostered self-serving sycophancy focused on posturing, personalities and egos without regard or concern for the nation. It is all too easy to understand why many African leaders have not seen Cincinnatus as a role model, but rather sought to cling to the perquisites and trappings of power.
Africa's greatest problem is failed leadership, in a moral not technical sense. No matter how many finely crafted International Monetary Fund/International Bank for Reconstruction and Development adjustment programs are put in place or how much development assistance donors pledge or how often "free and fair" elections are held, if this continent's leaders are not prepared to serve the needs of its people, Africa will remain Mr. Sarkozy's "wounded continent," unable to affect an exodus from its plagues.
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