Togo and Nigeria, October 2004

Apologies for not writing in a while. My workload with the U.S. government (USAID) is insanely busy and I feel like the last thing I want to do at night or on weekends is get on a computer again. Where did the myth come from that government workers don't work? It may be true in some environments, but it is definitely not true overseas. I finally understand what my husband has been going through for the last 14 years as an employee of the State Department. My job is very similar to his in terms of workload and pressure. In all the places I've worked (private sector, foundations, nonprofits) I have never had a job where the workload was so unpredictable, demanding, and unrelenting and at the same time, I'm not sure what, if anything, I'm accomplishing. Each day I go to the office and cross things off my list, while new things keep being added to the top of it. There is no relief either - my supervisors and colleagues are in the same, or worse situations. I feel like my goal of actually trying to help West Africa in the process is elusive - rather like digging a hole too close to the surf at the beach. It doesn't matter how hard or vigorously you dig - the waves just keep on coming, filling it up the hole, and you are right back to where you started.

I have also been preoccupied outside of work, given that I'm six months pregnant. Yes, we took the plunge, so to speak. I have no idea what to expect, and I'm in a bit of denial about the whole baby thing, so I'm just continuing as things are now, more or less on auto-pilot. I just returned from a bumpy drive for work through the Ghanaian/Togolese countryside, which the baby in my belly did not appreciate. I think this is going to be my last African road trip for a few months. I am very happy to be home in Accra.

Going to Togo always makes me realize how lucky we are to be living in Ghana. Expats who live there have an expression—“There’s no place like Lome.” Of course, that’s not true. Let’s be honest. There are many places like it here in West Africa and they are not exactly vacation spots either (Cotonou and Lagos immediately come to mind). Lomé is a Mecca of moto-filled streets lined with shacks, with thousands of people sitting around for lack of anything productive to do. The capital is on the water, malaria mosquitoes are everywhere, as are painted signs written in French saying, “Do not urinate here.” The ocean and palm tree-lined waterfront is the city’s most redeeming quality, but the beach is the community bathroom here as well, so you have to tread carefully on those early morning beach walks.

Most streets in the “nice” parts of the capital of Togo remain unpaved. The dirt roads are filled with huge potholes that are impossible to pass without a four-wheel drive vehicle. Just imagine what the poorer parts of the country are like. There is garbage everywhere, and stray dogs and animals roam the streets. I thought the countryside of Ghana was poor, but this is ridiculous. It is criminal that people are forced to live like this in this century.

It wasn’t always like this. In fact, only twenty years ago, Togo was in many ways, more developed than Ghana, with better roads, more businesses, and a more stable economy. Most of Togo’s problems stem from one man—Gnassingbe Eyadema, Togo’s President. Eyadema is one of the last of his kind. He has been in power since 1967, thanks to intimidation, corruption and the ability to successfully manipulate the international community. And like many places in West Africa, the economy is in the tank here, with nowhere to go but down, mostly due to government mismanagement. Most legitimate entrepreneurial activity is squelched, so what is left is government-run, questionably legitmate and/or “under-the-table”. One of Lomé’s most thriving businesses is the used car market on the edge of town next to the port. I drove by to see one football-field-size parking lot surrounded by a chain link fence full of cars. This is where locals and expats alike go to buy cars, many of which have been shipped to Togo after being stolen in Europe. The used-car salesmen hang out in the lot under lean-to shacks. Haggling is necessary, and like most things in West Africa, foreigners will pay more.

Companies drill for oil off the coast of the Gulf of Guinea with the Togolese government’s blessing. Development types want to find something to help Togo develop economically, but as far as I can tell, the magic bullet is not going to be discovering oil, but rather a change of government. Every election, Eyadema gets magically re-elected with over 90% of the vote. His picture is everywhere—in hotels, restaurants, and businesses. Every official event opens with speakers acknowledging him and thanking him for his support. All this adoration for a morally-bankrupt public figure is so offensive to my American sensibilities I can’t stand it. I purposefully didn’t mention good old Eyadema in my speech here to press, government, the business community and other dignitaries at a women’s business conference, although every other speaker did. I figured I could hide behind cultural ignorance if I was called on it. Diplomacy be damned—I’m an American before I’m a government official.

I was also invited to give a talk to Peace Corps volunteers in Togo on career options in development. During the lunch afterwards I had a chance to chat with some of the volunteers to find out about their work and what was happening where they were living. One volunteer told me how in the village where she lives, the families arrange marriages for their girls to older men while they are still really young, like 11 or 12. Although this is against Togo’s laws, not many are enforced in Togo’s countryside. Also, as per this volunteer, many Togolese families consider it more honorable to arrange marriage of their girls than to send their girls to a boarding school where their teachers will sleep with them and get them pregnant or infected with HIV. Some villagers consider these “teachers” superior because they speak French and are educated, and therefore they defer to them and don’t feel powerful enough to denounce them. The village where this particular volunteer lives is considered the “end of the line” village where all the bad teachers and education supervisors are sent. With some of the families’ encouragement, this Peace Corps volunteer complained to the supervisors about the lascivious teachers, but nothing changed. I asked her how she keeps going, and she said she just does. She continues with her education campaign with the girls and their families, teaching them about their rights under the law, and the need to stay in school. But nothing changes. Talk about depressing.

One group has managed to overcome adversity to become economically successful in Togo—the Lebanese. As in Ghana, Lebanese who have been in West Africa for generations own many of Togo's more successful businesses. The African Lebanese tend to keep to themselves and most businesses remain family-owned and family-run. One foreigner I met in Lomé told me that there is a group of young, twenty-something Lebanese men living in Togo now who are not local. They work hard and make lots of money at the Lebanese companies they work for, and send all of their earnings, um, somewhere, but they are not investing in Togo. Some people worry they are financing terrorist activities in other parts of the world. Who knows what truth there is to that. If they were any other nationality, would we even suspect such a thing? And can we blame them for not investing in Togo? Would we?

I was also told that there is an abundance of female Peace Corps volunteers in Togo, due to a preponderance of female French speakers in the Peace Corps service overall, some of whom end up dating Lebanese men. One saying among the female volunteers is, “Date a Lebanese guy, get a cell phone.” Apparently some of the Lebanese guys give the female volunteers cell phones so they can reach them at any time. One story I heard was how a jealous Lebanese boyfriend took back the phone he had given to his volunteer girlfriend after a fight, and started dialing all the numbers saved in the phone to see who would answer. He ended up calling the U.S. Embassy’s Regional Security Officer (RSO), basically the Embassy’s head cop in charge of the security of all official Americans and Peace Corps volunteers in Togo. Bad move. The story I heard is that the RSO had a few words for the caller, something appropriate and along the lines of, “Touch her and I will come find you.”

In fairness to the U.S. government types worried about potential terrorist activities in West Africa, the volunteers also mentioned to me that conservative forms of Islam are spreading like wildfire in Togo’s countryside. The Saudis and Iranians are building mosques and schools, mostly teaching boys to read the Koran. The upside is that the schools and religious leaders frown on things like drinking and promiscuity. Whether we are comfortable with it or not, the imposition of religion is bringing some improvements to the villages. The villagers get more from the Islamic fundamentalists then they get from their own government and, as an added benefit, the teachers aren’t impregnating the girls.

So what is the U.S. government doing for Togo outside of providing Peace Corps volunteers and supporting women’s business conferences? Not much. My employer, the U.S. Agency for International Development, pulled out of Togo a few years ago during a wave of belt-tightening. Since then, my office (the regional office) has been providing some development assistance (e.g. HIV prevention programs, support of the West Africa gas pipeline through Togo, and Togo’s participation in regional trade activities), without being too supportive of an undemocratic government. It’s a tough call because although Togo certainly needs all the help it can get, due to local conditions, it is also the sort of place you can sink lots of money into and have very little to show for it, the sort of thing USAID is being asked to avoid by Congress and other more powerful agencies in Washington (that indidentally wouldn't mind the agency’s money). Maybe they have a point - USAID offices were in Togo providing assistance for almost 30 years. During my trip, I could not see one obvious remnant of its investment. Maybe we should all keep our fingers crossed for that oil.

There are two very nice things about Togo I have to report. First is the food— excellent. I ate the best croissants I’ve had in West Africa here. Lomé has some wonderful restaurants hidden throughout the city. I find the quality of food in restaurants in Togo much higher than in Ghana. I guess we have the French to thank for that. The other great thing about Togo is the people. They are extremely nice, in spite of the extremely difficult lives they lead. Even the taxi drivers in Togo were nice—not one tried to rip me off. Then again you would have to be pretty cold to rip off a pregnant lady.

What could be more uplifting than my stories about Togo? My trip to Nigeria, of course! But given the security situation in Nigeria, I actually have little to report. I never got out of my armored car and walked around, or left my hotel for anything outside of business meetings.

I flew to Nigeria with the economic development team from my office. Even though Nigeria is known to most of the world as the Mecca of financial scams, we suffered none, except for the official rip off at the “Sheraton” hotel at our stopover in Lagos. I think this Sheraton must be one of those hotels that was a legitimate Sheraton once, but had its charter revoked and was never reinstated. Regardless, I have never spent $250/night on a worse hotel. The check-in and checkout process was an interminable labyrinth. Multiple lines, long waits, many stamped pieces of paper and a $300 cash deposit (in dollars) were required before I could get a room key. Checking in took 45 minutes with five guys behind the counter. Prostitutes were everywhere. One of them was leaving her customer’s room in the morning and propositioned one of my work colleagues in the hall.

Lagos’ population is undetermined. Something like ten million people live in greater Lagos, but no one knows for sure. The sprawl, garbage and traffic are all the worst I have experienced anywhere in the world. And we only saw the edge of Lagos, from the airport to the hotel. Traveling on official government business after dark required us to be picked up in fully armored vehicles with an armored chase car. Airport taxis are apparently not an option – people often go missing from these. Yikes.

Nigeria has got to be one of the toughest places to govern in the world. It is a complex country with an extremely diverse population and colorful political history. Its states are more divided than the U.S., and many debate whether the central government has any real control over the provinces. Rule of law is sketchy at best, and corruption is endemic. Bribes on top of bribes. Thanks mostly to the oil industry, the environment is a disaster. Places in the interior tend to blow up in religious violence from time to time and the capital is famous for its city-paralyzing political protests.

Because of Nigeria’s oil wealth, nightmare or not, Nigeria is vital to the U.S. and to your life. The U.S. gets something like 10% of its oil from Nigeria now, and this will increase to around 25% in the next few years. You would think all that oil money would translate into economic development, but so far it hasn’t done much for the average Nigerian. The reasons are the same as they are in other resource-rich countries that can’t seem to figure out how to turn the profits of their extractive industries into benefits for the majority of their population—low capacity, weak governance, minimal security, corruption, religious extremists. But buying a hybrid car and using less gas isn’t going to help Nigeria—it might even make it worse. There are no easy answers in places like these.

Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, has a different feel to it from Lagos. It is a greener city with mountains in the background. As the administrative capital of an oil-rich country, government building, skyscrapers and construction abound. According to the expatriates living there, life in Abuja is extremely boring. I guess if given the choice, I’d take boring over the “excitement” of Lagos any day. I am grateful I don’t have to live there. As I mentioned when I started this email, it’s nice to be home in Ghana.