On The Village of Waiting and My Visit to Lomé

George Packer's Book

I have been reading George Packer’s The Village of Waiting about his experiences teaching English in Togo through the Peace Corps in the early 80’s. Packer was stationed in a small village over and hour from the capital Lomé. He writes about his experiences in Togo and traveling throughout Africa.

One aspect of Packer’s story that I have found particularly fascinating, especially in relation to my own experiences, is his discussion of the role of the white western man in post-colonial Africa. He is not and idealist suffering from a guilt complex by any means, and he often questions his own reasons for being in Africa as well as the reasons so many African nations have developed so little since the end of colonialism.

Many of his experiences and observations are things I myself have come across in Ghana, both the exciting, frustrating and shocking. As a white person in Africa, we have to adjust ourselves to being a minority, a curiosity. Sometimes people smile and welcome me and sometimes they scowl and give me bitter resentful looks. It is difficult not to feel guilty about the situation of the African people, but one must remind oneself that feeling guilty is futile. It is not “our” responsibility to fix every problem.

I was also able to identify with Packer's accounts of his journeys to Burkina Faso, Benin and elsewhere in Africa. I traveled to Lomé this past weekend and smiled as I recalled Packer’s cramped journeys in the back of pickup trucks and his fascination with the patience of Africans. Perhaps this is not true of the whole continent, but certainly in Ghana and Togo everything takes about five times as long as the same procedure would in Europe and the US. This is not always the case due to lack of technology, but often because of a lack of common sense. Administrative organization does not appear to be the forte of West Africans.

The details of Togolese political history that Packer includes in his book proved extremely helpful to me during my weekend trip. I was better able understand why the grand houses along the main boulevards stand empty and rundown, why roads are falling apart, why the gorgeous beach is out of bounds.

I have included a piece of creative writing from one of my classes. The topic was “place” (very vague I know), and I was inspired to recreate Lomé.

Lomé is like a dream – one of those nocturnal escapades that the mind embarks on, sometimes sweet and amusing, sometimes exciting and sometimes frightening and frustrating. Maybe spending a muggy day exploring the city on three hours of sleep contributed to this feeling, or maybe it was the beer I drank throughout the day and the whiskey I downed at night. Whatever it was, I felt as if I was in some hazy space between imagination and reality.

The beach, brilliant gold sand, sapphire sea and swaying palm trees lining the boulevard, was dangerous, we were told. Thieves and thugs will surround you and steal your purse, everyone warned. But the rhythmic crashing of the waves was like the call of the sirens and the sparkling sand drew us like pirates to a pot of treasure.

We whizzed along the boulevard on the backs of mopeds, clutching the waists of the grinning drivers and leaning towards the ocean not caring if we toppled the bikes.
The red dirt roads and poorly paved streets were marked with potholes, like pox scars on the face of the city. Muddy water collected in the holes like puddles of bright orange palm oil. The mopeds bounced over the holes and our fingers dug deeper into the folds of our drivers’ jackets.

“Yovo!” called the street vendors and taxi drivers, as they passed us. “Yovo” hissed the young men loitering on street corners and lounging outside bustling bars. “Yovo?” children blurted as we hurtled by on the backs of the mopeds.

The fetish market smelled of sour decay as we walked through the gates towards a table of dried monkey heads, snake skins, crocodile skulls and thick skeins of horsehair. A leopard, head long divorced from body, bared its teeth at us, the sharp incisors spattered with blood. A live monkey chained to a thick, gnarled tree in the center of the market, spun itself around the tree, like a possessed child on a speeding merry-go-round. As we approached him his mouth dropped open and his eyes popped from his little head. He strained against the chain trying to grab our legs, bite our fingers, claw our faces. Across the market raw red animal skins were stretched out on trestle tables, covered in flies picking them dry, the boys sitting at the tables oblivious to the stink of rotting flesh.

The Grand Marché was thick with perspiring bodies weaving in and out of each other. Women carried trays on their heads piled several feet high with suitcases or sacks of rice for sale. One man slithered through the crowd holding a large umbrella, gaudy hats hanging from the brim swinging to and fro as the man dodged bicycles and avoided stepping on chickens. We gripped our handbags to our sides, flinching if someone brushed against them and veering away from the thickest crowds.

In residential areas bougainvillea climbed walls, heedless of electric wires and strategically placed shards of glass, blossoming above our heads in an explosion of color. As we walked our flip-flops kicked up sand from the unpaved roads, stinging our calves. Old men wandered the muddy alleys aimlessly, smiling, nodding their heads and feebly calling “Bonsoir” as we passed.

Over a lunch of rich avocados drowned in vinaigrette and greasy spaghetti tossed over broiled chicken, we looked at each other, tapped the ash of our cigarettes into the yellow plastic ashtrays and agreed that we would rather stay here than battle our way back across the border and squeeze into a puttering van bound for Accra.

As we sped back to our hotel in a pack of roaring mopeds, the drivers speeding and egging each other on, I turned my face towards the full charcoal clouds spreading across the blue sky. I inhaled the aroma of wood smoke and the stench of burning plastic and urine and my hair flew out behind me like silk ribbons.