Wednesday, October 12, 2005
Lome, Togo October 11, 2005
None of us are in any hurry to leave Togo. We are receiving tremendous help from a Peace Corps volunteer in Lome and have been impressed with some of the Togolese projects for people living with AIDS. Unfortunately, recent instabilities seem to have dried up international funding and made it easier to misdirect national funding in extremely damaging ways. Sanctions are such a dubious means of achieving goals in foreign policy.
But, Lome is completely agreeable. It is one of those fairly grid like coastal cities encircled by a ring and is easy to navigate. The Togolese of the capital seem to enjoy themselves in a very healthy and unpretentious way. Granted, their football team had just accomplished something unprecedented in their nation's history and a post-coital glow pervaded the city for our entire stay, but all of the spacious and tasty outdoor cafes with their generous seating capacity were not erected for the purpose of celebrating a single football success. It is heartening to see men and women, families and youth, scattered in different ratios throughout the evening, enjoying the fine food and drink of their country and doing so in public. It was heartening that every table seemed to prefer a different beer of the eight or so available there. It was especially nice to see young women on the street who seemed to be having an evening amongst themselves, uninterested in the sleepless urge of men.
For five days in a row, first thing in the morning we went to the central offices of the Red Cross, moving from there to whichever destination made work possible. The Togolese have a higher AIDS rate than many surrounding nations; their presence on the Lagos to Abidjan corridor of overland transport business is a significant contributing factor.
* * *
I am sick of hearing people say "Africa" in a despairing and superior exhalation of breath that is supposed to explain why everything goes wrong here. I am equally sick of hearing Africans say "Africa" in a defeated and fatalistic shrug that is meant to communicate the uselessness of struggle or persistence. Learned helplessness was only proven to exist in a batch of hideously unfortunate dogs by one pompous monster. Deliberately chosen sloth is everywhere demonstrable and everywhere rationalized. Although, I have to admit that I tend to quit whenever I am really getting my ass kicked and I would probably have turned to fraudulence and crime if I were born in the wrong circumstances or kept their long enough—in a purely Robin Hood sort of way, of course.
None of us are in any hurry to leave Togo. We are receiving tremendous help from a Peace Corps volunteer in Lome and have been impressed with some of the Togolese projects for people living with AIDS. Unfortunately, recent instabilities seem to have dried up international funding and made it easier to misdirect national funding in extremely damaging ways. Sanctions are such a dubious means of achieving goals in foreign policy.
But, Lome is completely agreeable. It is one of those fairly grid like coastal cities encircled by a ring and is easy to navigate. The Togolese of the capital seem to enjoy themselves in a very healthy and unpretentious way. Granted, their football team had just accomplished something unprecedented in their nation's history and a post-coital glow pervaded the city for our entire stay, but all of the spacious and tasty outdoor cafes with their generous seating capacity were not erected for the purpose of celebrating a single football success. It is heartening to see men and women, families and youth, scattered in different ratios throughout the evening, enjoying the fine food and drink of their country and doing so in public. It was heartening that every table seemed to prefer a different beer of the eight or so available there. It was especially nice to see young women on the street who seemed to be having an evening amongst themselves, uninterested in the sleepless urge of men.
For five days in a row, first thing in the morning we went to the central offices of the Red Cross, moving from there to whichever destination made work possible. The Togolese have a higher AIDS rate than many surrounding nations; their presence on the Lagos to Abidjan corridor of overland transport business is a significant contributing factor.
* * *
I am sick of hearing people say "Africa" in a despairing and superior exhalation of breath that is supposed to explain why everything goes wrong here. I am equally sick of hearing Africans say "Africa" in a defeated and fatalistic shrug that is meant to communicate the uselessness of struggle or persistence. Learned helplessness was only proven to exist in a batch of hideously unfortunate dogs by one pompous monster. Deliberately chosen sloth is everywhere demonstrable and everywhere rationalized. Although, I have to admit that I tend to quit whenever I am really getting my ass kicked and I would probably have turned to fraudulence and crime if I were born in the wrong circumstances or kept their long enough—in a purely Robin Hood sort of way, of course.
1 Comments:
marzipan: you'd look fetching in green tights. go with the robin hood career path.
more seriously though, do you have a new phone number?
c
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more seriously though, do you have a new phone number?
c
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