Music on the Streets of West Africa

written by Nathan

 
If you love the culture or are from the Caribbean (in my case the Gulf of Mexico’s coastal parishes) you would feel right at home in West Africa. Here, the people’s sway, their excited conversation, their public life…the love of family, community, respect for elderly, the deference of small children, grown-upness of teenage youth, all concedes the same spirit: warmth of life, of markets, of churches and worship here, the public parade and royalty of music, these are here - and move around you in social forms, in group spirit.

Life musically sustains streets as civilities exchanged maintain sacred orders on manner. One needs to be from these new lands to see what is evident and obvious. To not be inculcated into the naturality and ital spirit of a group of peoples obstructed from their kingdoms by 500 years of strange oppression would be foreign for most outsiders, which it is not for us. Days leave streets evacuated as blinding light gives harsh and partial visibility to white walls; while sleeping forms muddle in darkness of the thickest tree shade.

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The Great Oil Spill

written by Nathan, May 2, 2010

The great oil spill of 2010 that now slickens the coastal fisheries of our home Louisiana looks particularly offensive from the coast of the Atlantic in West Africa. It is, however, easier to make out through the horizon of thickening plots and dying seas just how wealth generated from our seashores of home mimics colonial trespass, management of land purchases, and the like. A long history of exploitation does not even find financial benefits or economic justice in the riches still pouring from the Louisiana purchase 200 years on.

Louisiana, an economic boon for the United States, is still only an afterthought in discussions of economic justice, resource degradation, and oppressed peoples. While all classes of people are affected by the dangerous physical and environmental degradations at place on the Louisiana Gulf Coast wetlands, our political class will make no collective efforts at restitutions and environmental clean-up and reconstruction so long as they are in the pockets of status quo decision making. Other classes have no power. While we laugh at our tongue-in-cheek state motto, “Louisiana - Third World and Proud of it,” we do not seek meaningful change or equity improvement either as a nation or locally.

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Lomé, Togo: 50th Anniversary

written by Nathan

Protests in the street on the 50th Anniversary of Independence

On the day of our arrival in Lomé, Saturday, we saw mass protests on the boulevard. Every Saturday in Lomé, at least 60,000 citizens rise in opposition to the entrenched oligarchy here and march through the streets. Nearly every weekend these protests are begun with song and dance and ended with teargas and clubbing. After watching the first presidential address to the nation (five years after assuming power) we were dulled into boredom of watching fancy tinted window SUV’s and military might on parade from our TV. Our friend, a local musical celebrity of afro-funk and supporter of the opposition, stopped by and invited us to join him in visiting the celebrations of independence by the opposition.

All three of us loaded onto moto-taxis and rode to the beach where the protest marchers were circling after being refused entry to Lomé’s Independence Square. Meanwhile, the Stalinist-era military parades were taking place on the other end of town, and, while the square remained empty, the opposition was barred from using it (they had also been barred from using their own central church because, apparently, the president has a great fear of the power of burning candles).

The celebrations and speeches on the beach were already wrapped up when we arrived, crowds were either dispersing or joining the mass of the parade back to their headquarters. We enjoyed very much walking beside the quickly-moving parade (at one point thousands passed by us under a massive Togo flag - providing illumination of their country pride and much needed shade to those underneath). The march turned from the beach back onto the boulevard principal and we shortly found ourselves nearing their headquarters.

We arrived to see food and rich shade under a canopy in front of an nondescript building. We were so happy to be shown the ins and outs of Lomé by a local celebrity, people passing greeted us and burst into song from his popular ouvre of opposition music. We had not realized how lucky we would be to have this friend and guide. He suggested that we get going. “The parade did not stop here as I suspected they would,” he said, “apparently they continued back to Independence Square of the Cathedral.” When we turned back onto the boulevard, he said, “we are almost home, it is just a couple blocks. Let’s go back through the neighborhood.” Just as we crossed the boulevard we saw groups running back in our direction, behind them was the army truck that we had seen following the protest march.

“Run!” our friend yelled, taking off running in front of us. Brittany and our friend sprinted in front of me. I glanced behind just at the moment that the army truck turned onto the gravel road behind us. Soldiers were pointing tear gun rifles out of the back of the truck! As I watched, canisters began shooting through the air, tumbling down the street behind us. Families standing in courtyard gates waved to us, “Come in to our house!” they yelled in English. We turned a corner and stopped at the compound of a family known by our friend. “Come in!” they beckoned. We gratefully accepted. Shortly, the excitement died down. The tear gas truck, we were told, had gone off chasing the opposition in other directions. We walked back to our neighborhood watering hole, drank a few beers, recanted the excitement. “This happens every Saturday and has gone on for more than 20 years,” our friend said. “We almost won in 1990,” he told us. “We changed the constitution and had a Prime Minister elected who took power,” he went on, “the army surrounded his compound with tanks, barricades, and artillery until he waved a white flag and submitted to arrest.”

We discussed our experiences of studying Ghandhian thought in India and the powers of its implementation at the “Bapu Kuti” ashram in Sevagram. We shared our pride at the election of the USA’s first black president (with the peaceful transition of power that accompanies our elections). We discussed the history of non-violent civil rights movements in the USA and India - and pressed for their merits to continue here. Our friend shared his own experiences, while living in Chile twenty years earlier, of being part of the peaceful protects against the military dictatorship of Augosto Pinochet in that country; “I hope that Togo has a peaceful transition of power the same way Chile did,” he told us. “But, here, these youth are frustrated. They are asking their leaders for arms.”

Sadly, we will not understand the complexity of Togolaise politics on this visit. We were, however, with the right person to get a view of the very real struggle taking place here. We wish Togo and her people freedom, prosperity, dignity, and democracy in the future.

****

We have been traveling with a half dozen small books by Ghandi we purchased at the Bapu Kuti ashram. One of these, Mohan-Mala, is “A Ghandhian Rosary.” It shares a prayer each day for peace and justice.

On the day of this writing, a day after independence celebrations here, I read today’s rosary;

April 28 -

“Shall we have not the vision to see that in suppressing a sixth (or whatever the number) of ourselves, we have depressed ourselves? No man takes another down a pit without descending into it himself and sinning in the bargain. It is the suppressor who has to answer for his crime against those whom he suppresses.” - YI, 29, March, 1928

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The Benin Border

written by Nathan

 

On the border with Togo, we will not go to Benin. We have come as far as Aneho, the capital of Voodoo religion in Togo and apparently West Africa. People here have symmetrical scarification on their faces. There are goats and chickens a plenty; but we have not found that there are botanical shops or idols being sold in the street as advertised on Lonely Planet or other tourist info sites. What we are finding is that the people are very pleasant. We exchange all the French pleasantries we can think of on the spot, ‘Como c’est va? C’est va bien? Bon soir.’

As our taxi driver told us, voodoo is common in the villages. Actually, he said pueblos. The most unbelievable set of circumstances, you are not going to believe this, put us in a taxi with a Togolaise conductor who spoke perfect Spanish, (Brittany is getting REALLY annoyed here, in French speaking Togo, at my habit of mixing Spanish/English liberally with my tiny French vocabulary). But, the crazy part is not that Ignacio was so completely fluent in Spanish, the crazy part, super crazy, super loco to be mas exacto, our Togo taxi driver had learned his Spanish in Colombia!!

If any Voodoo spells were cast on me I have worn them well, while I sputtered and complained for more than an hour after choking on a fish bone at lunch, I was given a smart cure of swallowing large bites of Fufu (pounded yucca flour porridge balls?).

If you are not ECOWAS Community of West African States citizen, all of these countries are hard to visit on-the-fly. Benin, which was one of the most exciting conceptually to visit (especially since we will not make Gambia - close on the map of Africa - but really five countries north from here). Benin offers a 2 day Visa at the border ($20 US) which is fine if you plan to stay a while because you can ‘renovate’ your visa in the capital. But, this was an impossibility for us when coupled together with the fact that we are on day two of our 7-day visa to Togo. Actually, I have never been in countries before offering such short Visas. We had thought China’s 30-day Visa a Communist Era aberration.

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Lomé, Togo: West Africa

We are lucky to have arrived just a few days before the auspicious occasion of the 50th anniversary of Togolaise independence. But, luck in this instance is a learning experience to further our understanding and impressions of Africa, to get a slight interpretation of the massive affects of 400 years of colonial rule, and to explore, for ourselves, the ways that Togo has had impacted our lives in unanticipated ways.

Lomé, capital of Togo, is home to more than 2/3 of the country’s inhabitants. It is a sleepy slow city, at first impression, milling and humming on boulevards by motor bike, constantly avoiding the heat of day. Like most tropical cultures, though, Lomé comes to life after sunset, with visiting, cooking, partying, and general merriment that occurs until the wee hours of the morning.

Lomé is not impressive. There are perhaps a half dozen buildings over six stories scattered across its horizons. It has a port; but the port seems mostly to be set up to import basic necessities such as oil. It had (or has still?) a railroad. It has two perpendicular transit routes, one 56 km across its coast, another north all the way to Burkina Fassao.

Lomé is a history that encapsulates Africa’s suffering and injustice. The current president is the chosen son (among dozens) of the recently deceased one who ruled Togo for nearly forty years. It is a democracy in name only. Recent elections handed the president a resounding victory (monitored by U.N./E.U observers -who paid for the observations and then paid the observers who apparently treated the elections as a tropical vacation, were paid, and created a perfect economic loop before returning their opinion that there were not ‘enough’ irregularities to call the election a farce), while 80% of the population supports the opposition. Of course, the opposition is divided and unsteady.

While Togo is poor, corrupted, bureaucratically vile - the government is not the people. They are kind.

The manners are like home (the US South): everyone responds with greetings on the street. Children and old folks are so happy to speak to us. Like our discovery of other countries, people want the same basic necessities - quality life and economy, opportunity and hope, education and self-sufficiency, pride of culture, freedom of movement and expression, better lives for their families and neighbors.

Having just been in Ethiopia, it is easy to draw comparisons of what democracy has not done for Africa: Empowerment of elites and oligarchies; Replacement of colonial powers with neo-colonial entrenchment; Ruination and vast degradation of environments and natural resources. None of this, however, should be any reason not to visit. If anything, African and ‘3rd World’ democracies do envy most western democracies - in their worst sense. Entrenched oligarchic rule benefits elite and self-centered powers that have little interest in the people suffering under them. Participatory democracy may not herald better times; however, honest reflection on history seems to point to one unjust and corrupt government being swept away and replaced by something similar. As our friend said, sometimes the opposition just prefers the ‘devil you know, to the one you do not.’

While these themes of graft and corruption prevent progress and democratic participation, the heartbeat of West Africa is strong. As visitors and ambassadors of the western power structure we can show our solidarity in visiting; we can explain and measure the poor performance of government and ‘true’ democracy by sharing some of the failures of our own histories. We can enjoy and engender new forms of trust and affection between our peoples.

***

See “Zeitgeist Addendum” a movie on world monetary systems

1% of the world’s populations own more than 40% of its wealth.

50% of the worlds citizens survive on less that $700 U.S per year or >$2 per day

Think of an item that you spent $700 on. We spent almost five times this on each of our ‘round the world’ tickets. Is your item worth it? It is a question worth pondering….

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Coffee and Ethiopia

written by Nathan

 

Another quick note on coffee loving and Ethiopia. For those who love coffee, Ethiopia is your Jerusalem. Not only is this birthplace of humanity also the origin of wild ‘Arabica,’ our coffee ancestor still growing in forests here, Ethiopia still produces the meanest Cup o’ Joe that I have practically ever had.

For those readers who know that I proudly decamped (½ time) for Colombia almost ten years ago, this comes of course as a shock to all of us…. Especially me. Not that I did not love or know coffee before Colombia, café culture is a pride of my childhood new Orleans and Francophile Louisiana.

Of course, we have not found Starbucks or Dunkin’ Donuts even trying to compete with this 1000 year old coffee culture. Not that you can’t get a soy double latte here, just don’t ask for sugar substitute. Soy lattes are called ‘macchiato fasting’ indicating refrain from drinking cow’s milk (2-4 birr or less than 30c).

*** As we try and cull what themes come from our blog as it moves abroad (now transferring our content again subjects from East to West Africa the North Africa this next month), obviously travel - it's thrills, chills, strains, and magic moments of discovery - always rings true.

Focusing on aspects of each place, we are aligning our experiences with what we think other travelers may be interested in; and, writing more reviews.

Look for our 'Picks and Pans' list of favorite spots we have found along the route thus far in upcoming blogs.

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