Togo

Togo—officially the Togolese Republic—gained its independence from France on 27 April 1960. In 1963 Sergeant Etienne Eyadema Gnassingbe he led a military coup which brought about the assassination of then-leader Sylvanus Olympio. Following this Nicolas Grunitzky assumed the presidency, but another coup in 1967, again led by Gnassingbe, led to his being deposed, and from 1967 until his death in 2005 Togo was under the dictatorship of Gnassingbe. Since then his son Faure Gnassingbe has assumed power, altering the constitution to allow for his succession to rule and delaying elections.

Prior to European contact in the fifteenth century, there isn’t much history of the region—tribes entered from all directions (Togo is a narrow wedge of land bordered by Ghana, Benin and Burkina Faso) and most of these settled in coastal regions. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth century the region was a major raiding centre for the slave trade.

In 1884 Togo became a protectorate of Germany, but after the German defeat of World War I, Togo came under the administration of the United Kingdom and France. In 1960, residents of British Togoland voted to become part of the newly independent nation of Ghana, and French Togoland became a republic.

Under the Gnassingbe dictatorships Togo has had a record of human rights violations; environmentally, Togo has seen widespread deforestation.

Today’s poem was written by Togolese poet Kwami Nyamidie. I found it online here.


As above, so below


My eyes are fixed on things on high
on mysteries of galaxies and nebulae
on planets guiding my steps below.
My eyes are fixed on Hale-Bopp
A comet Pharaohs saw
When they built their pyramids.

Like Cheops I, too, am building a pyramid.
An inner one, but still a pyramid,
A great and awesome monument
As I look inside the vast untapped
Resources trapped and buried
In the soul of my soul.

I look up in awe and wonder
And I see within and below the mystery
That I am, the mystery of mud
Transforming itself daily, slowly into gold;
The mystery of the edifice I construct
Painfully and surely with each stone
Of life's experience.

—Kwami Nyamidie
March 24, 1997.