May 26, 2012
When I was looking at countries to teach in, one of the qualifications I sought was that I work in a democratic nation. According to the CIA World Factbook, at the time Togo had been a democracy for three years. I realized it was a new democracy, but still thought it a democracy. Over the last few months, the stories I’ve heard and my experience have taught me to view the country as more of a fake democracy.
Which makes sense if you consider the fact that the current president is the previous president’s son, and the election was much disputed.
Since I’ve been here I’ve become accustomed to the little incidents of corruption. Often the police pull over cars and demand they pay for such and such little offense. Whether or not you are actually breaking a law, they charge you money to let you go. This has advantages in that if you are not law-abiding like in the case of my Canadian colleague who hasn’t bothered to register his motorcycle, because then you just pay a fee. Any money paid goes directly into the police officer’s pocket. Actually, come to think of it, except for the time at night when we’ve gotten pulled over, they have always cited an offense like too many people in the front seat or talking on a cell phone while driving. Which is interesting, because for months I never saw a motorcycle stop for a red light, and the taxis and vans stuff three times as many people into a vehicle as they have seats, so it’s hard to tell what laws actually exist.
At the post office, when I pick up my packages the customs price varies. At first I didn’t pay anything, but then one day I went and the lady wanted 5,000 cfa per box, the equivalent of $10. After talking to my boss, I negotiated it down to 10,000 cfa instead of the 15,000 cfa she was asking. The next time I went for the same type of books in the same type of boxes, she asked me to pay “what I did last time.” I told her I didn’t want to and gave her my spiel about being a poor teacher who can’t afford her prices. She let me go for free. Corruption works both ways, sometimes you are pissed off when you feel the person in charge is taking you for a ride, but then when they let you off the hook, you are so excited, and you get the hell out of there before they change their minds.
I have been in Togo long enough to know how things work, but sometimes I just get in an ornery mood. Today was one of those days. Orion and I were going home on a moto with a random zemijan driver. We were going through an intersection and the driver got stuck in the middle of traffic and got waved over by a policeman. The police, I found out later, were out in swarms, because the opposition party had organized a march.
Last time that I was aware of the opposition really protesting, other than just riding around in brightly colored t-shirts on their motorcycles, was on Togo’s Independence Day when the beach road was strewn with smashed concrete blocks and tree branches, and the windows of the Ethiopian Air building near the Palm Beach Hotel were smashed during an opposition protest. That same day we had been driving near the center of the city when we came across a recently abandoned roadway with debris and patches of yellow smoke rising from it. We drove around a corner and saw a police van, and next to it, a crowd of some police uniforms and some other people around a man lying on the ground.
Anyhow, today, the policeman pulled over the moto driver, possibly because he got stuck in the middle of traffic, but really I had no idea why. Instead of just demanding he give him money as the police here usually do, the policeman demanded the key from the guy, which he didn’t want to give, and then drove my driver’s motorcycle across the street where there were several motos and drivers apparently waiting. I was really annoyed at how the police just took the guy’s key and got on his moto, so I took out the camera I had been using to take pictures of the student’s basketball tournament and snapped a photo of the policeman. Apparently this is illegal in Togo. The policeman got very upset. I was going to walk away, but I hadn’t paid the zemijan driver yet, and since he was in a pickle, I hated to leave him.
I don’t know what got into me, but the policeman was yelling at me to give him my camera and show him the photo. The zemijan driver told me to show it to the officer and delete it. But at first I refused. I was feeling argumentative, I guess. So after some time of being stubborn and asking if this was not a free country in French and him getting mad, I finally showed him the photo and deleted it. But I had made him pretty angry, so he demanded I walk over to the other police officers and told them that I took his picture and he was quite upset. He wanted my camera, but I didn’t want him to mess it up since clearly he knows nothing about cameras and doesn’t speak English and doesn’t know what buttons to press, and every time someone borrows my camera it comes back to me broken. But the other officer spoke some English, and I let him take my camera, and tried to show him I deleted the pictures, but he didn’t get it and he didn’t even know how to turn off the camera. He called his boss, and threatened to take me into the police station, and said the chief was on his way. Or he said he did rather. I’m not entirely certain since after that he asked a guy to get him some phone credit so he could make a phone call to his boss, who he had just said he’d been talking to. Apparently he even had to borrow someone else’s phone just to make the call. I suspect he may have been faking the whole first conversation since the boss never showed up and they never took me to the station as they said they would.
When he told me I had to go to the station, I just said ok and acted unfazed. I think it probably helped that all the police officers looked to be about 22. The officers demanded to know why I took the photo and I explained that I thought it was interesting, because in my country policeman don’t go riding other people’s motorcycles. They asked what policemen do in my country and I said they write tickets, the person goes to court in front of a judge and if the judge thinks they did something “not good” (I don’t know how to say “wrong” in French) then they pay money for the ticket. They conferred with the boss by phone and amongst themselves. Meanwhile I explained to Orion that Togo is crazy and that I was in trouble for taking the officer’s photograph, which is illegal here, but not in the U.S.
Then the guy with my camera asked for my identification card. I handed him my passport, and he asked me my job. I told him I was a teacher and he wanted to know where it was written on my passport, which it isn’t, so I just showed him my Visas. He wanted to know if I was a journalist, I guess. So then he gave my camera to the guy whose photo I took, and since he didn’t know how to work it, I scrolled through all the hundreds of pictures I’d taken that day of the basketball and soccer tournaments, plus my trip to Kpalime, Mt. Agou and Tchevie, so he could see that his picture was not on it. I made light of it, showed them pictures of me playing basketball and all the students so they would understand how perfectly harmless I am.
Then they asked me again what I had intended to do with the photo. Was I going to tell my boss about the police in Togo or what? I smiled at them and asked, “You know Facebook?” They nodded. “I was going to post it on Facebook.” They laughed, except the guy whose photo I had taken, who cursed me for being an idiot girl, I presume. They shook their heads and realized, I was just a foolish American girl. Then, they told me if I want to take pictures of military, I should just marry a policeman. The guy whose photo I had snapped was apparently single. If I really wanted pictures of the police they said, I could come to the headquarters and meet their boss and take a picture of all the officers. “Ok,” I said. They laughed and shook their heads and told me to take another moto and go. Apparently, no one told them that the revolution in Tahrir Square was organized on Facebook.
So, my dear friends, today I learned that here in Togo, there is definitely no freedom of the press, despite the government’s claim that this is a democracy. One wonders how long this fake democracy will last.
Writer With an I 