The Foreign Service Journal, October 2013

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | OCTOBER 2013 37 A former Peace Corps Volunteer and USAID FSO reflects on his longstanding involvement with Togo. BY MARK G . WENT L I NG TOGO TODAY AND IN 1970 W hen I first landed in Lomé in 1970, along with a dozen other new Peace Corps Vol- unteers, I beheld this slogan on a colorful poster in the poorly lit airport: “Si vous ne connaissez pas le Togo, vous ne connaissez pas le Afrique.” If you don’t know Togo, you don’t know Africa. Pasted lopsidedly on a bare wall, that poster was the only bright spot in what was little more than a dilapidated warehouse. After flying from New York through Dakar to Lomé , we were too tired to ponder the significance of that message. Still, I was excited enough about finally setting foot in Africa to spend most of the night walking the capital’s streets. I have reflected on these words countless times during my 43 years in Africa. Likewise, my three-year Peace Corps post- ing in the village of Agu-Nyogbo was a formative experience that has continued to guide me ever since. In 1987 I returned to Togo for four years as USAID repre- sentative. It was an especially tumultuous period as the Togo- lese struggled to make the transition to democracy, and in 1990 their country seemed on the verge of taking off. Instead, it failed to do so and began a long downward spiral. “When Togo Was Still Sweet” This past March, I returned to the country for the first time in a decade. After visiting Lomé , I traveled 120 kilometers to Kpalimé, stopping at villages I had worked in as a Peace Corps Volunteer. My goal was to compare today’s Togo to the country I knew 40 years ago, but I found this hard to do. For one thing, it was only in the cemeteries that I could find the people I once knew. There, I said my sad goodbyes. I was pleased that my command of the local language, Mark G. Wentling, a retired USAID Senior Foreign Service officer cur- rently working in Burkina Faso, is the author of the recently published novel, Africa’s Embrace, a fictional account about the adventures of a young man from Kansas who travels to Africa and becomes caught up in a mystical, larger-than-life adventure. (All photos are courtesy of the author.)