The Foreign Service Journal, October 2013

40 OCTOBER 2013 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL One of mymost precious possessions is a letter begging me to stay on after the end of my Peace Corps service in 1973. the Togolese minister of education, I was honored to be placed between the min- ister and our ambassador, Nancy Rawls (see the photo on this page). During my March 2013 visit, some Peace Corps Volunteers passed me on the road. I wanted to talk to them, but what does a person who was a PCV more than 40 years ago say to a 22-year-old? Besides, they looked so quiet, walking on foot or riding their bicycles. I recalled the volunteers of my day as being much rowdier, zooming about on motorbikes. While these were carrying lots of electronics wherever they went, I remember writing a letter home and waiting months for a reply. Whatever happened to the art of letter writ- ing? How can you be immersed in a cross- cultural experience with a laptop, a cell phone and Internet everywhere? Still, in some ways I envied the new PCVs, for they only know the present. Unlike me, they are not frustrated by hav- ing known Togo 40 years ago. The past was my problem, not theirs. Then again, how much has life really changed in Togo? Today there are better roads, and more electricity, schools and health clinics, etc. But life is harder for the average per- son. The Togolese I saw in March seemed less happy than those I had known in the 1970s. Back then, post-independence euphoria was still alive. People were full of hope and laughed a lot more. Today, life is much more expensive. There are too many mouths to nourish, care for, educate and employ. Togo was home to just 2.2 million people when I arrived in 1970. Today it has nearly seven million inhabitants, and 65 percent of the population is less than 25 years old. The capital city of Lomé had 200,000 people in 1970; today it has two million. So it isn’t surpris- ing that the United Nations reports Togo’s population density has risen from 30 per square kilometer in 1970 to more than 100 today. Many more Togolese are educated now, but jobs are scarce. It is scary for me to see so many young people with diplomas, but without jobs. It is like watching a ticking human time bomb. How much longer before it explodes? Will the population finally rise up against 50 years of autocratic rule? In 1970, we were warned not to talk about the president, his army or his party, and all would be well. Before going to Togo this time, I received the same advice. Lomé, Old and New I was sure the century-old Ger- man wharf in the capital, where I used to fish, had disintegrated and fallen into the ocean by now. But its remnants were still there. I recall some of the volun- teers who arrived before me telling me how they had come to Togo via ship and were offloaded onto smaller boats at the wharf. However, most of the places I once frequented in the capital have disappeared. The old U.S. embassy and cultural center are long gone, swamped by the overflow of the central market. Yet I could not look at the site without recalling a horrific scene from more than 20 years ago. Our ambassador at the time, Harmon Kirby, had his office just above me on the second floor. We watched from his win- dow on April 11, 1991, as a violent clash unfolded between government forces and hundreds of angry protesters. The crowd was standing around a truckload of dead people, killed the night before by soldiers. In the midst of growing chaos, some demonstrators climbed the embassy compound walls. They eventually fled Above, a 1974 reception in Lomé to thank the Peace Corps for all the schools it had built. U.S. Ambassador Nancy Rawls, Togo government officials and PCVs were present. At right, the author in 1970 as he set out on his Peace Corps assignment.