The Foreign Service Journal, October 2013

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | OCTOBER 2013 41 after dumping their grue- some load of 28 bloated bodies in front of the build- ing. It took many hours before the bodies were removed and we could leave. Another spot on this same street is a bad memory for Togo and all of Africa. Sylvanus Olympio, Togo’s first president, was murdered there, next to our embassy, on Jan. 13, 1963. Four Togolese soldiers recently released from the French army entered the compound to find Olympio hiding in a vehicle. They dragged him into the street and killed him. This was Africa’s first coup and the first assassination of a president. Sadly, coups soon became regular events on the continent. But I doubt the market women doing business on this spot in March knew what had happened here in 1963. On a brighter note, there are some new restaurants and private hotels in Lomé . There are also many more Lebanese than before, as well as lots of Indians and Chinese, new additions to the city’s popu- lation. The weather has not changed, however. It is still hot and humid until about 5 p.m., when it becomes quite pleasant. I encountered various surprises, negative and positive, during my one-week stay in the capital. After checking into my hotel, I rushed to the bar and asked for a “BB.” I was surprised when the bartender did not understand me. I explained to him that in the old days we all drank Bière Benin. He did not know when they had stopped making this popular beer that had made Togo famous for many. The old tennis club located behind the presidential palace is still there. That is where I learned tennis and played it almost every day during the late 1980s. I was happy to see that some of the ball boys I knew then are now club pros. They How can you be immersed in a cross-cultural experience with a laptop, a cell phone and Internet everywhere?