Greetings from Lomé, Togo

I've been lurking on and off for quite a while and have picked up some useful advice on how to spend some of my hard earned cash! After much reading of posts, a few months ago on a trip to the UK, I purchased a Sigma 105mm macro lens. I will post elsewhere what I have managed to achieve with it, but as many others have found it is a superb lens. Then for Christmas I got a new manfrotto 190XPROB + 460MG head and a Bamboo graphics tablet. Therefore one of my new years resolutions has been to stop lurking and to try and participate to some degree.

I was prompted in part to post again by this weeks competition 'buildings' as back in september I made a trip up to the North of Ghana and Southern Burkina to look at how the flooding affected people with disabilities in those areas that our projects are working with. The number of people left homeless in some areas was quite staggering.

Anyway, enough of my rambling - best regards to everyone for 2008, particularly to those who give of their time to administer and run the forum.

Cheers,

Steve

Thanks, Steve, good to hear from you.

Have a great 2008!

I lived in Ghana what must be 30 years ago now - great place but no food or beer so we used to drive to Lome to get supplies. I wonder how much it has changed? In our time there were only two or three restaurants worth going to and was it the sailor's hotel or something down by teh sea to stay in? Odd place.

I found Lome to be quite subdued compared to Accra but I recall there was a cloth market in what was clearly a multi story car park design.

Have you visited Benin - that was an odd country with banners across the road offering threats to capitalists (ie me) and travel at night was frowned upon with road blocks. We could only change travellers cheques in one bank in the whole country! It was fervently communist then but had the Chevrolet Dealership for West Africa and would always find a state owned room for capitalist running dogs. As I say a seriously odd place.

Togo was more easy going and Ghana was plain fun.

I probably envy you.

Mike

I wouldn't call that living....

Would love to see some photos....(hint)...

Sadly I lost all my photos that I took when we came back.

It was living OK - you could get beer if you were lucky but it could take two or three days to gfind it and then some serious negotiation and you had to have empty bottles to get full ones as there was a shortage. Food was always an issue and I often went to the docks to try and get cans of fish which might take another day or two. Flour - wow that was a real problem.

Fresh food was not at all easy to get and at the time the locals managed on basic starch like casava and imported rice but it was very, very hard for them. That said they were so welcoming and almost always helped the poor confused white man when he got himself into a mess. It made me ashamed of the racism they suffered in the UK at the time.

Happy days.

Mike

having walked a mile in thier shoes must've made you an ambasador...of sorts...
sad how so many people forget we all bleed red.

Hi Mike. Amazingly I'm actually sitting reading your message in a guest house in East Cantonments, Accra, having driven over from Lomé this morning. From your descriptions things have certainly changed quite a lot in the last 30 years - Ghana has gone up in the world and Togo down. Have just been out with the family to a very nice fish restaurant and enjoyed a nice cold Star beer (and didn't have to take an empty ).

In Lomé, I guess you used to stay iat the Foyer des Marins - it is still there down by the entrance to the port and serves up good cakes in the afternoons!

Have only been across to Benin once, just last week in fact and stayed at Ouidah on the coast. No longer a communist stronghold as far as I can tell - the only banners are advertising rival mobile phone companies.

Don, I'll try and oblige with some photo's in the months ahead. I'm quite fortunate in that in my day job I get to travel quite widely across West Africa and I've been trying to take my camera with me on my trips.

All the best,

Steve

Steve

I suspect East Cantonments might not have existed in my day - where is that?

I worked at The University of Legon and had a house at South Legon which had been built by the Yanks in the seconds World War. Looking at Google Map I think they must have gone by now, I can't find them on teh satellite image.

The University was a great place then and I guess I must have met Kofi Annan at some point as everyone (apart from the military) turned up there at some point.

I think we were there at Ghana's low point, three coup d'etats in one year was going it a bit and JJ Rawling in his plane bombing somewhere as I recall. They also canged the currency to catch out the black marketeers but the street money changers had the new currency before the banks!

But as I say - happy days!

Mike

PS Do the small boys still sell the chocolate by the roadside? Designed never to melt in the heat just become flexible!