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Betrayals
I used to be in love with the lake. But it all ended this week, leaving me hurt, confused, and angry, like any ending to a relationship.
Seva-Tonu is the fifth quartier of Sevagan (‘tonu’ is Ewe for lake), but now the sand where I stood in February watching the women dance to drums is under water. The place I attended Mass is only accessible by boat. The wall on which I sat with Justine, watching the festivities, is no longer visible, covered by ugly lapping green water. The pieroges (canoes) which used to be lazily reclining on the sand under the palm trees are pushed up against their owner’s houses, and children paddle them about to go feed their pigs. The palm trees appear to be sprouting from the water. Grass floating on the surface is, I realize, low bushes that used to be in the marshes and now only their tops are visible.
Inhabitants gingerly relearn the quartier’s back paths to avoid the main thoroughfare that had been next to the lake (and that currently is the lake). Sometimes, walking along, we see water on both sides of us. I watch a child seemingly stand on water and pushing a pole along; his pieroge was sinking and underwater as he tried to return to his house.
Justine glances at me. She knows I am upset. I wonder how much more upset she is. We are staring at her family house – the house she fled twenty years ago when floods only slightly worse than this threatened Seva-Tonu once before. She never returned to live here, but other members of her family did. Her uncle stands in the doorway. Below him, at his left foot, is the lake. On his right side is dry land – so far.
I say: How did this happen? For the past week there wasn’t that much rain.
I get no reply. For them it doesn’t seem to matter how it happened. What matters is that it did.
The two bridges that collapsed on the Route Nationale have garnered much (both national and international) attention, but it is my road, the road from Lome to Hahatoe and Vogan, that had seven bridges either broken or closed down. My trip to Lome yesterday took me four hours instead of forty-five minutes, after going through the detour. The moto-ride to Vogan seemed like we were motoing through the lake itself. The rivers that have swelled due to the South’s heavy rains have brought Togo’s infrastructure to its knees, damaging crops and bridges and roads and houses. And the rivers that empty into Lake Togo have followed nature’s laws; a lake can only hold so much water before it overflows, like a bathtub you fill up too much before getting into the tub.
Our little group of emissaries from the village center continue to pick our way through Seva-Tonu. As we pass through courtyards, taking shortcuts through people’s backdoors and animal courtyards to avoid the water, the villagers look up and smile. They go through the formal and polite greetings, and nod their approval of our condolence call. They don’t spend too much time commiserating. They can’t rebuild till the lake goes down, anyway, and they don’t know if it will. They offer us chairs automatically, but when we refuse and say we are just passing along, they do not insist. They have better things to do than entertain visitors. Many are sitting watching the water, doing nothing, or automatically cooking over charcoal or weaving fishing nets or straw mats, but always, always, watching the lake that laps at their feet. When we leave, without fail, the household returns to its contemplation of the water.
I ask, When will the water go down?
There is the slightest hesitation before the reply. My question hits a little too close to home, forces reflection that may be a little too painful. The reply comes softly. If it doesn’t rain, perhaps it will go down soon. If it rains – perhaps this will stay like this till October. Or perhaps – perhaps it will worsen.
We reach a point finally where dry land disappears. We call over a young boy to help shuttle us across the water to the other side of the flooded area. The boat tips precariously and sits low in the water. The water, even this close to dry land, is unusually deep, and there are angry waves. There is no calm about this flood; it is vicious, and snide, and silently victorious. I look silently at the water leaking into the canoe. Later, we will return to village centre a different way to avoid having to cross water again, but we will end up walking calf-deep through water that has flooded the path back to village.
I take pictures, silently, quickly, feeling on the one hand awkward and “touristy”, but on the other hand filled with a strange urgency to document, to make myself remember what this day was like when I realized the infinite difference between seeing pictures on television or in the newspapers and walking in the photo itself; worse, walking in a place that you have come to think of as home, and feeling sick at the ravishment of your home.
A man is standing and looking silently at a mud house that collapsed. It’s surrounded almost completely by water. I wonder if it was his house. I don’t ask, and glance away.
Soon, hopefully, we will begin to collect ourselves, to assess damage, and to make plans of what to do next. Motivated members of the community have already given reports to the Red Cross, petitions to the governments, and queries to Social Affaires.
I feel so very alone in my predicament, far from ‘normal’ outlets of stress relief like friends and family. Not even in April did I feel this removed and isolated. I can’t vent to my villagers because, after all, they are suffering so much more than I am. But I long for three wishes to put right the world. My little village on the lake is so much less likely to garner attention in comparison to major villages or roads that are the key to the economy, but I feel shocked and distressed – like a homeowner who has been visited by a burglar and can’t shake that feeling of vulnerability and betrayal. But so too are my villagers alone. And I still have a house that is standing and the knowledge I will be leaving in two years. But this knowledge is bittersweet, because it makes me realize that however badly I am feeling, it must only be a tiny glimmer of what the Sevaganese are feeling.
Outside I can hear the pitterpatter of rain starting to fall again.
Posted by togolesejourney 
Posted by togolesejourney 
Posted by togolesejourney 
