Down to Aneho for the day

I went with two colleagues today east of Lomé to an old colonial town, Aného, dating back to when the Portuguese called it Anecho and shipped slaves out of it. Then the Germans came in late in the 19th century, made an agreement with one local chief and used it as a pretext to take over the whole region. German Togoland!Anyways, not much to see these days. The colonial buildings are almost all in terrible repair with roofs missing. So much poverty, orphanages everywhere, homes for AIDS kids, deaf kids, etc. I'm reminded of my time in India by the mud streets, shacks, infrastructure breaking down and no money to repair it. As people drive around the potholes in Mercedes, BMWs and Land Rovers.

At Chez Alice, a restaurant and bar with traditional dancing and singing, they had two leashed monkeys pacing back and forth in a clearing, obviously miserable. And at another bar-restaurant, they had two crocodiles living out their 40-60 year lives in a concrete pit about the size of a walk-in closet.

I watched a huge team pull a net out of the surf there, and the hole catch would fill half a garbage bag. Only one fish that I could see was of a size that we would normally see for sale. Everything else was tiny. But there are big fish in the markets, I suppose one has to go offshore to get much of that. I heard a CBC radio documentary just before leaving Canada, about child trafficking in this region. It turns out fisherman buy child slaves because as the fish are depleted in Lake Volta and related rivers, in Ghana and across the region, they need little fingers to pry the smaller and smaller fish out of the nets. All of the injustice is inter-related.

Sorry there's nothing cheery today!