THE RETURN AT LAST Chapter II: Regeneration Verse II: Togo

As he had been instructed, Abdul boarded a long distance taxi by the side of the road at IPA the following day and headed for the Benin-Togo border. They had a stopover at Comé where some of the passengers bought food.

“What’s it?” Abdul inquired from a man to his left.

The man shook his head, wheeled about, and shouted something to those at the back.

“It’s ablo,” someone shouted from the back in English with a French accent. “Maize dough cooked over vapour. Very delicious with fish and pepper. You like it?”

“Thank you, I’m not hungry.”

“It’s very good,” the man insisted and said something in Fon.

“Next time,” Abdul whispered as the passengers burst into laughter

Having one more passenger than allowed in the front and the middle and back seats, the discomfort of the passengers increased as some began to move in the gestures of eating in the hurtling Peugeot 505 Estate car.

            “Not far from here is Ahémé, a lakeside village,” the man at the back shouted, pointing north when they approached the border area. “Most of the people travel in canoes up to the border.”

            Abdul stared right but couldn’t see any water body.

            After his passport had been registered and stamped at the Beninese side, Abdul walked into a cubicle before the final exit to see the officers collecting money into a carton.

“Do I pay?” he asked after showing his passport to the one nearer him.

The officer waved him off. “Go,” he said. “You’ve a passport.”

On the no man’s land between the two borders, Abdul heard two gentlemen talking in English.

“What do people pay for over there?” he asked out of curiosity, although he didn’t doubt the answer.

“Bribery and corruption,” one of them blurted out, with some disdain.

As Abdul walked by travellers buying from women selling an array of local foodstuffs, fruit and vegetables by his right, he couldn’t understand how people in uniform could extort money from travellers openly and publicly. Behind the sellers a sparse forest stretched right up to the hardly visible scintillating waters of the lagoon. The sea, not far away but invisible from here, boomed and crashed to his left.

At the other side of the border Abdul again noticed travelers paying bribes to an obese barking policeman with a paunch. When Abdul showed him his passport, the policeman sluggishly waved him to the registration desk ahead, on the verandah in front of the immigration building. Abdul never got over this broad daylight fraud, even after seeing it at all the borders he crossed during his later West African tour. Mohammed explained that because the top was rotten, the bottom could afford to be flagrantly so.

Lonlon Locoh came minutes after Abdul called him from a roadside private telephone operator. He was a stocky, smiling fellow with fleshy lips and drooping jowls like a problem drinker. He spoke good English.

“I did my master’s degree in anthropology at the University of Ghana, Legon,” he explained in his barrel voice on noticing Abdul’s surprise.

“Impressive place,” Abdul said. “I visited it with a friend.”

“You’re welcome to Aneho, the tercentenary town,” he added, pushing up his small glasses hugging his wide face snugly.

They shook hands warmly.

“At only 44 kilometers from Lomé, the Togolese capital, Aneho, formerly called Xlaviho, is a town founded in the 17^th century by Ga and Fanti immigrants from the west,” Lonlon said as they left the immediate surroundings of the border cluttered with travellers, sellers, cars, minibuses, and heavily overloaded trucks to look for zemidjan.

Abdul nodded.

“Do you read French?”

Abdul shook his head resolutely.

“What a pity. I’d have advised you to buy this book Le Tricentenaire d’Aneho et du Pays Guin published by the press of the university in Lome.” He took out two thick books from a sack straddling his hairy chest. “These two volumes, proceedings of the international colloquium on the tercentary of the Ge country held here from 18^th to 20^th September 2000, deal with the three hundred years of the history of Aneho. Most of what I’m going to talk about come from it.”

Abdul nodded.

“Aneho was the final point of settlement of successive migrations of the Fanti, the Ga, and the Adangbe of the then Gold Coast now Ghana, fleeing the attacks for hegemony launched by the Akwamu,” Lonlon continued with the history of Aneho. “Knowing the benefits of centralized political regimes from their former homes, the migrants pooled their forces and resources together and regrouped into organized societies with secured structures. Thus they formed villages, notably Glidji, the royal and political center a few kilometres from the sea. Glidji soon became the source of food supply for Aneho, the economic center right on the coast. The new settlement became known collectively as Genyi, the apocope for Genyigban, that is, the land of the Ge people.”

“You said they were Fanti, Ga, and Adan---.”

“Adangbe,” Lonlon supplied slowly.

“Adang-be,” Abdul said as best as he could, causing Lonlon to titter. “How come they became known as the Ge?”

“The languages of the three groups fused with the Ewe language spoken by the local people who temporary occupied the area as fishermen and farmers and became the language known as Ge-Mina, or simply, Ge.”

Abdul nodded, wishing the African American had been allowed to evolve a language too.

“I’d rather say the migrants came up with a more easily spoken form of Ewe. While Gengbe and Ewegbe are mutually intelligible, nobody here speaks nor understands the three former languages anymore. Ga is only used in some prayers during Kpesoso, the tercentenary New Year Festival of the Ge popularly known as Yeke-Yeke celebrated in August or September to commemorate the trek of the ancestors.”

Abdul made a mental note to witness it.

“Although there is intermixing of the three ethnic groups, each still uses some of their former names.”

            Abdul wished that had happened to the African American too.

“The fortunes of this ancient town, geographically well located on a picturesque site because sandwiched between the ocean to the south and a lagoon system to the north, were shaped during the pre-colonial and the colonial history of Togo.”

“You’re talking about the slave trade?”

Lonlon nodded. “Slavery was practiced in Genyi mainly at Aneho, Atoêta, Agoue, Goumoukope, and Agbodrafo. Other nearby areas were Aflao, Agbanakin, Xwlagan or Grand-Popo and Jeta.”

 “I think I saw Grand-Popo and Agoue over there.”

“Yeah, they’re the last habitations in Benin when coming over here. Agoue is now a strip of land in the Republic of Benin. For our tour, we’ll start with Atoêta, then continue to Anfoin, and then come back here to Aneho. We wouldn’t have time to visit Agbodrafo today. It wouldn’t even be practical. We’ll go there tomorrow and then you continue your journey straight from there. This means you’ll have to stay in a hotel here today.”

“I’d like a good one, but not too expensive.”

“Yeah,” Lonlon said after a brief thought, “Hôtel La Lagune,”. “Let’s go book before going to Atoêta.”

Lonlon flagged two motorcycle-taxis and they set out to the town five kilometers away.

“Aneho is made up of three modules,” Lonlon said to Abdul feeling uncomfortable as they rode side by side on the quiet narrow road of Sanvicondji linking the border to Messancondji, the eastern tip of the Aneho town. The first module, the oldest, is Anehogan sandwiched between the lagoon and the sea.  It begins at the west, by the Nlessi quarter.”

“Is that the area you see after crossing the rail line?”

“Yes!” A wide grin split Lonlon’s face. “The founder of this area was a black African from Sierra Leone.”

“Yeah?” Abdul sounded surprised.

Lonlon nodded. “He was one of freed former slaves, returned from the New World. A number of them became traders in the coastal towns. His descendants are today the Bruce family.”

“I see.”

“Anehogan ends at Agbodji which continues towards the east by Apunukpa, a tongue of land which disappears like a peninsula between the sea and the lagoon. Your hotel is on the north-eastern bank of the lagoon.”

Abdul nodded. “The Apunu---, whatever you were calling it, isn’t it prone to flooding?”

“Apunukpa,” Lonlon corrected through laughter. “Of course it is, during the rainy season when the lagoon gets swollen by the flood waters of the Haho, Zio and Mono which pours in there. But this connection between fresh and salty waters opens naturally and sometimes is opened by the people to save the town from this danger.”

Abdul nodded again, gripping the seat of the motorcycle as Lonlon’s rider passed in front when they came to the junction of Messancondji one going straight and the other branching off slightly left and at ninety degrees to the right.

            “I live over there.” Lonlon pointed right. They passed the intersection and took the road left along the sea and the riders came side by side again. “The second module forming Aneho begins beyond the Pont Adjido,” Lonlon continued, “the bridge by Adjidogan, an area founded by an Afro-Brazilian slave trader, Félix Francisco de Souza, a very influential man in Dahomey and Aneho, …”

“Chacha?”

“Yes. You know about him?” Lonlon sounded pleasantly surprised.

“I was on the slave route at Ouidah.”

“Ah, you know about Chacha then. He was known for his intelligence and his trading acumen and nicknamed Chacha, which was an allusion to his quick allure. As I was saying, he and his son Isidoros, described as the most famous and the most powerful Brazilian merchant established on the African coast, founded the second module when they came to settle at Aneho in the beginning of the 19^th century.”

“I see.”

“He bought that piece of land to serve as a quartering in barracks of slaves.”

Abdul swallowed, remembering Raia Ayaba de Souza’s hesitation to own up to the inglorious past of her ancestor and Quenum’s charge to her to do so.

“The second module ends at Pont Zebe, the second bridge over the lagoon to the north which leads to the Zebe plateau, used by the Germans to house the colonial administrative quarters, and which constitutes the third module of the town. Zebe continues to accommodate administrative services of the Prefecture des Lacs.”

Abdul nodded.

“The second module was enlarged later by the addition of the small hamlets of Amadoté and Messankondji, the frontier post with Benin, today called Hillacondji.”

            They passed by a cemetery to the right and soon stopped at a hotel to their left.

Hôtel La Lagune was built into the steep banks of the lagoon.

“This is Adjidogan,” Lonlon said as they got down from the motorcycles and Abdul paid for them both. “Over there is Anehogan.” Lonlon waved over the lagoon separated from the crashing sea by a tongue of land and the town sprawling westwards.

From the street the two-storey hotel building appeared as if it was one-storey.

Abdul booked a room with a lagoon cum sea view.

            When they came out Lonlon led Abdul westwards. They stopped just beyond the edge of the hotel.

            “Do you see that piece of land?” Lonlon said, pointing to the area where the tongue of land plunged into the sea. “That’s Apunukpa.”

             “The place looks idyllic,” Abdul said, brushing his gaze over the lagoon around whose winding banks the town sat, surrounded by palm groves whose waxy leaves waved lazily in the breeze from the sea.

            “Yes, but as I said earlier flooding often throws them out. Five houses to the right is the home of the d’Almeida family. My wife comes from there.”

“Is that not an Afro-Brazilian family?”

Lonlon nodded.

“So, you’re married to a descendant of a slave seller,” Abdul joked and they laughed. “A town is best toured on foot,” Lonlon said, “so let’s start now by walking to the

station. It’ll take only about a quarter of an hour.”

“I don’t mind,” Abdul said with a shrug and they walked towards the intersection leading to the southern bridge spanning old Aneho and Adjidogan on which they stood and then turned right onto a narrow street which cars, motorcycles and pedestrians seemed to be juggling for space.

“This is Adjido,” Lonlon pointed out the immense peninsula north-east of the lagoon. “Chacha got it from Sekpon (the Aputaga) of Aneho towards 1800 and established a slave storing and trading post which he called Ajuda that became deformed to Adjido,” Lonlon said as they rounded a sharp corner and walked up the quiet street towards the small lorry park at its end.

Cars constantly honked at pedestrians that motorcycle-taxis simply brushed past, causing some people to curse them. The riders hurled back insults.

“Like elsewhere, three types of slavery were practiced on the Slave Coast,” Lonlon said after praying Abdul not to mind those scenes.

 “Yeah?”

Lonlon nodded. “The first was trading under sail or depot-to-depot slave trading or coastal collection. Under this method, the slave ship laid at anchor in the open sea at one of the depots dotted along the coast and then contacted the African intermediaries to trade for slaves held in the area. After doing business, the ship sailed to the next depot and so on till enough slaves were got before sailing to the New World. This was the case of Agbodrafo.”

Abdul itched to tour the town.

“The second method was trading on land. The slave ships approached European lodges and forts and bought the large number of captives held there.”

“The case of the former Portuguese fort of Ouidah.”

“Yes. And finally trading with a floating depot. This was a combination of the two methods I’ve already mentioned.”

“Who served as intermediaries?” Abdul asked.

“These were Africans whose mastery of European languages enabled them to serve as interpreters between the local slave sellers and the foreign buyers. On the Gold Coast the Dutch depended on the class of brokers called makaelers to maintain contact with African rulers.”

“Makaelers?”

“They were of various origins: princes, merchants, mulattoes, or emancipated slaves.”

Abdul stared at Lonlon.

“On the Gold Coast, we had John Conny who worked with Brandenburg, John Kabes with the RAC (Royal African Company), and Pieter Pasop, with the WIC and Geraldo de Lima at Keta.”

 “What about the Slave Coast?”

“We had Latevi Awoku here at Aneho. But where an organized state reigned, the trade was the preserve of a monarch. The monarch dealt with the Europeans through his mandated agents who were mulatto descendants of European merchants or Africans of high birth or who have been able to attain a high social status. This was the case on the eastern coast west of the Mono, where the responsibility for the trade fell on a royal officer. Thus the trade in Glexwe was controlled by the Yovogan, which means the chief of white people. At Aneho the Aputaga—chief of the beach—of Fantekome played the same role on behalf of the kings of Glidji all along the 18^th century. Such agents authorized the European ships to trade after receiving payment in kind on behalf of the monarch: welcoming gifts, anchorage fee, and a percentage on the transaction. If there was a European fort, it also received these duties or ‘customary rights’.”

“And people were enslaved indiscriminately,” Abdul whined.

Lonlon pointed out the landmark buildings on the street, including a cinema hall to the right. Seeing the ruins that Aneho is today, offering visitors the spectacle of a sad and distressing scene, Abdul wondered who could believe that the sale of numerous slaves here had made this town prosperous and famous. The many two-storey buildings, whose Portuguese and German architecture still remained a living proof of a prestigious and glorious past, were ramshackle for most of them. Worn away by time, their burnt bricks used for the walls cracked in places. In certain cases, if the roof was not totally gone, what remained was only the timber framework and some sheets of corrugated iron, torn into shreds and gone russet with time. What did it really profit Africans to gain European goods and deplete the continent of its able-bodied hands?

“How were slaves obtained here?”

“On the Slave Coast here, one became a slave in three ways: through indebtedness and theft, by birth, and through raids,” Lonlon said.

“Yeah?”

Lonlon nodded. “Should a person be unable to pay a debt, or should they be incapable of making reparations for theft, they were given to a ‘master’ as awoba—a sort of being pawned at the pawnbroker’s. Once the debt was paid, the person became free. If that did not happen and they had children, their offspring also remained in this form of captivity, which explains becoming slave through birth; but the raids were acts of banditry foreign to tradition here. Unfortunately they furnished the largest number of slaves to the Brazilian slave traders.”

“Just because of junk,” Abdul sneered-chided.

“Unfortunately the success of the slave trade depended to a large extent on the choice of six categories of some 100 to 120 products European merchants brought here in exchange for human beings.”

Abdul shook his head sadly.

“The goods were overvalued depending on their being rare or exotic for Africans. The six categories were firearms and accessories, metals and metallic goods, junk and ‘Guinea goods,’ brandy, textiles, and Brazilian tobacco.”

“Nothing useful,” Abdul remarked. “No doubt slavery did not benefit Africans, and shouldn’t have either.”

“At the top of the demand list was Quantano tobacco from Brazil. So much so that the saying went: ‘Bahia has tobacco and needs slaves; the Mina coast has slaves and wants tobacco’.”

“And it was even poor quality tobacco the import of which was prohibited in Portugal.”

“Yes. But being novel here, this third quality tobacco, presented in rolls smeared with molasses for longer conservation but which gave it a taste highly appreciated by the African clientele, was the number one item exchanged for slaves.”

Abdul shook his head.

“Next came textiles.”

“This is also strange.”

“Yes, because they weren’t new here. When the Portuguese reached the coast of Elmina in 1471, they were surprised to find a remarkable network of trade exchanges between the coastal people and the Wangara—Mandingo traders—who came from the Sudan to exchange their wide range of products, dominated by textiles, against gold. The Portuguese killed the Mandingo trade by proposing a much larger assortment of textiles such as woollen cloth, serge, canvas, Indian cotton cloth, striped taffetas, linen cloth, cheap red sheets, ‘rassades’ of all colors; high quality silk and embroidered clothing for monarchs.”

“I don’t find it strange anymore: Africans liked the textiles. Unfortunate that they had to exchange their kind for such baubles.”

“In the third position of goods in demand were firearms and their accessories such as various types of gunpowder, lead, gunflint, and knives.”

“The guns and their accessories assured one more slaves.”

“Yes, who had European arms could easily subdue their neighbour, settle old scores or carry out expeditions. From 1591, it was the muskets which enabled the corps of Spanish renegades sent to the Sudan by the sultanate of Morocco to destroy the army of the Gao Empire although they were superior in number.”

“Yes, firearms consolidated states which used it to their advantage.”

“The main centers of production of arms for the slave trade in the 18^th century were Liège in Belgium as from 1672 and Birmingham in Great Britain where the first order was dated 1698. French firearm manufacturers at St-Etienne and Charleville were not authorized to meet commands of the Compagnie des Indies until 1727.”

“They were also poor quality goods.”

“There were arms of excellent quality and others not so well made. But generally Europeans often sent old or defective guns which sometimes went apart or worse exploded and mutilated the owners when they tried them.”

Although it felt damn funny, Abdul did not feel like laughing. He wished the guns killed the users.

“Next in importance were wines, spirits, and other alcoholic drinks. They were also of bad quality, veritable firewater supplied by France in large quantities. But the English supplied rums and inferior quality tafias from their West Indies. From the manufacturer up to the consumer, all the intermediaries diluted the drinks with water to increase the volume and make more profit.”

Abdul wondered whether to laugh or cry.

“Next in preference were metals and metallic goods. The metals were iron, copper, lead; in raw form, bars ingots; ‘manille, manillette,’ (shackles), or in manufactured forms: bowls, swords, basins, cauldron, cans, tins, plates, and utensils of all sorts.”

One could understand someone wanting these, Abdul thought, but certainly not at the price of a human being.

“The iron bars from Sweden and Germany tolled the knell of local iron foundries.”

You asked for it, Abdul thought with mixed feelings and shook his head.

“Dutch copperware, new or second-hand, was also very well received, thus slowly killing local ceramic work.”

This is one way in which Europe rendered Africa underdeveloped, Abdul thought bitterly, but whose fault?

“Rightly in last position, and the worst imported items, were junk—colored glass or coral beads, rocaille, tin platters, haberdashery or dry goods, bells, mirrors, amber, crystalware, pieces of porcelain, gold paper, etc.—and ‘Guinea goods’—cowry shells, glass jewelry: corals and beads are delivered as drawplate, and glassful, long fine pipes…”

“Of course,” Abdul remarked. “There’s no tobacco without pipe.” 

“… old, ordinary or fancy hats; second-hand clothing, outmoded wigs, and metallic goods such as locks, scissors, cutlass, and machetes which also put up stiff competition with the ones produced in Africa.”  

Abdul sighed. Sad that the immoderate taste for these silly items caused immense suffering to millions of innocent people.

Soon they came to a roadside market to the left, not as animated as typical African markets are, and then the station heaved into view.

It stood between the forked arms of an intersection which formed a Y with the street they were coming from. Abdul was surprised to find Jesus on the crucifix before the small station, as sleepy as the town. Lonlon said the crucifix gave the place the name Yesuvito, meaning Jesus Square. A handful of rundown vehicles were parked at the station.

“The station is doubly quiet today,” Lonlon whispered when they came to it, stopped in his tracks and debated whether they should go further left to the roadside where they could find transport quicker when three transport touts saw them and rushed towards them. They began to talk together to Lonlon, each apparently trying to convince him to board their vehicles. Lonlon seemed not to agree with them, shaking his head all the time. Abdul, waiting for Lonlon to decide, finally made up his mind and Lonlon shrugged and a tout victoriously led them to an old Peugeot 504 caravan car bound for Aklakou on whose route the village of Atoêta was situated at only about 15 kilometres north-east of Aneho.

“Geographically, Aneho is part of Genyi, that is the land on which the Ga migrants settled,” Lonlon said as they crawled into the back seat of the car. Only one man sat in front. “Genyi can be drawn on the southern tip of the map of Togo as a small triangle with Anfoin at the apex at about 10 km north of the coast; and at the base, on the coast, by Agbodrafo (Porto-Seguro) at west and Sanvicondji at the east. But socio-politically, Genyi goes far beyond those borders as the increasing Ge population spread out to other localities.”

A motorcycle-taxi brought in an adolescent boy and a younger girl whose heavy plastic travelling bags called Bafana rested precariously on the petrol tanks of the motorcycles and the three touts bounded towards them.

“Don’t such loads fall off the motorcycles?” Abdul asked.

            “I guess sometimes but I haven’t witnessed one yet. Those riders are agile.”

“It seems quite a history concerns this place,” Abdul said.

“Concerning the origins and the formation of the Genyi, historically the term designates the kingdom of Glidji founded by the Ge people at the end of the 17^th century on a territory stretching in length from Aflao—divided by the border running between Togo and present day Ghana to the west—to the Mono in the east.”

“Yeah?”

Lonlon nodded. “That’s more than the coastal breadth of present day Togo. Our coast is only some 50 kilometers long,” Lonlon said, “from the Hillacondji to the Kodjoviakope border towns. Togo is in the shape of a 600-kilometer corridor, you know.”

One of the transport touts had climbed up the Toyota minibus. The other handed him the bags of the young travellers. He placed them among others on the luggage carrier on top of the vehicle and sat there waiting for some more.

            “The history of the Ge people began with the socio-political situation on the Gold Coast in the second half of the 17^th century. The establishment of permanent contact between the coastal people of the Gold Coast and the European (Danish, English, Portuguese which later became Dutch after 1648) coastal forts since the 16^th century in their role as middlemen in the exchange economy between the hinterland states—producers and suppliers of the main products traded: gold which came essentially from Akyem and Akwapim and ivory from the forest zones of the interior or slaves raided from the same people—and the Europeans was making the coastal society to undergo profound changes. Also the import of European goods into the interior of the lands, the export of gold, ivory, food, and some slaves from the hinterlands done through the coastal ports against the payment of heavy taxes by the Europeans and the carrying of these goods by coastal men were bringing unprecedented wealth to the people of the coast.”

“If only they knew where these would lead them!”

            “Feeling cheated by the coastal states which blocked them from trading directly with the Europeans, the hinterland states decided to change the situation.”

            “The lust for wealth always brought war in those days which destabilized the precarious political situation.”

A car got full and the driver paid the touts commission.

“The Fanti, both traders and skilled boatmen, pedalled across the coast, helped European navigators to come ashore and ferried captives from the coast to the slave ships in canoes and goods in both directions. The covetousness of the people of the immediate hinterlands: the Denkyira towards the Fanti of the west, and the Akwamu towards the Ga and Adangbe of the east, and their taking up arms to carve a niche for themselves in the trade, forced these people to look for a haven of peace eastwards for their activities.”

“War and rumors of war,” Abdul quoted Bob Marley.  

 “Yes. The European companies are also to blame for this unfortunate state of affairs through their system of selective alliance which distorted the balance of the forces present. Faced with the dilemma of trading with large kingdoms, desirous of limiting the amount of customs and other taxes to be paid and wishing to curb the powers of these kingdoms so that they don’t become troublesome competitors, the Europeans often buried their nominal differences and put pressure on the local authorities.”

“While we did the opposite and suffered the pression. Do you see how we became our own enemies?”

Lonlon nodded. “One day the Europeans would support a state in war against its neighbour, next time they would do the opposite, and another time they themselves went to war against their former allies.”

            “Why shouldn’t they when they found passive people before them?” Abdul said with pain and remorse. “The solution would have been for Africans to expel those fiends who had turned themselves into warlords.” He licked the foam from the corners of his mouth.

“Unfortunately our people didn’t, usually because of the novelties that Europeans brought them.”

Abdul soughed.

“The main cause of the Ga-Akwamu conflicts however was economic. The economic importance of Accra from the 17^th century as a trade hub in the region showed in the relatively high number of European traders and their forts established there: the English at James Town or Little Accra under the protection of James Fort; the Dutch at Kinka or Usshertown dominated by Fort crève-coeur; the Danes at Osu or Christiansborg, under the same fort; the Portuguese, after the destruction of their small fort by the Ga in 1578, and the Swedes who had only lodges there. These Europeans were engaged in both underhand and keen fight against each other, each one wishing to oust the other in order to monopolize the trade. The Akwamu kingdom, located in the hinterland of the Ga kingdom, also sought to overthrow Accra in order to monopolize the trade.”

Abdul couldn’t help smiling as the transport touts haggled for the luggage of three passengers who had alighted from a taxi.

            “When is this damn taxi going to be full?” Lonlon grumbled, threatening loudly to get down. Fuming, as the driver convinced him to stay, Lonlon continued his story: “Therefore, even before the middle of the 17^th century, the Akwamu, in line with their expansionist ambitions, began to attack the Ga kingdom.”

            “Didn’t the Ga replicate?”

“The Akwamu had prepared for war, but the Ga kingdom, seriously weakened by internal dissension, hadn’t.”

            “They’d grown complacent on European trash.”

“Maybe they’d reached their apogee. The Akwamu launched their major offensive against Accra in 1677 under the leadership of their king Ansa Sasraku. Seizing the Ga capital, Ayawaso, they plundered and burnt it down. Okai Kwei, the king of Accra, and his elder son, were captured and decapitated.”

“Oh!” Abdul howled and a fat woman trader, who had waddled onto the middle seat, turned and glanced at him.

Abdul nodded amiably and she beamed him a motherly smile.

“Having lost another battle against the Akwamu in 1680, other waves of Ga, Akyem, Adangbe and Fanti people constituting several clans emigrated from the coast of Accra and Elmina. The Ga fled and settled at the present site under the leadership of Foli Bebe, Foli Hémadjro and Amah Kpassem. Foli Bebe founded Glidji and Foli Hemadjro Anfoin.”

“Weren’t other people here?”

“The zones settled by the Fanti, Ga, Akyem, and Adangbe migrants were used on a temporary basis by Xwla and Xweda fishermen and farmers. Being better organized, the newcomers quickly imposed themselves on the existing Adja, Xwla, and Xweda communities in the region, including Aneho the Portuguese called Petit Popo.”

            Abdul laughed at the name.

The Toyota minibus got full. The tout on the roof drew a strong faded blue net over the luggage and clambered down. Two of them pulled ropes across the length and breadth of the bus to secure the goods and then tied them down. The clanging engine burst into life and the bus wheeled out of the station for Lome in a small cloud of dust, the touts waving vigorously in a ‘see-you-later’ fashion to the driver.

“From the end of the 17^th century, the fighting spirit of the kings of Glidji began to spread their fame far and wide. Thus more and more slave traders began to come here.”

“Attracted by war, the factory which churned out captives.”

“With the exception of Keta, Aneho was the only stable maritime outlet of the Genyi for the export of slaves during the whole of the 18^th century when the kingdom reached its apogee. Fante boatmen who ferried the slaves to the slave ships and a host of intermediaries such as interpreters, the Chiefs of the beach called Aputaga and others were the agents who assured the smooth functioning of the trade.”

“Apu…”

Latévi laughed. “Yes, the aputaga—chief of the beach whose title was the equivalent of Yovogan at Ouidah—was responsible for running the trade operations on the beach on behalf of the kings of Glidji who had installed them in the town. They regulated the external trade of the kingdom and received the various taxes—aputanu or putanu—from the slave traders. With the increased exchanges emerged a system of reference evaluated in ounce of gold and then cowries.”

Abdul managed to keep his adrenaline level from rising by fixing his attention on a Nissan minibus which had arrived. The passengers crawled wearily out of it while the two touts loosened the ropes holding the green net cover over the goods on the carrier. A tout climbed up the bus, loosened the cover and handed down the luggage to his colleague who set them down and the owners picked them away.

            It took an uncomfortably long moment for the old Peugeot to have the seven passengers, during which Lonlon recounted, cursed and threatened. Abdul offered to pay for the extra three passengers to avoid the car from being overloaded and to leave early. The tout collected the fare from the passengers, handed them to the driver and soon the rattling car wobbled out of the station and headed north. The woman trader who had been helmed in by two men, turned and clapped noiselessly in thankfulness to Abdul. Abdul shook her puffy hands. They passed a Y intersection and headed towards a bridge.

“This is the Pont Zebe over the northern lagoon,” Lonlon said.

“Looks like a river,” Abdul said, as the car bumped over the narrow bridge. Fishing villages were dotted along the winding banks of the lagoon.

“The right arm flows into the Republic of Benin. And this road—” Lonlon indicated a fork left while they took the right one at an intersection in front of Zebe and stopped at a customs check point. “—goes to Glidji about two kilometers away.”

“Must be some big place.”

“Far less spectacular and sleepier than Aneho.”

“What did slavery benefit Africans?” Abdul whispered painfully.

“Seen from today, nothing. Africans lost far more than they gained from it. This is why we must praise Paul-Erdman Isert, a doctor from Berlin who was in the service of Denmark and who visted Genyi in 1784.”

“Why?” Abdul asked in curiosity.

“Quite a number of European travellers and slave traders who came to the Golf of Guinea during the period of the slave trade left accounts of their stay. That was the case of Isert, who wrote about the portion of the coast from Accra to Ouidah in the last quarter of the 18^th century.”

            Abdul waited expectantly for Lonlon while the car moved again.

“Born on 20 October 1756 in the Brandenburg, after finishing his medical studies, Denmark sent Isert to Africa as Medical Inspector of Danish establishments in Guinea.”

Abdul stared at Lonlon. 

            “Isert embarked on board the ship l’Espérance-du-Prince-Frederick at Copenhagen on 12 July 1783 and after 14 weeks of sailing disembarked in Accra on 16 October. He arrived when the Anlo were fighting against the Danes and he took part in the war which lasted from March to April 1784.”

“For or against the Africans?”

“Certainly against.”

“These covetous Europeans!” 

“Isert visited most of the towns situated between the Volta and Ouidah and interacted with several African personalities, including Latévi Awoku,—the slave trading middleman at Aneho I had mentioned—and Obly, who was the king of Glidji.”

“To buy slaves.”

“No,” Lonlon said, “Isert paradoxically was against slavery.”

Abdul recoiled, a confused look on his face.

“That’s why I said Isert must be praised. After witnessing the ravages of slavery in Africa and in the West Indies, he launched a crusade against the institution which he qualified as the most unnatural and unjust that ever existed, the indelible crime of the Europeans.”

“Yeah?” Abdul sounded tickled.

Lonlon nodded. “He took that stand although he nearly got killed during a revolt of slaves aboard a slave ship he was travelling on to the West Indies …”

“Yeah, to them all whites were slave traders,” Abdul said.

“… He wanted Danish slavery replaced with sane plantation work in Africa where Africans would work as paid workers.”

            “Did he succeed?”

“To some extent. He set up a model colony but this did not please everybody.”

“I can well imagine that.”

“Because of the colony, Kipnasse, the governor of Danish establishments in Accra, and Bioern, his assistant, run into serious difficulties in getting slaves.”

“All were going to the colony,” Abdul ventured, hoping that had happened all over the continent instead of slavery.

“Yes. As the few slaves destined for Christiansborg were sent to Isert’s plantation, Kipnasse knew the full success of Isert’s experience would mean the end of Danish slavery.”

Abdul bit his lips.

“Kipnasse then declared Isert’s enterprise a threat to the Danish slave trade.”

“Let him continue to burn in hell where he is.”

“On 19 January 1789, he invited Isert and his wife to the fort. Two days later, Isert died.”

“Poisoned.”

“Maybe.”

“He surely was eliminated,” Abdul declared emphatically.

Lonlon shrugged. “Isert’s colony also withered away.”

Abdul cursed.     

            Soon they saw two passengers standing at the side of the road. The driver started waving to them to enquire where they were going at the same time they started waving ahead and calling out their destination: Aklakou. Lonlon barked something to the driver as he slowed down. The driver seemed to apologize, smirked, and scratched his shaved head while the car picked up speed. The passengers burst into laughter. The fat woman and some passengers turned around and smiled thankfully at Lonlon.

Abdul turned questioningly towards Lonlon.

“He wanted to pick those people up and I refused,” he explained.

“But we’ve paid for the three places to overload.”

“That’s what he seemed to have forgotten. He cannot do that with me Lonlon Locoh.”

Abdul thumbed him and his face beefed up some more.

            “Concerning Genyi, Isert wrote that there was civil strife at the time of his visit to the Genyi. These civil wars, which strained relations between Aneho and Genyi, were caused by the sudden silence of the kings of Glidji. The power of Genyi declined seriously after the disastrous campaign of 1795 which opposed an army of Glidji led by King Foli Adjalo and Latévi Awoku against a coalition of Xwla and Xweda. The king and Latévi were killed.”

“Two slave traders less.”

            Lonlon giggled. “Genyi, which never recovered from this defeat, forever lost its eminent position from the beginning of the 19^th century.”

            “A slave trading kingdom less.”  

Lonlon giggled again. “Being the main coastal port of the Genyi, Aneho played an important part in the rise and the enrichment of an important political and trade aristocracy called Tomehuenyi in the local language, Cabocero in Portuguese, Cabécère in French, and Cabocier or Cabozeer by the English.”

            “I prefer to call them slavocrats.”

            “Does the word exist?” Lonlon asked humorously.

            “Yes, from now on.”

            They laughed hard and the fat woman turned and smiled at them.

“At the beginning of the 19^th century, profiting from the weakness of Glidji, the Tomehuenyi of Aneho rebelled for the control of the coastal trade, especially the royalties paid by the European slave traders. This led to a series of antagonisms which degenerated into civil war in 1821, at which the Lawson clan, with the support of the slave trader Chacha, defeated the Adjigo aputaga, representatives of the kings of Glidji in the town. Comlagan, the reigning aputaga, had to seek refuge at less than 10 km to the west, where he founded the town of Agoue.”

“Oh!”

Lonlon nodded. “Troubles broke out again in 1835 and ended with the chasing away of the Adjigo chief, Kodjo Agbossou, who fled east to found Agbodrafo. The Akagban, now became masters of the town, but they were however not able to totally supplant the Adjigo.”

“All because of the evil slave trade.”

Lonlon nodded. “Thank God this ignominious trade declined and the plantation system encouraged by the German colonialists appeared in the region in the 20^th century. Such farms had been initiated by Afro Brazilians, personalities, chiefs and their agent brokers. We’re not far from Atoêta now,” Lonlon added happily. “Some five kilometers and we’re in the slave village.”  

“Do the people of Atoêta talk freely about slavery?” Abdul asked hopefully.

“No,” Lonlon said emphatically, shaking his head. “Like everywhere else in the Ge country, talking of slavery at Atoêta is a taboo and a delicate subject. When people do so, it is only in whispers or in muffled tones. Even then, they make sure that there’re no eavesdroppers around. Further, they avoid the indecency and the brutality of using the exact term amepeple which literally means ‘a bought person,’ and instead employ the courteous word amehenva, that is to say ‘a person brought from outside’ which is generally judged soothing and more discreet.”

“Why all this?” Abdul asked wistfully, sounding irked.

“Slavery is a taboo subject because it is embarrassing and delicate. Embarrassing because people find it demeaning for their sense of self-worth to talk of or have someone else reveal former slaves in their ancestry.”

“That’s running away from one’s past.”

Lonlon nodded-shrugged. “It is also a delicate subject because if it isn’t handled with care, it can tear the social coherence apart. Hence, in the families and in all the Ge communities, a self-censorship is imposed on the question; and not even the historian escapes this as he is obliged not to reveal any embarrassing detail gathered during field research.”

“What?” Abdul howled.

Lonlon nodded. “Many colleagues who have done research here for their theses on slavery in the Ge country have hushed information their informants asked them not to write about.”

Abdul shook his head. He found it hard to believe that historians who had the duty to unearth hidden historical facts themselves shrouded them in culpable silence. After selling us they imposed silence on the act.

“However, Togolese historians are of the feeling now that two centuries after the total cessation of the ‘buying of people,’ it was high time the taboo was broken.”

Abdul gave Lonlon a high five.

“Both the verbal and the written.”

Abdul, who felt like hugging Lonlon, gave him a warm handshake.

“The slave trade should no longer constitute a ‘black hole’ in the history of mankind. Despite the silence this burning issue continues to exert a strong influence in human rights and cultural pluralism. The ultimate symbol of violence shedding a disturbing light on the values of the society which brought it up and those which practiced it, the slave trade has been shrouded too long in an all-pervading deafening silence and furtively presented in history books as just another episode in European-African relations. The historical and moral significance of this conscious attempt to truncate or obscure an important issue in human history is aptly expressed by the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel: ‘The executioner always kills twice - the second time with his silence’.”

“Wow!” Abdul raved, while his lean face broke into a proud grin.

Tickled too, Lonlon said, “The silence must therefore be broken. But there’s a snag.”

Abdul turned towards Lonlon. “What’s it?”

“People may be reluctant to give certain pieces of information they consider delicate.”

Soughing, Abdul winced, rubbing his forehead.

“So people must be sensitized about the necessity to open up.”

Abdul gave Lonlon another warm handshake.

“The silence must be broken for four reasons.”

Abdul was all ears.   

“One: history must henceforth be written with no matter bottled up and left unsaid. Breaking the censorship and blocking the gaps can make history fully play its psychotherapeutic role of healing people and societies of their complexes and neuroses.”

            “That’s the reason for my peregrination,” Abdul said, giggling. “I don’t want to continue being sick or half-healed.”

“You’d be totally healed,” Lonlon promised. “Second reason: nobody should be embarrassment to have had a slave in the lineage, because that was rather a trite phenomenon.”

Abdul nodded in agreement.

“In effect, research done at the main Ge slave trading areas of Goumoukope, Atoêta, Agbodrafo, Agoue, and Aneho revealed that many people there descended from a slave.”

 “Yeah?” Abdul’s interest appeared peaked.

Lonlon nodded. “They had a great-great-grandparent, great-grandparent or even a                grandparent who was slave. Atoêta for example was a former village where slaves were barracked; practically everybody there has a slave fore parent.”

Abdul died to be there. He told himself once again that he should be careful about accusing all Africans of selling them. Here, right in Africa, were people suffering the same fate as him.

“Therefore such a common and general ‘opprobrium,’ that was slavery should not be regarded as a tragedy: it was part of everyday life for several generations. Besides, having descended from slaves does not constitute a handicap for one’s self-fulfilment in the present.” 

Abdul nodded-shrugged.

“Third, slavery, or becoming a slave, has always been the result of bad luck or an accident.”

Abdul nodded.

 “Nobody chose to be a slave. That’s a truism not worth repeating. Yet we must because the descendants of those whose ancestors enslaved others use the word ‘slave’ as a weapon against the children of former enslaved people as if their fore parents forced others to walk that satanic road so that their progenitors could have something to debase others with.”

“Powerful,” Abdul murmured admiringly. “Slavery should not be a stigma.”

“That’s right, for how did one become a slave in Genyi, or anywhere else?”

Abdul was all ears.

“Most of the time one became a slave through wars, raids, or abduction.”

Abdul nodded.

“An adolescent boy gets captured when he went to visit a friend in the neighboring hamlet at a few hundred meters from his village; a young girl gets seized on going to fetch water at the backwater a few meters away from her village; a man gets pounced on while walking to farm on the outskirts of the village; a woman gets kidnapped on going to fetch firewood in the woods around the farmlands.”

Abdul chewed his lips.

“Concerning Togo, young men were hijacked at Atakpame by Hausa cavalrymen on market days. I know a very high Togolese personality to whose great-grandmother that happened to.”

Abdul’s eyes got widened.

Lonlon nodded. “There’s also a prominent businesswoman here whose grandmother was kidnapped as a young girl at the village square at ‘Tchamba’ by the same cavalrymen.”

“You know her too?”

“Sure.”

“That sounds recent, though.”

“Slavery here continued well beyond the universal abolition of slavery.”

“Up to when?”

“Even the colonial era.”

“The so-called illegal slave trade.”

Lonlon nodded. “I like the word ‘so-called’. Who or what made the European slave trade legal?” he sneered.

“The lords of this earth.”

Lonlon tut-tut. “In the atmosphere of generalized insecurity which characterized the era of slavery, to fall into the trap of raiders was something that could happen to anybody at any time; just a little bad luck and one’s fate was sealed as fast as being struck with a lightning bolt. Is it therefore acceptable for ill-intentioned people to despise others simply because their ancestors, on a certain day of their lives, met such a misfortune? Of course, not.”

Abdul nodded again.

            “Fortunately here in the Ge country, the domestic slave became a free person at the end of a generation. Then they got integrated into the host family. Once that happened, their children became completely free and effectively treated as such. Therefore, any Ge person who jeers at such people today is simply being dishonest.”

“Perfectly.”    

            “Much as I know slavery is not hereditary, should one therefore carry it like a bad gene?”

            Abdul shook his head, whispering, “Not at all.”     

“The fourth reason for breaking the taboo of slavery is that self-fulfilment counts more than the condition of one’s birth. The tendency of non-enslaved people to saddle the descendants of former slaves with a congenital and eternal inferiority status comes from the pernicious ideology of ‘value through birth’. That people fight to break out of an unfortunate situation into which birth had thrust them is proof that self-fulfilment is valued over the appalling conditions of birth.”

            “Yeah, no one accepts to be downtrodden: slave, serf, bourgeois, proletariat.”

            “Right,” Lonlon agreed and yelled something to the driver who nodded. “That people really break out of their downtrodden status is proof that value through birth doesn’t exist. Being a slave does not make one a lower human being; and it is precisely the refusal to be treated as such that goaded individuals, communities, and people under serfdom to fight for emancipation, even when others had paid the supreme price for doing so. In the Ge country there are countless examples of slaves or their descendants who have lifted themselves from that abysmal depth to heights achieved by their masters or even exceeding them.”

“That was the case in the New World too.”

Nodding, Lonlon craned his neck, peered through the car’s foggy windscreen bearing a crack made by the impact of a flying pebble in the right upper corner and whispered, “We’re almost there.”

Abdul peered ahead too to glimpse a village.

Lonlon spoke quickly: “In his book De la biologie à la culture (From Biology to Culture), touching on the subject, Professor Jacques Ruffié also recognized that the enslavement of Africans was still a taboo subject, of which one felt ashamed or tried to ignore, when one does not try to justify it. He found the most unusual conspiracy to be the silence which links the European—in his case, French—private keeper of documents on the slave trade and the African holder of oral tradition on the same, each of them closed to public scrutiny because their revelation could still, even today, create problems for them. The work of the historian, Professor Ruffié stressed, consists in avoiding uncertainties, shame, silence, and to lift the taboos.”

A smile breaking his grave face, Abdul gave Lonlon a high five.

“Here we are,” Lonlon said as the car slowed down before a village after less than half an hour’s journey and the smell of partially burnt gasoline invaded the interior.

Atoêta was like any other African village, a quiet place made up of thatch-roof huts mixed with some modern stone buildings.

“This village was founded towards 1835-1840 by Joachim d’Almeida popularly known as Zoki Azata,” the chief’s linguist Lonlon had called on explained. He was a tall, smiling man with dark dried skin. “He was a freed slave of Mahi origin, who returned from Bahia in Brazil and lived at Agoue and Ouidah. Zoki was the deformation of Joachim since the local people could not pronounce his Brazilian first name; d’Almeida was the name of his former Portuguese master; and Azata means ‘storey building’ in the language of Ouidah.”

Lonlon explained to Abdul in a whisper that Joachim d’Almeida had a storey building in Ouidah whose storey had hiding places like an attic or a loft where, the slave trade having become illicit, he kept the slaves while waiting for an opportunity to sell them. “However another version says that Azata was a place at Glidji where he hid the slaves the kings of Dahomey were looking for,” he added.

“In any case he had a secret place for hiding slaves,” Abdul said and he and Lonlon laughed

“Truly, our village was a center of quartering of slaves in barracks with a double vocation,” the linguist said as he led them to the site where the slaves were quartered. “First, slaves destined for sale at Ouidah and Agoue at a little less than ten kilometres south of here transited through here where they spent some time; it was also a center of stable quartering in barracks for a slave labor force destined for commercial agriculture.”

“Commercial agriculture?” Abdul wondered.

“Yes,” the linguist said after Lonlon had interpreted for him. “The slaves grew maize and other food products for their subsistence; but especially, they maintained the cassava plantations of the master. The cassava was used to make gari and tapioca for export to Brazil.”

“The system wasn’t too different from what pertained overseas,” Abdul remarked.

“Yes,” Lonlon agreed. “The mode of production apparently was modelled on that of the Latin-American fazenda, with what that meant as pressure for work put on the servile labor force, especially at the time of harvests and the processing of the gari and tapioca.”

“Were some of the slaves on the plantations sometimes taken for sale for export?” Abdul asked Lonlon.

“Tradition does not make that clear, but with the pro-slavery mentality of the masters who had no qualms about such matters, I wouldn’t be surprised if it did happen. What was sure was that when slavery was abolished, Joachim d’Almeida organized his own trade, no longer triangular but bilateral. He traveled to Brazil from time to time, to study the market and meet his business partners. And at the time of his death in 1852 following a heart attack, he was still waiting for a ship to go.”

May I laugh or cry, Abdul told himself.

Lonlon shrugged when their eyes met, as if he read Abdul’s mind.

They arrived at the quartering in site. It was X.

“My own people passed through here,” the linguist whispered, after peering around him.

Abdul stared at him, feeling revulsion for the linguist’s shame of his past and pain for the stigma he has to fight all life-long to avoid.

“Today, we the descendants of plantation slaves have acquired as much rights and sometimes even more than the natural descendants of our former masters,” the linguist added proudly as they continued on to the two memorial sites erected in memory of Joachim d’Almeida and Pédro Kouadjo Landjékpo da Silveira, two personalities who engaged in the slave trade.

They were X

Abdul stared at their memorials with some disdain.

“These memorials are for which memory of these traitors?” Abdul asked.

“Without this these people’s memories would have been wiped out as slave traders,” Lonlon explained with some embarrassment.

“Why did Africans participate in the slave trade at all? Worse, why did they engage in it for four centuries?” Abdul said in exasperation, in his unquenched quest for a satisfactory answer to this nagging question.

“We could get the answer if we asked why former slaves like Joachim d’Almeida who returned to Africa participated in the slave trade.”

Abdul puckered his brow.

“In 1835 slaves in Brazil rebelled against their masters who chartered ships and brought them back to Africa, principally to Benin and Togo. These people, mainly mulattoes who bore names such as d’Almeida, de Souza, da Silveira, da Costa, dos Reis, etcetera, practiced segregation by living separate from the natives. Worse, they got engaged in the slave trade.”

Abdul stared at Lonlon who nodded at him.

“That people whose ancestors had been sold as slaves, who had experienced the horrors of slavery in the New World and who even had rebelled against the maltreatment meted out to them would want to send other people into that hell should tell you how at that time the slave trade had become an accepted form of trade without any scruples.”

Abdul puffed and looked about. Difficult to believe that this quiet place was one of the scenes of the longest and the most painful drama the world has ever known.

Soon they left Atoêta for Anfoin. They had no choice but to board an overloaded minibus going from Aklakou to Vogan via Anfoin. It was full of peasants who chattered all the way.

“If people hardly talk about slaves in their own families, however they open up easily concerning the regions of origin of the slaves brought to Genyi at the pre-colonial time. It has also been possible to determine the capture sites, the extension of the phenomenon in time, its perception and the social integration of the victims.”

            Abdul died to know where the slaves brought into the Ge country came from.

“Concerning the capture sites the Ge claim that their slaves were taken from places far from here. But nothing can be far from the truth. In effect why do they pretend so? If it doesn’t sound impertinent to reduce people from far regions to slavery, on the contrary it seems indecent to do so among the neighboring populations with whom one should normally maintain friendly as well as cooperative relations. The Ge therefore seem eager to preserve the good neighbourly relations they have with the ethnic groups around them.”

            “I think this is where you talked about slavery as a delicate subject capable of tearing the social fabric apart if it wasn’t handled with care.”

“Exactly!” A satisfied grin split Lonlon’s face.

“The Ge therefore say that their slaves came from among the Adja of Moyen-Mono; the Tchamba, the Kotokoli (Tem), the Kabyè, and the Moba of Northern Togo; the Mosi of Burkina Faso; the Mahi and the Bariba respectively from the center-south and the north of the Republic of Benin; and the Yoruba of Nigeria.”

“Quite a number.”

Lonlon nodded. “But Tchamba is the name often given as the souce of slaves for the Ge country.  ”

“Yeah?”

Lonlon nodded. “But it must be noted that that was a generic term. As a toponym,—that is, place name—it designated the whole of the Tchamba country; but as an ethnonym,—that is, the name of an ethnic group—it referred not only to the members of that ethnic group, but also included other ethnic groups from the north who, after their capture, had been kept in the town while on transit to the coast.”

“Just like a place called Salaga in Ghana.”

“Exactly!” Lonlon exclaimed. “Tchamba, situated very near to the left bank of the Mono river, was a central market where Hausa and Bariba cavalrymen, Tchaoudjo warriors and Tchokossi or Mango roughneck soldiers brought captives generated from their slave trading expeditions for sale. Here, the captives were regrouped and then brought down to the coast by caravans over routes along the river. Other indications of the northern origins (north Togo, north Benin, Burkina Faso) of the captives were the pierced noses among both sexes, or the pierced ears among the men.”

Memories of his childhood disgust of such people from glossy pictures in the National Geographical magazine and his visit to the Lobi country in Ghana flooded Abdul.

“As I indicated earlier, the Ge had also often taken slaves from the southern regions of Togo. We can talk of the Watchi country to the north and north-west of Glidji, the lower Haho valley and the region of Tsevie to the north-east of the Ge country, and finally the Bas-Mono or Lower Mono region had all been sources of supply of slaves for the Ge country.”

“A guide in Northern Ghana said that slavery killed any human sentiment in those who practiced it,” Abdul said and Lonlon nodded. ”This is what we are seeing here where no love of neighbour prevailed.”

“Certainly. Concerning particularly the Watchi people, the Ge claim that they only used them in the systems of métayage or sharecropping as you call it in the US; ‘human pawning’ known here as awoba (people left as guarantee with a creditor till the repayment of a debt); farm wage-earner; or the simple situation of free domestic worker called amegbononvi. Yet the reality was something else and worse than what we are made to believe.”

“This is why I don’t understand descendants of slaves who feel disgraced at the status of their fore parents instead of the self-reproach of the children of the perpetrators of slavery emboldening them to raise their heads in pride.” 

            “If we experienced this at Atoeta, it means that what you’re suggesting is easily said than done,” Lonlon countered and Abdul threw his arms about. Lonlon continued his story: “The Watchi country and its surrounding areas had in effect been a supply of human cargo for the trans-Atlantic crossing.”

            Abdul wondered why Lonlon was so sure but he didn’t need to wait for the answer.

            “The slave trader, W. Bosman, related that on arriving at Aneho from the Gold Coast in 1697, he got only three slaves to buy in three days. But the people assured him that they could furnish him 200 in the same three days. Taking this for a joke, he weighed anchor and sailed to Ouidah. On arrival, he learnt that as promised, the Ge people had gone on a slaving expedition and had brought down more than 200 slaves.”

Abdul whistled.

“Realizing his absence, they sold the captives to the Portuguese.”

“Dastardly people!” Abdul cursed.

“The question is, where on earth did the people of Aneho get the more than 200 slaves in three days, if they did not take them from their immediate neighbors such as the Watchi, the Adja, the Pla, or the Peda of Bas-Mono?”

“The answer is clear.”

“We could say that the urgency of the situation obliged them to resort to their immediate neighbourhood to satisfy Bosman’s demand.”

“No way!” Abdul thundered.

Lonlon tittered. “Really. Because the firm promise of the Ge to Bosman to get that number of captives in that short time and their really doing it means that they had been taking captives from their environs.”

            “No doubt about that.”

The bus slowed down at an approaching town.

“Here we are in Anfoin,” Lonlon said and added: “A little further and we’ll be in Vogan, the capital of the Watchi area.”

Abdul found Anfoin, a sprawling town, far more cosmopolitan than Atoêta, but much less so compared to Aneho.

“Didn’t the Ge take any from here?”

“I doubt. Anfoin is also a Ge town founded by Foli Hemadjro, one of the two brothers of Foli Bebe who founded Glidji.”

“Only the other, the ‘foreigner’ was sold.”

Lonlon agreed with a nod. “Another major source of slaves for the Ge was the Zio-Haho interfluve,” Lonlon said as they went to inspect the vestiges of the slave trade in the Anfoin town, “from the level of Lac Togo to that of Tsevie, and certainly by the Haho and Yoto valleys, up to Notse. Bands of raiders from the region and from the Ge country prowled the length and breadth of the zone carrying out a persistent manhunt.” Lonlon giggled as if at a joke. “Often the dramatic rivalled with the tragic-comedy: sometimes raiders happily on the way to the slave market were themselves despoil of their catch by other stronger raiders.”

Abdul wondered whether to laugh his head off or cry his eyes out. “Dog eats dog, must tears be shed for those fiends?” he said simply.

            “Never! But should all go well, the raiders sent the captives mainly to Kpome—also known as Kpogame—and Dekpo (to be precise, the ‘Kponte-Dekpo complex; for Dekpo, situated at about 4 km south of Kpome, and where precisely the Blokotigomé market is found, functions as the port of Kpomé on the immediate bank of the lake).” 

“The name even sounds ominous,” Abdul remarked, wrinkling his nose.

“Blokotigomé means ‘under the bloko tree.”

“I see,” Abdul sighed, his mind zooming back to baobab trees under which captives were sold in Northern Ghana.

“Even though coastal merchants, including those from Agbozume and Anloga in the lower Volta region of today’s Ghana between the Volta and the Mono came to purchase the slaves from the Blokotigomé market, the kings and the notables of Agbodrafo were the biggest buyers in the 19^th century. They mainly bought slaves from Dékpo because of its proximity. Dekpo was such a major market for slaves that the kings created the administrative function of Dekpoga (chief of Dekpo) on the lines of the Aputaga of Aneho and Yovogan at Ouidah. Like his counterparts, this royal employee at Dekpo was entrusted with the responsibility of ensuring that the economic, material and moral interests of the king and his retinue were protected.”

            “Goddamn them!”

“Two destinations were reserved for the captives brought into the Ge country between the 17^th and the 19^th centuries. Those taken from the neighboring ethnic groups such as the Watchi of the northern plateau of Glidji, the Adja, the Pla and the Peda of Bas-Mono, and the Ewe of Bas-Haho and the Zio-Haho interfluve, were exported immediately.”

“Why?”

“The proximity of their homes made them more likely to flee back home if kept in the Ge country.”

Abdul sighed.

“However, the Tchamba, Moba and Bariba captives were used as domestic slaves or plantation laborers in Genyi because the long distance from their native towns was dissuasive enough for them to attempt to flee or revolt.”

Abdul shook his head.

The vestiges at Anfoin consisted of leg-irons, chains and huts in which slaves were kept. Jocelyine was right, Abdul told himself, the vestiges of the slave trade in Togo were not elaborate.

The red-hot sun was sliding down the dome when Lonlon bought three large bowls of gari—grilled maize flour—cheap here and he and Abdul left Anfoin for Aneho.

“The Slave Coast, where Dahomey and Aneho are located, was abandoned by the European navigators during the 15^th century because of the little economic attraction it offered them,” Lonlon started telling the history of Aneho once again as the decrepit minibus was whining up the gentle hill from the town. “These zones only really became interesting for them towards the end of the 16^th century with the organization of the triangular slave trade. Thus, it was the slave trade which made the Dahomean and the Aneho coast known to Europeans.”

Abdul who was going to nod rather winced.

“The earliest descriptions of Aneho in the 17^th century, especially from the 1680s to the 1690s when she was known as Little Popo or Petit-Popo to European slave traders, come principally from the correspondence of a certain Rawlinson describing events mainly in the places where his employers had factories, such as ‘Offra’ (today’s Godomey in the Republic of Benin) and to some degree the western section of the Slave Coast which included Aneho.”

            “Slave Coast,” Abdul sneered. “What a dastardly name!”

“Between the 16^th and the 19^th centuries, the slave trade, no doubt, was the major event that marked the coastal populations, especially those of West Africa. There was hardly a town of the Gulf of Guinea which wasn’t involved or affected in one way or the other by it. It wasn’t for nothing that our part of the coast bore the infamous name of the Slave Coast.”

            “Slave Coast,” Abdul sneered again. But who was to blame for that name? Abdul sighed.

“Aneho was no exception. Danish companies had a permanent presence on the coast of Togo with the creation of a trading post at Aneho in 1772. I’ve already said that Aneho being the sole maritime outlet of the kingdom of Glidji enriched it very early thus contributing to the formation of an important political and mercantile aristocracy there.”

“Slavocracy,” Abdul corrected.

            . “The slavocratic trade,” Lonlon said and tittered, “on which Aneho was heavily dependent, became the engine of its growth for two centuries. This enabled the Ge of Aneho to develop very early a highly advanced mercantile spirit which enabled them to control the major part of transactions which were carried out in the region and so became capitalists and lived in great opulence.”

            “Who could have believed it seeing the sleepy town?”

            “Yet the slave trade at Aneho was very important. It is estimated that the Slave Coast accounted for nearly a quarter of the total volume of the trans-Atlantic slave trade over 3,500 kilometers, that is, 43.75% of the territories affected by this trade. Considering the importance of Aneho and the particular interest slave traders attached to it, it is not difficult to imagine the number of people that she helped to deport.”

            Abdul sighed, his sleepy, blood-shot eyes, now keen, recoiling into their sockets.

“It was not surprising the ruling classes of Aneho lived in great abundance.”

            “If only they knew that the wages of sin is death! Look at the crumbling European style buildings in Aneho today!”

“Even good things come to an end,” Lonlon simply continued his story and Abdul nodded in agreement. “The abolition of slavery and emancipation in 1860 put a brake on the development of the town but did not kill it.”

“The ill-gotten wealth of two centuries was enough to keep it going.”

“That’s true,” Lonlon agreed. “But it was mainly because the big merchants of Aneho moved into the trade in palm oil and copra which had outlets in Germany, France and England where the palm oil was mainly used in the making of soap and candles.”

            “Imagine where West Africa would have been today if agriculture had been practised here for all those centuries instead of slavery!”

“This new trade was important and flourishing and the transactions at Aneho were the largest on the whole of the West African coast.”

            How come the town is so drowsy now? Abdul wondered.

“Aneho, the economic hub of the Ge country, is, as you noticed, in ruins today,—” Lonlon turned towards Abdul who nodded vigorously, the proverb ill-gotten wealth seldom profits on his mind. “The numerous two-storey buildings which made it world-renowned are neglected. Incessant attacks by bad weather—the combined effects of salt-laden sea breeze, rain, heat, humidity, wind, and others—aided by lack of maintenance are making them wear slowly away.”

Yes, Abdul thought happily, aren’t the wages of sin death? Aneho is paying for the sin of slavery of its builders, Abdul wanted to say with glee but something held him from doing so. Self-censorship, he thought uncomfortably.

“The expression ‘aspect of a bombarded town’ used by the municipal authorities on 16 October 1959, is not exaggerated. Aneho, as most observers rightly say, has become a ghost town.”

            “Haunted by the ghosts of the slaves who passed through it,” Abdul remarked and Lonlon glanced sharply at him and then shrugged while Abdul nodded happily.

“While you may be right, the decline of the town and of its civilization cannot be attributed to a single factor. We can cite three principal indirect causes for the present economic and social doldrums of Aneho in particular and the Ge country in general.”

Shaking his head, shrugging his shoulders and pouting, Abdul made gestures of indifference.

“Of course, the abolition of the slave trade in the 19^th century was a determining historic factor for the death of the town.”

“And rightly so,” Abdul observed forcefully. “Who lives by the sword surely dies by the sword.”

“Besides, Glidji and Aneho had suffered bitter defeat by the powerful coalition of the Fon, Peda and Pla at the battle of Adame in 1795 which sought to break the desire of hegemony of Genyi.”

Abdul made the gesture of indifference again.

“Thirdly, the fratricidal fight between the Adjigo and the Lawson dynasties for supremacy in Aneho culminated in two civil wars in 1821 and 1834 which led to the founding of Agoue-Adjigo and Agbodrafo and thus sapped the energy of the ancient town. You know, united we stand, divided we fall.”

            Let them fall to pieces, these sons of slave traders.

“Other minor factors aiding during and after the colonial period, Aneho slipped into its present coma.”

“That Aneho, a town whose richness and prosperity were built on the slave trade, has lost practically everything of this shameful period, is only justice done to the ancestors they sent away into hell. Nobody should live definitely on the tears and the sweat of others.”

Lonlon became quiet for a while before speaking again. When he did, it was a slightly different topic that he brought up. “One of your main objectives on coming down here is to learn lessons from the return and the integration of Afro-Brazilians into our society in the 19^th century.”

“Yep,” Abdul said, nodding.

“I think the history and the integration of the Afro-Brazilians into the Ge country, especially that of the d’Almeida and the Santos families of Aneho would be in the right direction.”

“Let it come,” Abdul encouraged.

“In the 17^th century, only Elmina counted more than Aneho for the Portuguese concerning the supply of slave labor for the sugar cane, coffee, and cotton plantations and the rich gold-bearing deposits of Minas Gerais in Brazil.”

“Cursed town!” Abdul muttered under his breath.

“The kings of Dahomey: Agadja of Abomey (1708-1732) and Guézo (1818-1858), in their desire to retain the monopoly of the trade on the coast, launched incessant raids in the hinterlands culminating in the supply of numerous slaves to the European slave traders.”

Another cursed town! Abdul thought bitterly while his breath rasped in his nose, his eyes receded into their sockets and his lips distended in a pout.

“The Arda (Allada) trading post of Ouidah brought more than 30,000 slaves to Aneho—one of the most important slave ports on the coast after Ouidah and Agoue—via the commercial itineraries of Agoue, Agouegan, Agome Seva, and Glidji, all towns along the banks of the Mono.”

Chest heaving and eyes shut tight, Abdul leaned against the hard seat.

“At Aneho, the captives were bartered against guns, cotton fabrics, all sorts of utensils, tobacco, and alcoholic drinks such as whisky, cognac, and rum and they ended up as slaves at Bahia, the former capital of Brazil.”

Abdul’s breathing increased.

“The first shipload of captives from the Guinea coast arrived in Bahia in 1538. It didn’t take long for the sugar cane and coffee plantations overseas to be extended, creating the need for more slaves which caused the trade to be expanded between 1580 and 1640.”

“S---,” Abdul cursed under his breath.

“While only 14,000 African slaves could be found in Brazil in 1585, from the 17^th century, 44,000 Blacks were landed there. But in the 18^th century, 55,000 of them were deported there each year. Not surprisingly, at the census of 1798, the slaves accounted for an important part of the Brazilian population: 406,000 free blacks and 1,582,000 chattel slaves in a population of 3,250,000.”

“My God!” Abdul cried.

Lonlon nodded. “In 1818 the population of the deportees swelled to 3,817,000 inhabitants of which 1,930,000 were slaves and 585,000 emancipated blacks. In 1830, they represented 28.6% of the Brazilian population.”

“Kings of Dahomey!” Abdul exclaimed maliciously, slowly shaking his head.

“People in Dahomey and Nigeria lived in perpetual anguish of being captured and the captured mulled over the fear of the unknown in the Americas. The crossing to Brazil was long and done under deplorable conditions of the overloaded ships.”

Abdul’s breathing approached sobbing.

            “The deported Africans were enslaved in the cotton and sugar cane provinces of the north, in coffee and cocoa plantations, and in the gold mines of Minas Gerais and Goyaz. However some of the free blacks were engaged in activities other than farming. For example, the educated and qualified ones worked as architects, sculptors, locksmiths, ironsmiths, and shoe-repairers. They were sometimes well paid. But the majority: the farm hands were badly treated, poorly fed and not well accommodated; they worked long hours under the watchful eye of the overseer who did not hesitate to flog them, especially the slaves he thought were not working hard enough. This inhuman treatment obliged some blacks to organize themselves against the planters into resistant groups called quilombos.”

Abdul’s eyes flew open, his harsh breathing ceased and he straightened himself.

“In 1607 and 1650, numerous revolts broke out, led by the advanced blacks, making the Brazilian authorities of Bahia and Rio de Janeiro to grapple with many problems. To dissuade the blacks, captured fugitives were branded with an ‘F’ (fugäo) and their ears cut off.”

Abdul was wide awake now and he winced. “To signify that they were hard eared?” His voice sounded broken.

 “I guess.”

“The hard eared were rather the plantocrats who pretended not to hear the plaintive cries of their enslaved Africans for liberty.”

“You’re right,” Lonlon said. “The rebels who managed to escape lived clandestinely in the forest zones. They later formed rural communities in the valleys of Rio Mundatto, Cerca Réal, Dô Macao established in the 17^th century as a black state, the Republic of Palmarès recognized by Brazil …”

“Wow!”

“… but destroyed in the 18^th century.”

“S---!” Abdul swore, a little loud, and some passengers swivelled and stared at him. Abdul smiled at them and they smiled back and buried themselves in their thoughts once again.

“This destruction led to several black insurrections against army and police buildings between 1807 and 1815.”

“That’s it!” Abdul raved and some passengers again turned towards him, murmuring this time.

“They wonder what’s thrilling you so much,” Lonlon explained.

“Tell them,” Abdul said and Lonlon burst into the Ge-Mina language.

The passengers turned and thumbed Abdul.

“They say you’re a descendant of the ancestor sent away and they wish you welcome.”

“Are they descendants of slaves?”

“No idea. But our consciousness now as Africans and not such or such an ethnic group make people now feel close to the descendants of the deported captives.”

Abdul thumbed back and the bus burst into hilarious laughter. Abdul heard someone say Yovo and asked Lonlon to tell them he was not Yovo. The bus clapped proudly and hummed with animated conversation.

Lonlon came back to the subject. “To placate the blacks, certain favourable legislative measures were put in place but rarely applied.”

“Tomfoolerism, that’s like them.”

Lonlon laughed about that. “The free blacks had possibilities for social promotion and enjoyed the same legal rights as the whites.”

“Theoretically,” Abdul stressed, his forefinger raised in the air.

“They received religious education and literacy training. Hence they were baptized and followed the prescriptions of the church and could read and write.”

“The church sinned gravely by failing to come to the aid of people in danger.”

“From 1830, under pressure from the clergy, …”

“At last.”

“… anti-slavery societies, and free blacks, the slave trade was prohibited. Unable to stand the pangs of exile no more, and especially following a series of revolts, the bloodiest of which was that of the Malé in 1835, thousands of emancipated Africans of Bahia, soon followed by others of other regions of Brazil, began to return to the African ports of Ouidah, Agoue, Porto-Novo in Dahomey and Lagos in Nigeria.”

“Through the door of no return, the return.”

“Yeah! This was the case of Zoki d’Almeida and Ichola Santos who came back in 1835 to places near their native homes of Porto-Novo, Cotonou, Ouidah, Agoue, and Aneho.”

“How did they know their ancestral homes?” Abdul itched to know.

“Of Mahi race, Zoki, the ancestor of the d’Almeida, who was born around 1802 in the village of Hoko in today’s Bénin was from Savalou, in the north of the same country; and Ichola, the ancestor of the Santos, was Mahi on his father’s side and Nago on the maternal side, came from the east. Other Afro-Brazilians did not really know their native towns and on their return settled at places located near what they thought were their countries of origin.”

How lucky they were! Abdul thought wistfully.

“One of the first Afro-Brazilians to set foot in 1838 at Agoue which was a prosperous town and the last bastion of the slave trade before Aneho was Manuel Joachim d’Almeida, alias Zoki Azata, and Pereira Santos. Lodged in makeshift dwellings established on lands offered by Adandozan Guezo, eight years later, they built quarters: the ‘Zokikome’ area was founded in 1843 by Zoki Azata and ‘Idiata’ by Pereira Santos.”

Abdul wished he could do the same.

“Being of Nago race Pereira Santos converted to Islam.”

 “Allah Akbar!” Abdul shouted and the passengers stared at him and burst into hilarious laughter.

“After the sudden death of Zoki d’Almeida in 1857 and following internecine infighting, some d’Almeida and Santo family members left for Aneho and most of them settled at Badji (Landjo) on fertile lands along the lagoon.”

Abdul nodded.

“The settlement and the integration of these Afro-Brazilian families at Aneho led to the fusion of African and western values, profitable for both sides.”

            Abdul knew, should he decide to stay too, he couldn’t embrace everything African neither could he impose everything African-American on his hosts.

“The Afro-Brazilians maintained very privileged relations with the people of Aneho and the strangers living there.”

Abdul made a mental note of it too.

“Although the civil wars of 1821 and 1835, having exhausted the autochthones, more or less facilitated the integration of the Afro-Brazilians into Aneho, the newcomers nevertheless faced problems of adaptation and the mistrust of Europeans.”

“What the hell was their problem?” Abdul sounded vexed.

“They viewed the returnees as rivals.”

“Those fiends should have been driven back to Europe where they came from.” 

“The Afro-Brazilians got into the exploitation of big profitable economic activities, served as notables, acted as brokers or middlemen between the Africans and the Europeans and were even appointed as Aputaga representing local authorities at negotiations of the slave trade.”

Shaking his head, Abdul sighed deeply.

“They even got directly involved in the illegal slave trade, paradoxically deporting people into the inhuman conditions they had abhorred.”

Abdul breathed hard. Former slaves who had resented their deplorable condition in Brazil and who had come back home to be really free engaging in the slave trade showed, as Lonlon had said, how banal the slave trade had become at that time.

“The Afro-Brazilian slave traders traveled all over the Dahomean (Abomey), Nigerian, and Togolese (Atakpamé) hinterlands in the search for captives of little boys and girls aged 12 to 15 and other goods to buy which they exported to the various trading houses such as the Régis company, but in particular Mante and Borelli (1860) and Fabre (1864).”

“How were the slaves sold at this time?” Abdul wanted to know.

“The slaves were still exchanged for alcoholic drinks, cloths and all other sorts of sundry goods.”

“No doubt the slave trade did nobody any good here.”

“I think this Atlantic slave trade was certainly very profitable if one considers the fratricidal fights the families carried out in their bid to monopolize the trade and also the number of opulent buildings that they possessed.”

Which are now in ruins, Abdul recalled painfully.

“Fortunately the use of machines brought about by the industrial revolution rendered slave labor anachronistic and therefore killed the need for this shameful trade.”

Why didn’t this happen much much earlier? Abdul wished.

“The trade in slaves in Aneho also died out and the capture of people in the hinterlands also dried up. The slave trade in Aneho was therefore replaced by that in palm oil supplied from the hinterland of Kpalime and Atakpame.”

“The same places the captives were extracted from.”

Lonlon nodded. “And exported overseas where they were used in the soap making industries of metropolitan France in cities such as Marseille, Nantes, Le Havre, etc.”

“The former slave ports.”

Lonlon nodded.

“Nothing new under the sun,” Abdul observed.

“Yeah.” Lonlon tittered. “Statuettes used in religious rites in Bahia were also exchanged for American food products.”

Abdul winced: in their shoes he couldn’t trade with Bahia.

“The Afro-Brazilians also worked in the shops of trading companies and as packers at the port or at construction sites; their arts and crafts work comprised the making of and the sculpture of artefacts, shoe-repairing, pottery making, basket weaving, and sewing which was the most important activity.”

“Didn’t they go into agriculture?”

Lonlon shook his head. “Despite the efforts of local authorities in distributing land to them, many Afro-Brazilians shunned farm work which they considered as a mark of slavery.”

Abdul laughed his head off. “They’d have been true to themselves if they had rather refused the slave trade.”

“Nevertheless some of them set up sugar cane, maize, cassava, tobacco, etc. plantations.”

Abdul nodded again. 

“With the introduction of these new plants, farmed land increased, agricultural production improved and trade in agricultural products propelled Aneho onto the international scene, making the German colonialists to choose it as the first capital of Togo in 1886 after the shameful sharing of Africa among the European colonial powers.”

“Colonial usurpers, my brother!”

Lonlon laughed. “German firms exported the goods.”

“Just as Europeans did in the days of slavery.”

“In turn, Togo imported luxury products like rum from Hamburg and Holland; gin and tobacco from Bremen; powder from elsewhere in Germany; and other manufactured products like perfumes, iron goods, and flint guns.”

Abdul wondered what changed from the days of slavery.

            “The d’Almeida and Santos families contributed immensely to this trade by acting as intermediaries between the European trading houses and the local producers or by exporting the products to Europe themselves.”

Abdul wondered what activity he should be engaged in.

“The activities of Joachim d’Almeida, for example, were mainly commercial. He sought to extend his business to various regions of Africa, Europe and America. The representative of the firm Regis Ainé et Cie was a mulatto called Aïté d’Almeida.”

“Joachim’s son.”

“He was probably one of the children of Pedro Félix d’Almeida, known as Apeto Ayi, a native who served Chacha, his aunt’s husband, at Ouidah and on whose release Chacha recommended him to Zoki whose name he adopted. That’s the line my wife comes from.”

“So she isn’t actually a descendant of that Afro-Brazilian slave trader?”

“No.”

“That’s better.”

“As Sales Representative at Aneho, he got 10% commission on the gross sales.”

Not bad, Abdul thought happily. Maybe he should do likewise.

“The profits made from trading with European merchants enabled the Afro-Brazilian families to increase their economic influence which facilitated their social integration.”

Abdul made a mental note of this.

“From the cohabitation of Afro-Brazilians with the Ge people, from the interaction of Ge and Afro-Brazilian cultures, new habits and new customs appeared in food, architecture, and dance.”

Abdul sighed with pleasure.

“A process of acculturation was even observed.”

“For example?”

“There was intermarriage and it was the Brazilian mode which prevailed in this instance.”

Images of Zenabu flooded him and Abdul thought he also couldn’t marry anybody in a way other than the one he knew.

“Gilberto Freyre observed rightly in his Influence du Brésil au Golfe de Guinée that the descendants of Africans in Brazil returned home with modes of life that they had acquired or to which they were attached overseas. They came back to Africa with ‘brazilianized’ or ‘portuguized’ habits, tastes, customs, and even vices.”

Abdul knew that was his case too because he had ‘Americanised’ habits, tastes, customs, and even vices too. He shrugged.

 “According to R. Cornevin in Histoire du Togo, the Afro-Brazilians formed a veritable intermediary class of highly civilized people compared to the autochtones from whom they kept their distances.”

“Did they?” Abdul sounded displeased.

Lonlon nodded. “But some Santos and especially d’Almeida families quickly got integrated into the Ge country thanks to Félix Francisco de Souza through the borrowing of certain local familial customs and the disclosure of some Brazilian acquisitions.”

Sad that he had to be a slave trader, Abdul thought with pain.

“That’s Glidji over there,” Lonlon pointed out the beginning of a cluster of buildings beyond a gently rising small grassy land as they negotiated a curve around Zebe.

            Soon they passed in front of Zebe. On the left Abdul could see crumbling colonial barrack-like buildings invaded by elephant weed and partly hidden by giant trees. Beyond, majestic buildings he couldn’t make out clearly stood on the plateau. On the right side of the road, the scintillating waters of the lagoon wound itself through the grassy land. As they passed the customs check point, Abdul took a good look at the entrance of Zebe. The place seemed administrative, with tall, well-arranged trees in front of sturdy saffron colonial buildings.

            “This was where the Germans ruled Togo from when Aneho was the capital city.”

            Abdul nodded, not taking his eyes off the place.

Soon they bumped over the bridge and the passengers groaned as the vehicle’s dead absorber system couldn’t douse the shock which they felt right in their waists. Embarrassed, Lonlon apologized to Abdul who replied: “No problem, no problem.”

“A more visible contribution of the Afro-Brazilians to Aneho is the architectural style of their buildings.”

“That is remarkable even though the buildings are neglected and crumbling.”

“They are of Brazilian inspiration but with some African touches. Provided with vast compounds, the buildings are of baroque style with balconies, columns, doors and walls in wrought iron, and high relief of lions and elephants on the doors leading onto verandas where meals were sometimes taken in grand style.”

            The frown appeared on Abdul’s sunken-in face again. He couldn’t stand the vexing thought that the sins of the slavocracy of Aneho assured them comfortable lodgings while those they sinned gravely against went to live in simple huts in slave quarters.

“The cultural heritage of the d’Almeida and Santos families is very wide not only because of their Beninese, Nigerian, and Brazilian origins but also because of the animist, catholic and Islamic influences of their milieu.”

Abdul nodded.

“In one and three-quarter centuries of their settlement in Aneho, the Afro-Brazilians have enormously influenced not only the economic, political, and social life of Aneho in particular but also that of Togo in particular. They participated actively in the fight for independence. In this case we can mention Paa Augustino de Souza who financed the independence movement at its beginnings. The father of Sylvanus Olympio, the man who won independence for Togo, was an Afro-Brazilian. Having been in contact with Europeans in the New World, these people acquired some enriching experience. This gave them a certain maturity of mind which enables them to better judge the best and the worst of African and European civilizations in the modern world.”

Abdul nodded vigorously to that.

“Being people of diversified backgrounds and nationalities, they still have a primordial role to play today in the fight for African unity.”

Abdul again nodded vigorously.

“It is also in this regard that the return of the African Diaspora today to the homeland could be very helpful.”

            “Yes, we’re interested in coming back,” Abdul said, “but not as Nigerian, Beninese, Togolese, Ghanaian, or any other nationality forced on Africans by the damn colonialist usurpers. We want to be simply African.”

            “That’s what Diaspora Africans are: supranational, as you said Africans simply. May the dream of return therefore quickly come true.”

            “Amen!” Abdul replied as they soon took the right arm of a Y intersection and cruised into the station.

Abdul shook Lonlon’s hand warmly when they crawled out of the stuffy bus. “Thanks a lot for the trip and for the useful information. I really appreciate.”

“Always a pleasure,” Lonlon replied, patting Abdul’s shoulder, his broad smile revealing small white teeth split in the middle of the top part.

A grin brightening his face, Abdul patted Lonlon’s muscular shoulder too.

“As you can see, most of the buildings are ancient and of colonial architectural structure,” Lonlon said when they walked towards the hotel as Abdul had declined to take a motorcycle-taxi when Lonlon suggested it.

Abdul nodded, now noting the beauty of the designs of the buildings. Maybe they shouldn’t be allowed to crumble away, just as a testimony to what happened to us here.

“Such buildings are particularly found in Anehogan beyond the southern lake and to a lesser extent here in Adjido. They are easily recognized by their form and, on closer inspection, by the type of materials used.”

Abdul began to take a closer look of the buildings.

            “Concerning the form, most of the buildings are of two storeys. Those located on the main business roads, like this one—” Lonlon pointed out an intact rectangular building which seemed abandoned. “—have different uses by storey: shop and storeroom below and living quarters above.”

Abdul noticed that the windows and the doors of the ground floor were full, maybe to prevent intrusion, while those upstairs were provided with shutters for aeration.

“In the interior courtyard, one finds more modest outbuildings for the wives and the numerous clients of the proprietors who behave like veritable patriarchs.”

To Abdul’s chagrin, the courtyards weren’t visible from the street.

“As you see, the house roofs in general are of four slopes, two long and two short.”

Abdul glanced at some of the roofs which were intact and nodded.

“They were made of Palmyra planks covered with bitumized carton.”

Abdul nodded without verifying the fact.

“Look at the level of the clamps and the pillars which are made thick and moulded so as to make them stand out.”

Noticing that and the perfect symmetry of the buildings, Abdul couldn’t help admiring the degree of advancement of the builders. Sad that they had to achieve this feat on slavery. 

“Some of the windows are provided with ledges and styled with bas relief of sober setting as you can see on that building on the left.” Lonlon pointed to a roofless house 150 meters away.

Abdul saw how people here had lived in grand style.

“And if you look at this typical Aneho storey building,” Lonlon said as they came alongside a well-designed building which was in use but not maintained, “you’ll notice that the fliers are outside the buildings, which is the case for most of them.”

Staring at the stairs Abdul noticed the smooth hump-backed concrete handrails which went northwards up to the landing and then turned westwards unto an uncovered verandah. The same type of ornamentally styled balusters also lined the sides of the rooftop verandah.     

“For the materials used, the shell of the building was made of burnt red clay bricks held by a mortar of imported cement.”

The clay showed in the cracks of some of the buildings like a red trail through white sand.

“The most appreciated timber was made of rafters of the trunk of palmyra wood, wood which is not only very rigid but also resistant to weather conditions and damage by insects. The same material was also used in supporting the floors which were made of boards or concrete.”

 “I was wondering about that.”

“The split hinges and the hinges were often locally made, proof of the advancement of a local crafts trade which made some people famous, like Akakpo Sitti, a great carpenter and Aboki Gbede, a blacksmith.”

Abdul nodded.

“Aboki Gbede certainly got the name Gbede from his craft as Gbede means blacksmith.”

“I see.”

“These craftsmen were able to put up their own storey buildings, a veritable symbol of success at Aneho.”

“I don’t have to do the same should I succeed in Africa,” Abdul joked.

“Would you want to go into some form of business?”

“Possibly.”

“Then you’d be judged by its success.”

Abdul brushed aside that dream as it wasn’t on the agenda for the time being.

“Although the capital of Togo was transferred to Lome in 1897 because of the difficulty of developing Aneho, a swampy zone, that also did not toll the death knell of Aneho.”

            “For the successful tour, I think some refreshment is called for,” Abdul said when he saw a beer parlour ahead. “I can’t afford to get to the hotel.”

“I wouldn’t say no either,” Lonlon said, the two branching into the parlour. “Besides, it’d be more expensive in the hotel.”

“While coming over here from Ouidah, there’s some food I saw while we stopped over at Comé,” Abdul said over cold frothing Awooyo—the dark Togolese beer.

“Ablo.”

“How did you know?” Abdul said as he had been on the point of describing it.

“In the region, Comé is synonymous with ablo. It’s delicious. Do you want to try it?”

“Is it available here?”

“That’s our fast food, sold at every street corner.”

“Then, why not?”

Lonlon asked permission from the bar owner and sent the barmaid, who, for a tip, gladly fetched the corn dough loaves accompanied with fried fish and pepper ground with onions and tomatoes.

Lonlon broke a piece of loaf, dipped it into the pepper sauce and sent it down his throat, followed with a piece of fish. “Be careful about the pepper,” he warned in a mouthful as Abdul also broke off a piece of loaf to dip it into the pepper sauce. “It can burn your throat.”

Abdul chewed the soft, sugared loaf gingerly while Lonlon watched him curiously. The ablo tasted delicious but the pepper mixture seared Abdul’s palate. He grabbed his glass, guzzled a throatful of beer and soughing, nodded vigorously while Lonlon burst into laughter and lifted his glass to him. Abdul happily chinked glasses with him.

“Just be sparing on the pepper sauce and you’ll enjoy it.”

“What surprises me about Aneho is the absence of a European fort here,” Abdul said after swallowing a second bite.

“It was the rivalry between the Europeans and the desire to monopolize the coastal trade at the various ports which made them build forts in Africa between the 16^th and the 18^th centuries. Such a competition was almost absent at Aneho.”

“Why?”

“Because the trade here was certainly less important than on the Gold Coast to the west and Ouidah to the east.”        

“What was that due to?

“This was because of insecurity characteristic in this region since there was no strong power capable of centralizing the forces present and serving as intermediary between the European merchants and the hinterland.”

“Why that?”

“When the Fanti, Ga, Akyem, and Adangbe migrants from the Accra and Elmina regions were fleeing eastwards, the presence of the relatively organized Ewe-Anlo to the east of the Volta and the fact that their zone was itself prone to attacks from the Akwamu, made them continue further east to this place.”

“What made it safe here?”

“The zone was loosely peopled by Xwla and Xweda fishermen and farmers and the dominant political powers were rather weak.”

“Who were those dominant political powers?”

            “The Awoamefia of Anloga to the west and to the east the Awoussan, the dynasty reigning at Agbanakin, the political capital of the Xwla country. But the Awoamefia’s influence did not go beyond Denu, the town next to Aflawu; and even at Denu, the Awoamefia’s authority was not effective. As for the Awoussan, they too did not firmly reign over the zone of the lagoon which stretched right up to the village of Aflawu today divided between Lome and the border town of Ghana where the Xwla farmers and fishermen had put up a multitude of hamlets.”

            “The zone was relatively safe to settle at.”

            “In the 17^th and 18^th centuries, the economic and architectural splendour of Aneho and the Ge country did not match those of other coastal trading centers such as Cape Coast, Elmina, Accra, Keta, etc. on the Gold Coast and even Ouidah or Badagry on the Slave Coast.”

            Abdul wished the Ge country hadn’t engaged in the slave trade at all.

“The number of slaves shipped from here in the 17^th century was significantly less than those deported from just a little bit to the east, in particular at Offra, direct port of Allada, at Ouidah, Ekpe, and Badagry. It was not until at the end of the 18^th century and above all during the 19^th century that the slave trade soared at Aneho.”

            Abdul shook his head sadly.

“From the end of the 18^th century, the battle of French and English humanitarians began to spread. Although the French decree of February 1794 did not mention the slave trade, but already in March 1794, the United States had voted an act which not only prohibited the trade all over the territory of the union, but also extended it to all foreign countries. The end of the tunnel was in sight.”

Abdul agreed with a guttural sound.

“Despite the force of the movement in Great Britain, at least two decades of struggle had been necessary for the House of Commons to vote the official acts against the slave trade.”

“Too many interests were at stake.”

“Already at this time the demand had began to fall.”

“Thank God.”

“This situation certainly contributed to reducing raiding on the continent, particularly on the Gulf of Guinea.”

Abdul thanked God again.

“The raids for centuries having drained Africa of its population, especially in the hinterlands of coastal areas, one therefore had to go further inland to get the human goods. The long distance from the coast, having made the work of the foot soldiers of coastal armies difficult or impossible, the task passed to cavalrymen of Sudanese countries to supply the slaves. And it was at this moment that the fortunes of Aneho and the Ge country changed in the slave trade.”

“What brought about that?”

“The geographical location of the region and the abolitionist pressures on Dahomey.”

Abdul stared at Lonlon.

“From the end of the 18^th century the regional geopolitical situation changed drastically in the area situated between the Ouémé in today’s Bénin and the Volta in present day Ghana. In their search for a larger market in the 19^th century, the Ge merchants invested, beside the Mono valley, in the entire Watchi plateau and the interfluves between the two coastal rivers, and in the Zio and the Haho. This zone was not courted by either Dahomey or Akwamu neither was the English abolitionist machinery keeping a close eye on it as it lay outside the officially recognized slave trading centres which were the areas beyond the Ouémé and the Volta. The zone between the Ouémé and the Volta had not been much raided during the past centuries. In the second half of the 19^th century it therefore became the new field where manhunt was rife.”

Abdul sighed.

“From this period, and at least for over a little more than half a century, there was an upsurge of the slave trade again in the Ge country.”

Abdul found it difficult to believe that where he was sitting had been the stage of such drama.

“The concerted action of European nations, after the Napoleonic disaster in 1814 and the Vienna conference of 9 June 1815, made the slave trade illegal in Europe as well as on the African and American coasts. Portugal however did not immediately join this trend because the interests of its slave traders were at stake.”

“Goddamn her!” Abdul cursed. “But it wasn’t only Europeans who fought for the abolition of the slave trade.”

“Right. Africans also played a part in that regard. Yet, the role of European philosophers, thinkers, religious men and businessmen is too often stressed …”

“That’s what you’ve also just done,” Abdul cut in, a bit friendly.

Lonlon smirked. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re also imbued with that one-sided history.”

“I can’t say no,” Lonlon answered and they laughed. “Very often we leave unsung the part played by the Africans.”

“That alone would have been better as some historians even go further to tax the Africans with being the main impediment to the phasing-out of the trade in the nineteenth century.”

“Nothing could be further from the truth. The Portuguese were also to blame in this regard: because of their refusal to join in the abolition, the Brazilians had a field day and merrily continued the slave trade despite the impediments placed in the path of slave traders.”

Abdul cursed again.

“It was during this phase that the Afro-Brazilians who had returned home got massively into action.”

“What a pest, the slave trade!" Abdul chided and shook his head sadly.

“The joint Franco-British pressure on Ghézo to make him adhere to the fight against the illegal slave trade led to the setting up in 1849 of a control lodge in the port of Ouidah. The slave traders there, such as Francisco Félix de Souza, withdrew to the Ge country which therefore became the epicentre of the illegal slave trade.”

“No doubt it is argued that Africans resisted the abolition of the slave trade,” Abdul remarked bitterly. 

“The New World slave owners also refused to let their slaves go. Since the British Navy was plying the African coasts and the high seas to seize any ships engaged in the illegal slave trade, its practitioners changed the form of the means of transport. To go about their illegal activity unnoticed, they replaced the big ships with smaller ones which were relatively not easy for the British surveillance ships to detect.”

Abdul chewed his lips and said, “Those ships did not belong to Africans.”

“Yeah,” Lonlon raved. “That should tell you that all had sinned.

“And thus come short of the praises of men,” Abdul added and they laughed.

“Lake Togo became the center of the new slave trade. The slaves, seized from the lake’s immediate hinterland, notably in the Watchi land and maybe also further, were conveyed to the northern bank of the lake. The reputed main slave markets in these places were Dekpo Blokossi, or Blokotigome, near Kpogame at the area where the Haho joined the lake. This market lasted up to the end of the 19^th century.”

Abdul whistled under his breath.

“From those markets, canoes rowed the human cargoes to the embarkation ports of Aneho, Agoue, Goumoukope, and Agbodrafo.”

“Were they many, the captives?”

“I guess, for although Agbodrafo was the most important port after 1840, an Afro-Brazilian, J. F. Dos Santos, succeeded in shipping 296 slaves from Agoue in 1847.”

“I don’t understand how this situation could go unnoticed to the powers then unless they had an interest in it.”

            “This situation was not unknown to the chancelleries who, rightly, thought that it could not end this trade without the support of the local authorities. This, no doubt, was what motivated Queen Victoria to send to the authorities of Goumoukopé, Agbodrafo, and Glidji symbolic sticks in January 1852 to obtain their adherence to the fight against the illegal slave trade.”

“Did all the chiefs adhere to the treaty?” Abdul was curious to know.

“No,” Lonlon was emphatic. “But action was taken against the African leaders who refused to agree to British treaties to outlaw the trade. A notable example is ‘the usurping King of Lagos’, deposed in 1851. But anti-slavery treaties were signed with over 50 African rulers. ”

That whites had to force Africans to finally abandon the illegal slave trade appeared unacceptable to Abdul. He didn’t believe the queen was doing it for humanitarian reasons either: the grounds needed to be prepared for colonialism, but he agreed it was the better of the two evils.

            “However one of the least known aspects of the illegal slave trade was the practice of a mode of slave production that helped the accumulation of capital in the Ge country and in particular in its rapidly growing urban centres in general.”

            The Ge might have been as terribly hungry for slaves as the kings of Dahomey, Abdul thought bitterly.

“Aneho, almost sandwiched between the sea and the lagoon, is surrounded by marsh which rendered it humid practically all year round. There was therefore not sufficient land and suitable soil for the development of agriculture to feed the population growing from natural birth and from the addition of more Ga, Fanti, Afro-Brazilian migrants and slaves bought on the Dekpo and other markets and who could not be sold in the late 19^th and the early 20^th centuries.”

            Lucky people, Abdul thought.

“The Aja-Ewe country had land to spare. The Ge therefore negotiated for lands from them in exchange for imported European products: hardware, cotton fabrics, tobacco, gin, and also salt produced locally on the coast in exchange for food products (cereals and tubers) and slaves.”

“Still?” What terrible people, the Ge!

“With the abolition of the illegal slave trade and the development of a plantation economy, local slavery reappeared.”

“The Ge seemed insatiable for slaves.”

“With the economic restructuring, they used the slaves on their plantations, the development of which, from 1850, led to environmental degradation as the Bas-Mono forests disappeared.”

            The last pieces of ablo and fish having also disappeared down the throats of Abdul and Lonlon, they washed it down with beer.

“I think original documents on slavery and the slave trade exist here,” Abdul advanced, remembering his talk with Quenum on the UNESCO Slave Route Project, as they walked with elaborate nonchalance to the hotel.

“Yes, I can think of the archives of European traders,” Lonlon replied. “The earliest mention of Popo and European trade on the coast between the Volta and Lagos were made in the correspondence sent to the Cape Coast Castle by the agents of the Royal African Company (RAC) working in the factories established on the coast (principally at Offra,—today called Godomey—Ouidah and the western edge of the Slave Coast, including Little Popo—now known as Aneho) and the captains of their boats engaged in coastal slave trading. It dwelt on a Portuguese attempt to open the trade at the level of a river they labelled Popos (Papoues) on a Portuguese map of 1561.”

Abdul nodded.

“Although the Portuguese trade in the region got quickly centred in the Allada kingdom in the east, Popo continued to be cited in the correspondence as a secondary site (and maybe a sporadic one) of the European slave trade and this, up to the 17^th century. For example, a Portuguese document dated 1607 specifies that, in value, the trade at ‘Popo’ was half of that of Allada but double of that of ‘Faloime’ which was a European toponym for maybe Glehue or Ouidah.”

Abdul acknowledged with a guttural sound.

“From the 1630s, when the Dutch replaced the Portuguese as the main traders, the trade still continued at ‘Popo’ as well as at Allada. As proof, some Dutch manuscripts of the 1650s give the list of usual gifts to be given to the various persons at Popo as well as the appropriate goods for the trade there.”

Abdul nodded.

“The correspondence gave other proofs of the trade at Popo: In 1858, a ship belonging to Dutch East India Company interfered with the monopolyof the West India Company and hauled off a cargo of slaves at ‘Popo’ to sell at the Cape in South Africa.”

“Dog eat dog affair, no comment. Second proof.”

“Mention is made of a factory maintained at ‘Popo’ between 1660 and 1680 by the Dutch West India Company.”

“Twenty years.”

“The French trader Jean Barbot who visited Popo possibly in 1682 reported that sometimes it generated numerous captives to be exchanged against cowry shells, iron, beads, cloth, and others.”

Abdul recalled his visit to the Lobi market in the Upper West Region of Ghana.

“The installation of slave traders at Popo maybe goes back to the last quarter of the 17^th century. During the 17^th and the 18^th centuries, Genyi was becoming economically more and more important and several companies wished to transform their lodges there into forts. But the Genyi refused.”

“Good.”

“They refused the requests because they dreaded losing the valuable right to trade with all nations as well as the political independence they had been enjoying for years.”

Abdul bit his lips. Why didn’t Africans do this when the external slave trade came?

“The RAC factory at Accra reported in May 1682 that with the migration of the Adangbe to Keta, certainly following an attack by the Akwamu, there was lucrative trade in the Keta area.”

War, the manna of the slave traders.

“The following year, an RAC ship which was to embark slaves at Ouidah indicated that it rather sailed to an area situated at 45 miles west of Ouidah; and a report from the RAC factory at Ouidah confirmed the area as Keta which the Europeans misspelled as Quitto.”

“No doubt war had displaced people there again.”

“Possibly. Later, another RAC ship engaged in the trade at Ouidah also recorded in its notes that it had directed two of its boats westwards to look for slaves but they were captured by the French pirate Jean Hamlyn.”

Another dog eat dog affair. Abdul shrugged.

“Indications were that Hamlyn tried to use those boats west of Petit-Popo, which certainly meant Keta.”

            Abdul sighed.

“Hamlyn seized another English ship under the command of Captain Booth, an interloper, at Petit-Popo itself. Reports from the RAC factory at Ouidah said that Booth bought the slaves from Captain Petley Wybourne, another interloper manager of the rival factory of the RAC at Ouidah. In a letter, Wybourne confirmed that there were slaves, ‘akori’ beads and maize at Petit-Popo and encouraged the RAC to establish a factory there.”

            Goddamn him.

“Although the RAC lost ships captured by the pirates in 1683, the managers were still keen on continuing the trade at Keta and Petit-Popo.”

And white historians want us to believe that the slave trade was not profitable.

“Thus, later in 1683, a second RAC ship sailed from Cape Coast to load slaves at Keta; another was directed to purchase slaves at Keta and Petit-Popo. The following year, the General Agent of Cape Coast asked the RAC in London to direct the ships straight to Keta.  They even thought of establishing a factory at Petit-Popo but this did not go through for lack of personnel and goods.”

            “All the better.”

“In November 1685 however, Sylvanus Paine, an RAC captain, embarked 150 slaves at Keta; another captain, John Collins, also sailed to Keta but not finding enough slaves there quickly, he continued to Ouidah to load the rest of the cargo. Towards the same period, another RAC ship, the African Merchant, finding only 14 slaves at Petit-Popo, sailed to Ouidah to look for the rest of 211 slaves; all the while, another RAC ship, the Charlton, anchored off Grand-Popo.”

            “Ouidah might have been a horror at that time,” Abdul said with horror.

“Conditions of trade at the western regions of the Slave Coast became difficult; they went beyond the difficulty of getting enough slaves to fill the boats. For example, Captain Paine and some members of his crew were killed at Keta following a quarrel with the local population.”

“Bye bye straight to hell, sinful slave traders.”

Lonlon giggled. “And at Grand-Popo, the Charlton was rocked by a slave rebellion on board.”

“Wow!” Abdul raved.

“Attackers from the coast, believed by the RAC to be inhabitants of Keta, helped the slaves to revolt. Whether this was simply an act of piracy or an attempt to free the slave was not clearly established.”

“Piracy or not, the most important thing was that the captives recovered their freedom.” 

“Because of these threats to the security of the Europeans, John Carter, the manager of the RAC factory at Ouidah, directed in 1686 that the ships should not navigate in the coast between the Volta and Ouidah.”

 “The bastard!” Abdul blurted out, regretting that Africans did not create such hell for Europeans right from the beginning of the European slave trade.

“Yet the trade continued.”

Abdul sighed.

“When Carter visited Petit-Popo in 1687, he met Janpoeselwitt, the manager of the factory of the Brandenburg African Company, who had just loaded Brandenburg ships. Maybe encouraged by that, later in 1687, an RAC ship embarked 50 slaves at Popo and continued to Ouidah to complete its cargo. In the beginning of 1688, a French ship which left Accra for Ouidah was also programmed to embark slaves at Popo and to continue to Ouidah only when it couldn’t obtain enough slaves there. Grand-Popo was also busy: not only was a Brandenburg ship seized there by the Dutch towards the end of 1687 but also the Dutch West India Company itself established a factory there at the beginning of 1688.”

Abdul breathed hard.

            “Later, in 1688, Wybourne gathered a cargo of 500 slaves at ‘Poccahonna’ which apparently was another European toponym for Petit-Popo. Unable to persuade the RAC ship to stop there to embark the cargo, he was obliged to sell it to a Portuguese ship.”

            How human life became a game! Abdul whined.

“Wybourne died at Ouidah in February 1690 and his factory at Petit-Popo was abandoned.”

Goodbye evil Wybourne, see you no more satanic factory!

A minibus ahead of them about to negotiate the steep, narrow Adjido curve, slowed down and blew its horn incessantly and then the curve swallowed it.

“Now came the time of war: Glidji king Ofori attacked Offra and Ouidah in 1692, and Keta at the end of 1693 during which he met his death. Seizing the opportunity, Keta attacked and destroyed Petit-Popo, obliging its inhabitants to seek refuge at Allada. King Ofori’s brother and successor ‘Ofori Benbeneem’ later defeated Keta in a campaign which produced a lot of captives, so much so that in 1695, an RAC ship was able to load a full cargo of slaves in a month at ‘Paccahenny’, encouraging the manager of the RAC factory at Ouidah to view the area as ideal to quickly fill a ship with slaves.”

 “Goddamn him!” Abdul cursed as they rounded the Adjido curve and sea breeze caressed them. “This curve looks dangerous.”

“It sure is, and accidents are frequent here. That’s why I find it difficult to imagine why an intersection has been provided on the narrow stretch in front of the bridge. It’s such a headache for long truck drivers to get around both, sometimes throwing their vehicles off balance into the ravine.”

Abdul winced, imagining the plunge into the steep bank of the lagoon.

Lonlon went back to the topic. “The beginning of the RAC trade at Keta and Petit-Popo in 1683 was partly due to two major factors.”

“Yeah?”

“One, it was the reaction of Europeans to the bad conditions at the established ports of Offra and Ouidah towards 1682-83. In effect, in addition to European rivalry hiking up the prices of slaves, other obstacles cropped up at Ouidah afterwards.”

“What were they?”

“The interruptions in the supply of slaves from the interior in 1685 ...”

“Why?”

“Due to an unknown dispute from the hinterland; and in 1688 following a dispute between Allada and Dahomey; and between 1691 and 1692 because of war between Allada and Whydah; and in 1692 because of a dispute between the RAC and the king of Whydah, what led to the expulsion of John Wortly, the manager of the Compagnie’s factory.”

 Abdul once again had proof that Africans could have refused the slave trade.

“But, the most obvious factor for the opening of ports west was the flight of populations from Adangme and Accra to settle east of the Volta. Europeans and Africans were re-establishing the trade links which had existed between them at Accra. Rightly, an RAC ship buying slaves at ‘Allampo’ in 1683 pointed out that because of the flight of the inhabitants to Keta the trade which in the past was being done in Accra, was then taking place at Keta. Also, the wars generating these refugee groups turned out large numbers of captives that one could sell.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised that Europeans stirred up the feud.”

            “Possibly.”

“And their local accomplices too.”

“Why not?”

“Despite the efforts of the English and other Europeans to develop the trade at Keta and Petit-Popo from 1683, the ports of Keta, Petit-Popo and Grand-Popo never rivalled the old established ones of Offra and Ouidah. The assertion of the RAC that the supply of slaves at Petit-Popo in particular and on the western Slave Coast in general was insufficient was corroborated by others. A French account dated 1688 claimed that Petit-Popo and Grand-Popo together only supplied 300 slaves a year while Ouidah and Offra through Allada exported about 15,000 and 4,000-5,000 respectively.”

Abdul whistled.

“The Dutch trader Willem Bosam who was trading at the Slave Coast in 1697-99 also confirmed that Keta was sometimes capable of offering slaves in large numbers, but not enough to fill a ship; and at Petit-Popo, he said it took some months to have a shipload of slaves; and at Grand-Popo the Dutch Company abandoned its lodge when war between Petit-Popo and Ouidah caused the trade to decline.”

            Abdul, who was listening in a haze, stared at Lonlon.

            “War between supplying powers was not good for the trade because the insecurity discouraged raiders from bringing their catch.”

Abdul nodded.

“The limit of the ports of the western part of the Slave Coast at the end of the 17^th century, and even well beyond the beginning of the 18^th, unlike Offra and Ouidah, seemed to have come from the fact that they had not developed regular commercial links with the farthest regions of the interior.”

“The reservoir.”

“Already towards 1680, most of the slaves sold by Offra were believed to have come from the Fon and Dahomey kingdoms. At Keta, Petit-Popo and Grand-Popo, local attacks produced them. Bosman noted that the most profitable trade at Keta consisted in roaming the whole day in the interior of the country to steal men for sale to Europeans; while the inhabitants of Petit-Popo lived on plunder and the slave trade. Bosman said that the people of Peiti-Popo were more agile at stealing than those of Keta and consequently their trade flourished.”

“Dastardly people!” Abdul murmured between clenched teeth.

“Although the local military operations sometimes produced large quantities of captives, as after the victory of Petit-Popo over Keta in 1695, it could not always turn out captives and in large quantities, what did not assure Europeans of slaves at Petit-Popo. Bosman also noted that although before 1694 a ship of the Dutch East India Company loaded more than 50 slaves in only eleven days at Petit-Popo, this was extraordinary and not likely to happen again.”

“Why should it?” Abdul scoffed.

“Bosman himself, at a time in 1697, spent three days at Petit-Popo but had only three slaves, obliging him to go to Ouidah; but he learnt later on that after his departure the people of Petit-Popo carried out incursions which produced more than 200 captives for them …”

“That they sold to a Portuguese ship.”

“Ah, I recounted that story already! In 1698, Bosman also found a Danish ship trading at Petit-Popo but he was quick to add that it took more time to obtain 500 slaves here than it did to have 2,000 at Ouidah.”

“Ouidah,” Abdul murmured painfully.

“According to Bosman, Petit-Popo was also famous for fraudulent and light-fingered operations in carrying out its trading activities.”

“What kind of operation was the slave trade, Mr Bosman?” Abdul asked.

“He said that the Popo nation was so keen on cheating that they did not hesitate to rob everybody who did business with them.”

“Dog eat dog; what are you complaining about, Bosman?”

“Bosman cited the case of an English ship which was trading at Petit-Popo in 1696 or 1697. Feeling stripped of a part of its goods, the captain took a son of the king hostage and kept him on board in order to obtain reparation.”

Abdul bit his lips. “Who could do this in Europe?” he whined. “That’s how Africans debased themselves for Europeans.”

“Because the trade at the western part of the Slave Coast was not so satisfying explains the strong presence here of minor slave trading nations: Brandenburg, Denmark and Portugal which were no doubt attracted here because of the relative lack of the keen competition from the Dutch, the English and the French. As for the Portuguese, Bosman said they traded at Petit-Popo because they carried defective products which could not procure them slaves elsewhere.”

            “What type of goods did Bosman and the rest of his criminal horde have?” Abdul questioned. “More defective products is what he should have said.”

Back at the hotel Lonlon excused himself to go home and deliver the gari to his wife. Abdul profited to shower down and change into a beige T-shirt, a pair of khaki shorts and sports shoes.

Abdul and Lonlon burst into laughter, staring at their clothes and at each other’s and claiming telepathy when Lonlon came back in almost an hour, similarly dressed, but in darker colors.

“Aneho is divided into seventeen quarters in which we’ll try to locate twenty-one of some of the big families here,” Lonlon said when they came out of the hotel. “At the border side, as you already know, is Sanvicondji belonging to the Sanvee family. You also know Messancodji lying left of the left fork of the border road on entering the town and which comes down to your hotel. That is the zone inhabited by the Huedakor family. The area enclosed by the Messancondji intersection is where I live. It’s called Adjido.”

“Just like this area.” Abdul pointed west.

“Yes. The whole of that area up to here is properly called Adjidogan. At the eastern edge the Amadotey family is found and this one here is the area of the Kuevidjin family. Facing the Kuevidjin’s is the Landjo quarter peopled by the Kponton family.”

They set out at a leisurely pace to tour Anehogan, the southern part of the town and the oldest, and to inspect some vestiges of the slave trade.

“In the Adjigo peninsula here, as I said already, was a center of quartering of slaves in barracks built towards 1800 by the Brazilian slave trader Félix Francisco de Souza who himself was staying at Ouidah. It was his son Isidore de Souza who ran the trading post during the entire first half of the 19^th century.”

“It’s a pity there’s no vestige.”

“With urban redevelopment which took place following German colonisation in 1884, the buildings disappeared completely. Hence we don’t have a first hand material document which certainly could have informed us more or less on the mode of life of the captives in transit mainly to Ouidah, and eventually for Agoue or Anehogan. However, when I describe the life of the slaves at Anehogan, you can easily imagine that their fate was not different from that of their companions in misery over there.”

Abdul sighed.

“Chacha married a local woman called Akoa and had children with her. In the 19^th century, I think towards 1843, Isidore Félix de Souza, who was one of the mulatto children sent to Brazil by Chacha, returned to Aneho. He set up a small forge close by the hut of Laté Bewu at Dékamé (now Badji), on the land of Kuegan. After Chacha helped a certain Zankli defeat the Adjigo by supplying him most of the arms and ammunition which sparked that civil war, Chacha transferred his slave trading business to Isidore. Isidore abandoned his smithy to dedicate his time exclusively to slave trading. In 1845 Duncan described him as the biggest slave merchant of Africa.”

“The biggest devil of Africa,” Abdul said, wondering how many slaves he sold into the New World.

“Isidore’s apprentice blacksmith, Gubiyi took over the smithy. It was Gubiyi who branded the slaves with the hot iron stamp before they were shipped.”

Abdul winced and a chill ran down his shoulders, distantly hearing the sizzling and smelling the burning of skin and feeling the pain of the captives. His fingers curled into murderous clasps for that Gubiyi.

“Chacha died at Ouidah on 14 May 1849, of course, rendering null and void the pact of blood which existed between him and Ghézo, the king of Abomey.”

“That’s what I heard at Abomey.” Abdul felt glad and sad to have another direct proof of the involvement of African rulers in the slave trade.

They crossed the intersection to the western edge of the bridge. Staring down the deep incline, Abdul saw the calcined body of a tanker trailer there.

“When this truck plunged into the ravine and burst into flames, the bonfire could be seen as far as Lome 45 km away.”

Abdul whistled.

“It was being driven in the night by a Nigerian who didn’t know that the corner was so sharp. Before he realized it, he was down there and his truck burnt for hours.”

“Why aren’t they doing anything about the sharp curve?”

Lonlon shrugged. “It’s not the priority of our leaders and planners, but then what in Africa has ever been their priority except the power and the money they have confiscated from the people and which they fight tooth and nail to keep getting drunk on.”

“Especially, against common sense. I always say that the people of Africa are not the problem but the leaders.”

“And their foreign accomplices, most of whom crouch in the darkness. With attempts at democratizing the dictatorial regimes which stifle Africa’s development, some of them have revealed themselves by coming out openly to support decried leaders, especially during elections, most of which are fraudulent. Let’s forget that mafia group because they make my adrenaline level go up. We’ll walk right up to the end of town and then begin the tour proper,” Lonlon said as they left the bridge and headed west along the main road, he pointing out landmarks in the town.

“History is evident here,” Abdul said on reading on the ancient buildings the dates on which they were built etched in concrete.

“Sure, and I think you’d like the history of Aneho contained in the archives of Thomas Miles compiled from 1789 to 1796.”

“Another slave trader, huhn?”

“Thomas Miles, an officer of the Compagnie Africaine till 1792, was the agent of the Popo factory of the English company Miles and Meuves of London from 1793 to 1796,” Lonlon replied. “While references to Aneho during the era of the slave trade did not go beyond mere mentions of the passage of a ship which sailed here to complete its cargo of slaves, the archives of Thomas Miles was an exception: they gave detailed descriptions of the activities of the Popo factory in the 1790s, a rare door opened on the Afro-European trading enterprise at Popo during the period preceding the 19^th century.”

“Okay,” Abdul said, once gain seizing fully the import of UNESCO’s Slave Route Project to throw light on the transatlantic slave trade.

“Thomas’ brother, Richard, Chief Governor of the zones where the Africa Company was established on the West African coast, on returning home at the beginning of the 1780s, co-founded the Miles and Weuves Company with a friend. Around 1789 Thomas had an agent at Popo who was exchanging rum and cannon powder for ivory and slaves.”

“The trash, as always.” Abdul shook his head.

“The roots of the Popo factory however probably go back further than the 1770s or the beginning of the 1780s while Richard was governor at the Cape Coast Castle.”

“No, slave overseer at the Cape Coast Castle,” Abdul corrected and Lonlon laughed.

“For it was at this time that his trading activities with Latévi Awoku began. This influential trader became very instrumental for the trade at the Popo factory.”

            Abdul nodded.

“Returning to the coast as agent of the Miles and Weuves Company, Thomas Miles replaced a certain Henry Hohenloe as the manager of the Popo factory towards the end of August 1793. Thomas however did not stay at Popo. Entrusting the running of the Popo factory to John Searle, a young man he had brought from England with him, he left for Accra at the end of October. Searle ran the factory until his death between April and August 1795.”

            “A demon less.”

“In May 1795, as you know, Petit-Popo was crushed by allied forces of Dahomey and Grand-Popo, causing the deaths of several important personalities, including Laté. This incident having interrupted the trade at Popo, Miles and Weuves closed down the Popo factory temporarily.”

            “Thank God,” Abdul said, wishing it had been closed down for good. 

“Richard Miles’ determination to reopen the Popo factory despite the deaths of Laté and Searle got weakened because of the death of his brother Thomas in Accra in March or April 1796 following a disease.”

“Bye bye Satan Thomas.”

“Richard was obliged to work with Popo under sail.”

            “Once evil always evil.”

“It was in that wise that one of the ships belonging to the Miles and Weuves Company under the command of Captain George Lawson arrived at Cape Coast Castle from Popo and returned there shortly afterwards.”

Abdul sighed.

The widening lagoon began to curve towards the southwest and another arm the northeast. On the other side of the street old dilapidated houses stood mournfully.

“This was Aneho railway station,” Lonlon said when they came to a building in need of repairs and tracks between which bad weeds sprouted. “We made the magnificent railway system built by the Germans in the colonial days go to ruins all over the country.”

“You mean the trains don’t run anymore in Togo?” Abdul wiped off sweat.

“Finished, long ago,” Lonlon said mournfully.

Next came what Lonlon said was Lagbonou Market. It was quiet and the scenery not impressive.

“But the demise of Miles and Weuves’ Popo factory did not mean the end of factories there,” Lonlon continued. “For in 1794 there were two more factories at Popo, one Dutch belonging to a certain A. Coppeling and the other English belonging to a Captain Thomas Eagles and ran by one James Brown.”

Abdul laughed.

“Recalls black and proud James Brown, huhn?”

“More than that,” Abdul answered. “I was partly named after him. I threw off my oppressor’s names when I converted to Islam.”

“I also rejected my foreign name Laurent,” Lonlon said but added quickly: “What am I saying? The Gnassingbe Eyadema military regime obliged us in 1974 to drop what it called adopted names.”

“So you were Laurent Lonlon Locoh? LLL, triple L.”

Lonlon shook his head, killing Abdul’s wide grin. “While most Togolese chose new names, some reverted to their local middle names and others looked for or concocted local names nearer to the European ones.”

“Africa!” Abdul howled, shaking his head sadly.

            “Lonlon means love in my language,” Lonlon said and Abdul thumbed him as he shrugged and continued his story: “Thomas Miles constantly complained that trade was flourishing at Popo but he couldn’t buy captives because he was short of goods.”

“Good.”

“This situation was due to financial difficulties that Miles and Weuves Company was facing in London as well as the war against France which was making it difficult to load European supplies for the African coast.”

“Better.”

            “Moreover, Thomas Miles instructed John Searle to buy slaves only at derisory prices, what Searle found impossible to do.”

“Best,” Abdul said and they laughed.

“I’m serious,” Abdul added seriously.

“Of course,” Lonlon said with some embarrassment and continued: “While the factory bought neither slave nor ivory, it was supplying provisions to ships. They therefore lost Laté’s favors because he wanted flourishing trade at Popo.”

“The devil!”

            “The Popo factory was also engaged in the profitable supplies sector, which was abundant at Popo. Miles and Weuves supplied crew members to ships, furnished European employees for the factories on the coast (Gold Coast and Ouidah) with maize, kenkey …”

“I ate that maize flour meal in Accra.”

“Kenkey is as synonymous with Accra as our area is also known for akume or akplen.”

“I ate it in the Volta Region of Ghana too.”

“Then you’re a completely African,” Lonlon said to Abdul’s pride and then continued: “Other items supplied by the Popo factory were fruit and vegetables such as yams, plantains, bananas, pepper, palm nut, lemon and okra; livestock such as ducks, fowls, goat, and pigs; wood; and water, the quality of which was sometimes bad obliging the ships to go fetch them at Keta or the Gold Coast. Here we are at Nlessi, the western end of the town.”

Abdul wiped off sweat from his face.

            “Over there—” Lonlon pointed to the south-western edge of the town when they had gone a little bit after the old Protestant church. “—is the concession of the Bruce family.”

            “The Sierra Leonean guy.”

            “Yes. Beside it, to the left, and still on the beach, is Djamadji shared by the Atikossi, de Souza-Ovidio, and Ako families.”

            “The de Souza-Ovidio family, is it the same as the de Souza Chacha family?”

            “No. Beside Djamadji quarter is Ela where the Lacle family lives.”

            “There’s nothing on the slave trade yet,” Abdul moaned.  

“At Anehogan, we have very little information on the way the slaves were lodged,” Lonlon explained and Abdul winced. “Tradition speaks neither of huts as was found elsewhere, nor other similar structures. I therefore suspect makeshift shelters provided by each of the sellers: the da Silveira, Lawson, Wilson, d’Almeida, Creppy, de Souza, Ajavon and other families whose concesions we’ll see soon.”

            Abdul remembered Jocelyne, the curator of the Musée d’Histoire de Ouidah, who warned him that the vestiges of the slave trade at Aneho were not developed.

            “This area is Degbenou,” Lonlon said when they turned their backs to the sea. “Going near the lagoon, on the left, you find the Akue family and the Ahodikpe family on the right.”

            They came to where the winding street straightened and went through Anehogan, and then they stood facing the south.

“This area is Flamani and is occupied by the Djiyehoue or Gaba family. Over there, right at the beach is the Quam Dessou royal house. The ancestor Quam, a cabocier, was important for the Popo factory because he sold slaves to it and held an important post in the Popo community. His first wife visited the factory several times between October 1793 and September 1794. In October 1793 she lent 20 ounces of cowries to the factory. She bought some cloths, 2 hats, rum and in August 1794 six guns that she paid for with cowries.”

“Maybe she had people doing raiding for her.”

Lonlon shrugged. “Quam’s second wife visited the factory once in December 1793 and bought beads that she paid for with cowries. Now—” Lonlon led Abdul towards the north. “—we’re going to see more interesting places. We’ll begin with Badji, the quarter of the Royal Lawson family. Each of the three main European nations engaged in the slave trade at Aneho: the Danes, the English, and the Portuguese had privileged relations with a section of the town.”

Abdul’s blood raced to hear that.

“Thus, there was Fantekome (The Fante quarter), located on the beach, where the Aputaga and his retinue lived. The Danes had established their lodge there towards the end of the 18^th century, precisely in 1784, and so it became the ‘Danish town’. But when the kings of Glidji turned their backs on the Danes and beckoned to the Dutch, the area became Dutch from the beginning of the 19^th century.”

      Circus, was all that went through Abdul’s head.

They came to a majestic house.  

“This area was the ‘English town’ founded at the concession of the Lawson family.

Latévi Awoku, son of Foli Bewu the ancestor of the Lawson family settled in the last quarter of the 18^th century in a residence he called New London. He became the most important trader at Popo at the end of that century through his role as middleman between the Popo factory and Europeans, especially the English who always stayed at his place when they docked at Popo.”

Abdul found it difficult to believe that this place had been so prized.

“Rich and influential, he was the most important person after the king and spoke three European languages: English, Portuguese and Danish. He sent his children to England and Portugal to learn to read, write, and calculate so that he could run his business better.”

“Goddamn him!” Abdul cursed and Lonlon laughed. .

            “The Popo factory of the Miles and Weuves Company was located in Latévi Awoku’s house and he supplied the house servants.”

            “What was Latévi’s role in the factory?”

            “He played several roles in the factory. As a slave seller, he sold the largest number of slaves to the factory. Once, while he sold 40, other slave traders such as Quam and Ansah brought two and four respectively.”

            “S---!’

            “He was advisor to the factory and solved problems between the factory and local people.”

            “No doubt concerning sales of slaves.”

“He took care of the employees of the factory and captains of ships along the coast. He also sold the captains slaves and rendered them all sorts of services, among which the delivery of maize to the ships, recruitment of seamen (at least for the journeys along the coast), and even love affairs between the English traders and the girls of Popo.”

            “Oh, he was a pimp too!” Abdul cried. “What a libertine!”

“He received an ounce on each slave sold in the Popo factory except those sold by Quam, the formal authority of Aneho.”

            “No doubt this callous man became rich and influential.”

“Latévi’s elder wife also had privileged relations with the Popo factory which she visited often to buy necklace that she paid for with cowries. She also lent cowries to the company.”

            “First lady!” Abdul spat out the word and Lonlon laughed.

            “Here and at the homes of the other families who carried out the slave trade, the captives were chained to avoid escapes.”

Abdul sighed.

“While still in chains, they were taken from time to time to bathe in the lagoon.”

Abdul stared at the house and the lagoon in front of it. A chill went down his spine, imagining the slaves being led there to bathe.

“The first days, weeks, and months the slaves spent in the Ge country was not very comfortable. As was generally the case, the food of the slaves certainly was prepared with quantity in mind instead of quality, with the habitual cassava and maize flour of the Ge country.”

How they suffered! Abdul whined.

“At his death, Latévi’s son, Laté Akuété Zankli, succeeded him. Akuété Zankli later adopted the name of Captain George Lawson which has become the name of a large influential family today.”

“Who was this Captain George Lawson?”

“He played a role in the trade at Popo and had very personal and intimate relationships with Laté and his family. George was an experienced trader on the West African coast who sold his services to proprietors living in Europe and the Americas. He had under his command several ships of Miles and Weuves which were trading along the coast from Accra to Gabon.”

            “Birds of a feather flock together.”

“Akuété Zankli Lawson tried to give New London the appearance of a European residence at the beginning of the 19^th century. This area was also where Latévi Zankli set up his forge close by the hut of Laté Bewu at Dékamé, the former name of Badji, on the land of Kuegan.”

Standing where captives were branded, Abdul began to tremble.

“Later, towards the middle of the same century, with the instauration of legal trade, the other English quarter, Nlessi, which is the deformation of the Portuguese word inglês, was founded. And finally, we have the ‘Portuguese town,’ which was the slave trading post founded by Félix Francisco de Souza on the Adjido peninsula at the extreme end of the 18^th century.”

            They came back to the narrow Lomé-Cotonou highway.

“Over there is the Magnan quarter where the Creppy family is found,” Lonlon said and they walked eastwards.

As usual, Abdul carefully avoided walking on the jagged edge of the asphalt as the people of Aneho do and step off only when one of the speeding vehicles whooshed by. He wondered why they played with their lives.

“Here is Agbodji, the quarter of the Wilson Bahun family.”

Abdul stared at the house and wondered where they chained their slaves. He turned round and thought he saw captives being led to and from the lagoon not far away.

“Ah, my family-in-law’s house,” Lonlon said as they came to the Aplèho quarter nearby. “That big house is almost empty because like elsewhere, the children of Aneho have deserted the town.”

They’re right. This place is stained with the sin of their ancestors. “Where have they gone to?”

“Lome, Libreville, Abidjan, Accra, Lagos, Paris, London, Washington, and many other places.”

They’re scattered far and wide.”

“Yes.” Like you.

Lonlon next pointed out Ansahcondji, the zone of the Johnson family. “I wonder if this quarter was named after John Ansah who was apparently a prosperous trader at Popo intimately linked to the Popo factory,” he said. “He sold slaves to the factory and from time to time bought small quantities of goods such as cloth, liqueur, and cannon powder. A friend of Latévi, he became the rival of his son George A. Lawson.”

He then showed Abdul Evénumédé, the quarter of the da Silveira and Sitti or Mathey families. Then they left the road and walked towards the beach and followed the sandbar, the end of which the lagoon swallowed.

“This is Apunukpa, the home of another big family, Ajavon, the founder of which was also a major trader at Aneho.”

“His captives didn’t need to go far to bathe in the lagoon,” Abdul observed, wishing after the bathe that the captives felt as refreshed as he did with the sun a huge red ball on the horizon.

They walked to the beach a stone’s throw away. The waves of the Gulf of Guinea roared and boomed and crashed at the golden shore, sending in salt spray which sprinkled them like a light shower.

“A big problem here is erosion of our low, sandy coast,” Lonlon moaned. “When I was a child, we had to walk a long way from Apunukpa to bathe in the sea. Even the old Lome-Aneho highway has been swallowed by the sea from the port in Lome to Aneho here. Fortunately a sea defence project carried out years ago has checked the sea’s wrath.”

Secretly, Abdul wished the sea had wiped out the ancient buildings erected on slavery as staring at the sea, he imagined distressed captives being wheeled to the slave ships anchored a short distance away.

            Lonlon had to claw Abdul’s shoulder when he didn’t hear his call to go.

“Some interesting people are described in the manuscripts of Thomas Miles,” Lonlon said as they set out for the hotel northeast of Apunukpa.

            Abdul felt lead in his legs and noticed that Lonlon also trudged.

            “There’s William Sackey who was a seller of slaves in Accra where Miles and Weuves Company had a factory. Business relations between him and Thomas Miles go back to the time when Thomas was governor of Anomabu; that is 1789-1791.”

            “Slave keeper of Anomabu,” Abdul reminded.

            “Yeah, slave keeper,” Lonlon corrected and burst into laughter. “There were three Tettehs in the manuscript: a slave, a canoe man of the factory, and a native of Popo who was a relative of Laté and his family.”

            Abdul replied with a guttural sound.

“There’s mention of a certain person called Toofsoo or Toosoo: he seemed to be a rich individual or trader or maybe chief who had intimate relationships with the Popo factory. He sold slaves and visited the factory regularly to buy liqueur, cloths, guns and powder. In October 1793, he lent a huge sum of 36 ounces to the factory. Besides, he looked after the factory’s livestock.”

Abdul nodded.

            “The history of two sons of a certain Antonio Vaz of Porto Novo reveals how banal slavery had become in the 18^th century. The two, who worked as seamen for the company, were undergoing training in England by Miles and Weuves Company between 1795 and 1796. While there, their father died at Porto Novo and the king of Dahomey seized his properties.”

“King of Dahomey!” Abdul cried and shook his head.

“The question then was who was to pay for the training of the boys? Thomas Miles’ idea to solving the problem was to suggest to his brother to sell them to Laté who needed people with their type of knowledge.”

“Yeah?”

“Just as you heard. But Richard refused vehemently and instead sent the boys back to West Africa in November 1794 warning his brother firmly not to sell them as slaves.”

Abdul shook his head sadly.

“So you see, you could be on the side of the slave seller today and be sold tomorrow.”

“Queen Sara’s plea to the Portuguese courts revealed, the system became ‘sell to the Europeans or be sold to the Europeans’ but I think it should be ‘sell to the Europeans and/or be sold to the Europeans’.”

 “Perfectly!” Lonlon raved. “The two boys returned to our part of the coast in Februay 1796 and worked as seamen on coastal ships of the Miles and Weuves Company before returning to Porto Novo.”

            “Saved from slavery their parents and themselves shoved others into,” Abdul whined as they came to the side of the road.

            “In a letter sent to the Miles and Weuves Company in London, Thomas Miles described the slaves embarked on the ship Iris sailing for the West Indies in January 1794. Among them we note two old people belonging to Laté who were tagged as worth more than their transport.”

“What?”

“Yeah. Former seamen of one Mr. D. Je doute, they had been accused of witchcraft.”

Abdul sighed, shaking his head.

“Laté had instructed that they should not be disembarked.”

 “Goddamn him!”

            “There was also a father and son called Aourree (or Avourree) and Quee. Natives of Popo, Laté had sold them to Captain George Lawson.”

            “This Laté is evil!”

            “There is another young slave called Aduggui who was sent to Thomas Miles by John Ansah to be trained as seaman.”

            “And who may be sold tomorrow by Ansah for deportation.”

            “I think such African seamen were the ones who steered ships seized during revolts at sea.”

            “Yeah! That’s possible!”

            “In January 1796 when Captain George Lawson went to Popo to buy ivory and slaves and to take possession of the goods of the factory left there after the death of the manager Searle and the defeat of Popo by the allied forces of Dahomey and Grand-Popo in May 1795, he sent nine slaves to Thomas Miles in Accra from where they were to be embarked for the West Indies on the ship Gambia. Among them was a lady who was certainly Searle’s mistress when he was manager of the factory at Popo. Searle had described another girl he had bought in May 1794 as very beautiful which makes her seem a mistress of his too.”

            “Yesterday mistresses, today slaves,” Abdul said dreamily. “What drama happened here!”

            “Among nine slaves sent by Captain George Lawson from Popo to Accra on January 1796 to be embarked for the West Indies was a man called Taitey who was a slave and had apparently served on board the ship Iris,” Lonlon revealed when they crossed the bridge.

            “Yesterday seamen, today slaves, what fate!”

            “There are interesting details in a letter sent by John Searle to Thomas Miles on 4^th January 1794. John had written to inform Thomas about great demand for powder at Popo at that time while he had only three kegs remaining.”

“There was going to be war,” Abdul advanced.

“Rather an expedition which was going to be undertaken by the King of Ashantah (I wonder if Searle meant Ashanti) in conjunction with that of Popo against some neighboring power.”

“I guess Grand-Popo and Dahomey.”

“I think so too. Searle said Laté told him that whoever could give the most powder would command the trade and promised him that should they be successful in the expedition Searle would benefit from it.”

“Yeah. War, the machine for churning out captives.”

“Then making reference to a vessel, Searle assured if it laid at Popo a few more days, he would be able to get 40 slaves for it, of whom he already had 33 with several in his chains but not yet bought.”

“This is proof that the slaves at Popo were kept in chains as you said.”

Lonlon nodded. “Searle then promised that if he had goods he would be able to buy them and others too.”

“Dastardly people, the Ge!” Abdul spat and stared defiantly at Lonlon. 

“Wait a second before you heap anathema on all the Ge,” Lonlon, who had tittered, cautioned as they arrived at the hotel when dusk was creeping on the town. “Many of the senior citizens here came from a grandparent or a great-grandparent of slave origin. Slavery here, therefore, is not only an incident in living memory, but also an embarrassing and a sensitive matter consciously shrouded in taboo against a background of suppression and virtual neurosis.”

They plopped into chairs on the veranda behind the hotel which stretched right into the darkening green waters of the lagoon. The roar, the boom and the crashing of the seawaves seemed to be coming from the lagoon and not the sea beyond the sandbar.

“Thank you,” Latevi said when Abdul later invited him to order supper. “Gboma desi and akume are waiting for me at home.”

“What’s the first one?” Abdul itched to know.

“Green leaves, lamb, smoked salmon, crab, and shrimp cooked together and seasoned with cloves and aniseed and served with corn flour meal. As desert, you finish off the rest of the soup with gari. Mmm!”

“Sounds tasteful.”

“It sure is! I’ll invite you home next time to try it.”

“I’ll love to.”

“I bet you, you’d not like to leave Aneho or Togo after that.”

“Tell me.”

“Sure. I swear by my grandfather’s grave.” Lonlon bounced ceremoniously to his feet, dabbed his tongue with his forefinger and pointed it upwards. “Otherwise I’m not his grandson.”

“Oh, you’re his grandson alright,” Abdul assured through gales of laughter from them, urging Lonlon with a motion of his hand to sit down and Lonlon dropped into his seat again while they laughed hard.

            “Talking about people here with slave origins means that some of the slaves were integrated into the Ge society,” Lonlon said when they clinked glasses and took long refreshing sips of cold frothing Awooyo—the dark Togolese beer Abdul was appreciating.

            Abdul knew Lonlon was going to open another interesting chapter and he focused his attention. His relating of the archives of Thomas Miles had made him see what interesting details UNESCO’s Slave Route Project could furnish from slave-related materials of the repositories.

“Slavery was normally parasitic, characterized by an abusive exploitation of the slave by the master such as happened in most of the countries of the Sudano-Sahelian zone, in Ashanti and Dahomey, or in the New World. But in the pre-colonial Ge country, the slavery practiced can be described as symbiotic.”

“Meaning?” Abdul asked defiantly.

“Compared to the parasitic, this form of slavery was ‘soft’ since the captive lived in socio-economic and effective symbiosis with his master.” 

“Why did the Ge resort to this form of slavery?”

“Three reasons can be advanced for it. First, the low population level of the Ge people. Being minority migrants bent on sinking their roots firmly into a territory on which they were far outnumbered by the autochthonous Adja-Ewe people, the Ge knew that to establish themselves, it was imperative to increase their numbers. The fastest way to do so was to integrate the captives.”

Abdul nodded.

“The second reason was the absence of a state apparatus, of a civil or military aristocracy, or of a numerous privileged class, whose food or other needs would have necessitated the abusive exploitation of a slave labor force for farming or industrial purposes.”

Abdul nodded again.

“Finally, the Ge of Aneho were mainly traders and fishermen, and their needs in farming produce was largely met by the Watchi. In addition, not having developed commercial agriculture (at least in the 17^th and 18^th centuries, contrary to some big millet plantations in present day Senegal and Mali during the colonial era, or sugar cane or cotton plantations in America), nor large traditional industries of products manufactured to make profits, (for example, the leather and cotton industries in the Sahelo-Sudanese zone), hard slavery was not called for.”

Abdul’s head bobbed once more.

“Still, the creation of big palm and coconut plantations in the 19^th century did not bring about a hardening of the condition of slaves; probably because the European demand for the new export products of palm oil, palm, and copra was not high enough to lead to an overexploitation of the slave labor force.”

            “Fortunately.”

 “The real life of slaves in the Ge country can therefore be divided into three categories: domestic slaves, pawned persons or awobame, and slaves on transit to the New World.”

Abdul stared at Lonlon.

“The domestic slaves were subdivided into four groups. The first category was house slaves. They carried out everyday domestic tasks such as the crushing of maize, firewood duty, heavy construction work, etc. Another important work they did was porterage. The slaves carried their masters’ goods to the local or regional markets, over distances of some kilometers to about ten. Other slaves carrying knives and clubs accompanied the convoy as security personnel, for the phenomenon of highway robbery, known as adoglovi, was frequent at Aneho of the 19^th century.”

“Ado…?”

“Adoglovi,” Lonlon repeated slowly

“Adoglovi,”Abdul mimicked as best as he could, causing Lonlon to howl into laughter.

“Adoglovi means small lizard. The highway robbers were given that name because of the agility with which they robbed their victims and disappeared into the bush just the way lizards disappear into the underbrush on seeing people approach.”

“Dog eats dog.”

“Many house slaves gained their masters’ confidence to such an extent that they were regularly sent alone to markets to sell. That was the case in Agbodrafo in the second half of the 19^th century when some of them were sent to sell European goods on the markets of the other bank of the lake: Dekpo, Ekpui, Togoville, etc. Chief Assiakoley I (1835-1870) of Agbodrafo was so happy with his slaves that every Friday he invited them too to the big feast that he organized at his residence for his honorable guests.”

            “A piece of log kept in water will never become a crocodile,” Abdul said. “It’d have been better not to enslave them at all and once enslaved set them free.”

“Rural slaves were the second type of domestic slaves. These were the captives that the Huenyi or notables of Aneho kept on their rural farms in Adja-Ewe areas. In effect, in the 19^th century and more particularly from the 1840s, when, following the abolition of slavery at the international level, the selling of products had begun to replace the selling of people, some notables of Aneho established coconut and palm oil plantations in the hinterlands, and even up to Anfoin, and sometimes beyond.”

“This is what they should have done in the first place.”

“Here, they put slaves who maintained the plantation, harvested and elaborated the exportable products of palm oil, palm, and copra. Once or twice a year, the laborers came down to Aneho to present gifts of fowls and sheep, some measures of maize or gari to the master. During the annual Yeke-Yeke festival, the master invited them to Aneho for the Ge feast. And from time to time, the master visited them on the farm to check the management or to have a feast with them.”

“So they were in complete control of the farm,” Abdul wanted to know.

“On the farm, authority was vested in a man of Aneho delegated by the master, sometimes to one of the oldest captives having the full confidence of the master. There was no particular surveillance and the captives who wanted to run away could do so easily. For example, at the end of the 19^th century, on the farm of Mr. Joao Ayitévi d’Almeida situated at Akangadji near Zébé, on the road to Aklakou, 13 Mahi slaves escaped the same day.”

            “They did right, because no form of slavery is acceptable,” Abdul yapped, making Lonlon swallow the idea that domestic slavery in Aneho was slavery only in name but not in reality, since it had a humane face.

“Some rural slaves made fortune and raised themselves above their servile status. Rich, he could make up for his place with his master by procuring him another slave.”

“I’d never do it. I’d prefer to abscond like your ancestor-in-law’s Mahi slaves.”

This made Lonlon to laugh his guts out. “Some slaves whose behavior had been particularly appreciable, or who had shown high talent, rose in the esteem of their masters to the point of becoming the vigan (the eldest child) of the house in whom the master sometimes had more confidence than in his own children.”

“Sure?” Doubt colored Abdul’s tone.

Lonlon nodded. “This was the third sub-category of domestic slaves called excellent slaves.”

Abdul thought the term derogatory because it had the connotation of submissiveness.

            “There is the case of a former Kabyè slave belonging to my wife’s ancestor d’Almeida Apeto Ayi, to whom he had entrusted the bunch of keys of all the doors and cupboards of the house, rather than to his own children. A more poignant one comes from tradition which says that in the 18^th century, Chief Nuwomi of Degbenu had a tall, very handsome and exceptionally gifted and intelligent Mosi slave. In his esteem, he proposed that the slave succeed him to the throne.”

“Did it happen?” Abdul asked anxiously.

“No,” Lonlon replied and Abdul’s smile vanished. “The chief’s own children and the Council opposed the idea vehemently.”

            “This is proof that the slave, although integrated, was still considered a stranger.”

“Yes, the slave so integrated into the family was considered as an ordinary domestic servant called amegbononvi, although sometimes they were seen as a member of the family. Such male slaves got married in the area.”

“To other slaves?”

“Highly improbable, as this could not ensure their complete integration. The master even did not hesitate to marry the slave who pleased him. At the next generation, the children were assimilated and it was forbidden to mention the origin of their parents. Excellent slaves often inherited a part of the master’s property if so authorized.”

“With no objections?”

“Even if his own children objected to it, the master’s wishes were respected even though there were no wills at that time.”

“Huhn?”

“The given word at that time was sacred.”

Abdul sighed with pleasure as the waiter brought him his fechouada, a Brazilian meal—of a combination of red beans, tomatoes, and beef all simmered in peanut oil and seasoned with salt, garlic, aniseed, and onions—the returning slaves brought back.

“Bon appetit!” Lonlon said as Abdul picked up his cutlery.

“Thank you,” Abdul replied, forked a little food into his mouth, chewed tentatively and as the food teased his palate, nodded vigorously while he sighed with pleasure. Abdul nodded at Lonlon for his choice. Grinning proudly, Lonlon thumbed him.

“The last group of domestic slaves became fetish priestesses called vodusi. The Ge master of Aneho, Glidji or Agbodrafo sent some of their young female slaves to convents where, for a period of three years generally, they were initiated in the service of the vodu, god. These slaves were taught some arts and craft trade, such as the weaving of mats, rush baskets (kevi), and baskets. Since one didn’t talk a lot in the convent, ate frugally in addition to certain dietary restrictions, and because chastity was enforced and its violation severely punished there, the trainees learnt to control their senses, language, taste and sexual desire.”

“Why did the Ge send slaves of foreign origin to the convents? In principle they were not concerned with the Ge gods.”

“First, the low population level did not make it sensible for the Ge to send only their girls into the convents. Because of their spiritual, esoteric, and moral education, when the vodusi graduated from the convents, they became respectable and respected wives, with theoretically guaranteed virtues, in short, potential quality wives that the masters used as elements of exchange highly prized through matrimonial alliances.”

            “Shrewd, the Ge.”

“The entry of the slave into the court of the master meant a sort of a new birth for the former,” Lonlon continued. “He was given a new mother among the sisters of the master. In the case of a female slave, she was obliged to follow her new mother where the latter got married.”

            “To continue serving her.”

“Once given a new mother, the slave was taken to the beach and his feet plunged into the sea water to signify contact with the coast. They were then given a libation to drink to entrust them to the ancestors of the lineage. Having become members of the family, they were given names: these were often proverbial names (lodo nyiko) summarising the history of the line, challenge-names (atiten nyiko,) sayings hurled at enemies, or simply day names of the master: Kodjo, for example, if the master was born on a Monday. The former name of the slave disappeared.”

“Just as in America!” Abdul howled, wondering where the humane face of this type of slavery was.

“The slave status of the captive was materialized by the wearing of a brass bracelet called tchambaga on the left arm.”

“Didin’t the word ‘tchamba’ recall slaves here?”

“Yes,” Lonlon said and Abdul was convinced there was nothing humane about Ge domestic slavery. “But with time this bracelet could be done away with. After a period, the slave acquired seniority, and after the death of the master, they became free persons and full members of the line.”

            Abdul shrugged.

“Because the integration of the slave was realized in the first generation and there was no biological reproduction of slaves, the children of slaves did not automatically become slaves. They were born free persons.”

Abdul agreed with the humaneness of this.

“Apart from domestic slaves, the second main group was ‘pawned persons’—” Lonlon indicated the inverted commas with his fingers. “—our people called awobame. ‘Pawned persons’ were not slaves in the strict sense of the term, but since they were also deprived of their liberty, they could also be considered as such.”

            “Of course,” Abdul agreed. “That was what made a person a slave.”

“But properly speaking, the awobame was a temporary slave.”

Abdul stared at Lonlon.

“They were Ge people put into dependence with a Ge master by an insolvent debtor to work for a given time to pay off the debt,” Lonlon explained and Abdul went back to eating. “They were taken over by the master who wiped off the debt. Often, instead of becoming ‘pawned persons,’ themselves, the debtors replaced themselves with a relative, a brother, a sister or even a child. The ‘pawned person’ became free when the debt was paid off.”

“Couldn’t the master sell the ‘pawned person’?” Abdul wanted to know.

“The notion of awobame excluded any idea of sale or purchase, so that the ‘pawned person,’ sooner or later, could go back to his lineage,” Lonlon explained. “The exception was the case of women who were often incorporated into the line of the master through matrimonial alliances.”

“To increase the Ge population.”

“Yes. And if the person was Ge, to increase the number of the members of the master’s lineage. In this case, the ‘pawned person’ never went back to his family even after the payment of the debt.”

            “Did the Ge accept other ethnic groups as ‘pawned people’?”

“There were also ‘pawned people’ from the neighboring ethnic groups, particularly the Watchi and the Adja who the Ge sent to work in their homes or on their farms.”

“Didn’t such people run away?”

“No, such ‘slaves’ never escaped, as they had a high sense of honor.”

“Happy to be temporary slaves, huhn?” Abdul joked.

“No, being pawned was a sort of contract and they were honouring its terms.”

Lips twitching in disgust, Abdul shrugged.

“The last group of Ge slaves was people sold for deportation to the New World. As I said earlier, they were generally captives from neighboring areas who could escape and easily go back home.”

“So the Ge sealed their fate with deportation.”

            “Selling slaves for deportation to the New World was not new to the Ge because in their former home in the Accra region, transatlantic slavery had existed for more than a century. It was therefore not astonishing that on their settlement here, they went back to this ancient practice. In any way, between the Gold Coast and the Niger Delta, not engaging in slavery would have been surprising for a coastal group because of the general socio-economic context of that time.”

            Hearing this, Abdul’s appetite nearly flew away and he felt like pushing back the plates. Instead he ate slowly.

Lonlon soon asked to go when Abdul finished eating, drawling how famished he was.

            They embraced warmly and lengthily wished each other good night.

Day broke early and bright.

“We’ll go to the intersection before the bridge,” Lonlon said when he came at 8 as planned and found Abdul waiting at the reception. “We can get transport faster from there than at the station.”

Lonlon was right. They had hardly come to the roadside when a Renault 18 long-distance taxi appeared from the bend and the driver flashed his headlights at them at the same time that Lonlon flagged it down.

As they rumbled 15 kilometers west of Aneho towards Agbodrafo Lonlon pointed out landmarks. 

“That’s Lac Togo over there,” Lonlon said, waving to the right side of the road as the car slowed to a halt and Abdul glimpsed the glistening lake at some distance away through the foliage separating it from the road. “The sea is at the other side.” He gestured left. “Thus Agbodrafo is sandwiched between them.”

“Almost like Aneho.”

“Yeah, you got the picture!”

Ill gotten gains seldom prosper was the thought that crossed Abdul’s mind when they got down at Agbodrafo. One wouldn’t think hordes of people had been sold here. Agbodrafo looked like a small frontier town living the final moments of its existence, with lethargic people torn between staying and leaving. When it came into his mind, Abdul didn’t know whether to laugh or cry for the mirrors, alcohol, canons, and other trifles the African slave traders eagerly exchanged their brothers and sisters for.

“A former settlement occupied in the 1680s by the Ga refugees who came from the region of Accra,” Lonlon recounted as they walked into the Agbodrafo town, “this locality, also named Abree when the Dutch and the English used to call here for slaves, Agbodrafo grew only for a while and then disappeared from accounts of slave trading activities in the 18^th century.”

“All the better,” Abdul said and Lonlon laughed.

“Following the civil war in Aneho in March 1835, Kuadjo Agbossou, an Aputaga, led away a part of the Adjigo clan of Aneho chased away by the Lawsons. He obtained permission in October to settle on the beach facing Togoville, the town where the German explorer Gustav Nachtigal later signed the protectorate with King Mlapa in 1884. Kuadjo Agbossou called the area Agbo dre afo meaning: Me, ram, I have stretched my legs here; implying that he was ready to kick anyone who will come from Aneho to attack him.”

Both of them burst into laughter.

“Very soon, King Assiakoley and his notables, already used to slavery in Aneho, got down to practicing the slave trade whose importance has already been marked with the establishment of the Dekpoga at the other end of the lake. Everyday Kuadjo Agbossou had a white pennant raised on the beach to signal to Portuguese or Brazilian slave ships which sailed along the Slave Coast doing slavery under sail that he had captives for sale. He succeeded in attracting their attention. Agbodrafo soon became a slave loading port which the Portuguese slave traders called Porto Seguro, meaning Port of Security and set up slave trading posts here.”

Abdul noticed that the houses in Agbodrafo, contrary to Aneho, were almost all one storey and, like Aneho, old since the roughcast has disappeared from most of them. Lonlon pointed out the protestant Wesleyan mission which dates back to 1898 and the style of whose church was a symbol of that specific local character. Further, on the same street, they came to the ruins of a half European house: King Mensah Assiakoley’s royal palace. Some cannons and a big chain for mooring lay there, material witness of the relationship of the town with the outside world.

 “Slaves sold here were first brought to the northern bank of the lake at Dekpo,” Lonlon said as they moved away from the main road.

Abdul wondered if that place was worth a visit.

“They put up some resistance to their embarkation for the southern shore; and during the crossing, those captives who proved too restless thus putting the canoe at risk of being overturned were simply drowned in the lake.”

Abdul soughed.

“The people of Dekpo claimed that some days later cowry shells grew on the bodies of the victims of drowning and they dived to the bottom of the lake to pluck them.”

Abdul wrinkled his nose. “What’s this weird cowry shell story from these sons of vipers?”

“They were shells—used as money—thrown by the people of Agbodrafo at the point of drowning, in expiatory sacrifice to the divinity of the lake, at the same time for the crime of drowning and for the staining of the lake inflicted by the corpses.”

“Those people had lost their heads.”

            “I guessed slave raiding had killed something in him. On arrival at Agbodrafo, the captives were taken to about three kilometers north-west of the town to Nimagna, a coastal village where the well called Gatovudo (the well of those who wear chains, or the slaves well) was situated.”

            “Can we see that?” Abdul asked.

            “Now?”

            Abdul nodded and added: “If it suits you.”

            Lonlon shrugged. On the way westwards to the well, Abdul recalled the donkosuo, the Assin Manso Slave River in Ghana he had read about and which he wished he could visit and he sighed deeply.

At Nimagna, Canoes were pulled up the shore and nets spread over them to dry. Further up, women smoked fish over an open makeshift oven. The well, standing in the open at a view of the sea, was made of red bricks and roughly plastered with cement. The nearer he got to it, the more Abdul began to shiver.

Crouching on the knee length wall of the well, Abdul stared into the brackish water and thought he saw haggard, plaintive faces staring up at him from the dull sheen, supplicating to be allowed to go back home. He looked away.

“This well is so named because this was where the slaves took their last ‘purification bath.’ After washing down, they were led back into town.”

“Why were they made to take a purification bath?” Abdul asked.

“I think it was to purify them of some stain,” Lonlon said.

Just as at the donkosuo, Abdul thought. “Was it not some ritual to make them forgetful or something similar?” he asked however.

Lonlon stared into the sky for sometime, then shrugged and whispered: “I don’t really know. They were just made to wash themselves. Which is normal, considering the long trek from the hinterlands coupled with the stay in the humid cave of the Wood Home.”

Abdul sighed. Too hard to bear this amnesia of such a long, tragic event.

“This well is one of the sites symbolising the transatlantic slave trade in Togo.”

Abdul again saw how right Jocelyne was: the vestiges of the slave trade in Togo weren’t developed. Even the slave well could be taken for an ordinary abandoned one.

They clumped to the sea and Abdul stared out into the horizon. How did the slave forced to the canoe feel doing the same?

As if Lonlon had read his thoughts, he said: “One thing which has always fascinated me was how did the slave who had never seen the sea feel before this rolling churning endless mass of water; and where did the Africans who had never suspected a land beyond the Atlantic think they were being taken to when they were rowed to the slave ship and especially when the ship weighed anchor and slid away.”

“Somebody told me in Ouidah the slaves thought they were going to be eaten.”

“Yeah?” Lonlon said doubtfully. “I’d rather say they thought they were going to the beyond, the land of the ancestors. That must have been a painful thought.”

Abdul sighed, shaking his head in pain.

“No doubt some of them committed suicide and others died of grief,” Lonlon said as they headed back to town. “Very late into the 19^th century, the surveillance of anti-slavery cruises having been accentuated in the Golf of Benin, the people had to be extra discreet in order not to let it be known that they had slaves in the town for sale for export.”

“Despicable people!”

“Yeah. All over the Gold and Slave Coasts, there was resistance by the African slave traders to the abolition of slavery because they did not want to lose their profitable business.”

“Profitable for them,” Abdul cut in hotly, “but disastrous for the captives.”

“The profit motive was also the feeling of one Geraldo de Lima in Anlo country in today’s Ghana. He and other slave traders were prepared to go to war against the English and black abolitionists. Lima was captured and imprisoned in January 1888.”

“Fine.”

 “Contacts were also made with the sovereigns of the various communities of Lagos, Ouidah and Aneho for them to stop the trade abolished on their territories.”

Abdul shook his head sadly. While Europeans who had initiated the slave trade no longer wanted it, their African accomplices still craved it.

On the western side of the main street, at Lakome right in the center of Agbodrafo, they came to a well styled large building belonging to the royal family, today almost in neglect.

“In 1852, the king of Agbodrafo, Assiakoley I (1835-1870), just like those of Glidji and Goumoukope received walking sticks each from Victoria, the queen of England, in exchange for the signing of a declaration of renunciation of the slave trade. It was certainly for this reason that the king built this slave storage house at about 500 meters west of his residence, commonly called ‘Woold homé’ to escape the surveillance of the Europeans. The name came from a European trader people here called Woold but which I guess should be Wood to whom the place had been rented at the beginning of the century and who had named it Wood Lodge.”

There, Abdul stood gaping at the ochre one-storey Portuguese style building darkened at places by rivulets of rain. The bricks of the upper part of the foundation showed where pattering rain had worn off the roughcast and continued to eat into the brick. The building measured about twenty meters in length and fifteen in breadth. It had an awning covered with asbestos. Three steps led from the sides of the awning and directly in front to lead to the main door. Many high windows with fanlights went all around the building. Some scrawny shrubs, now grown into trees, waved about.

“Local and imported building materials such as cement, burnt brick, boards of Palmyra wood, corrugated iron sheets and sea sand were used to put up this building in Afro-Brazilian style typical of houses of that era,” Lonlon explained and Abdul’s head bobbed in acknowledgement. “The Wood Home was therefore designed and built to serve a double function linked to the triangular trade. Situated at an altitude of 10 metres and three kilometres from the Atlantic Ocean, thousands of captives hauled in from areas in today’s Togo, Republic of Benin, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Niger and Nigeria were kept here. All its victims were shipped from its cellars via the Gatovoudo.”

“I see.”

“Fallen out of use since the arrival of Germans on our shores in 1884, it is now used as residence by a family descended from chief Assiakoley.”

One of the residents whom Lonlon knew, an old man with a cloth tied around his waist, led them round the building.

“This is the sitting room,” Lonlon translated for the old man as they went into the large meagrely furnished hall.

Abdul nodded silently, staring about the room painted blue and provided with a floor of wooden boards.

“Those are the six bedrooms Chief Assiakoley furnished for the accommodation of European slave traders.”

Abdul stuck his head into one of the side rooms and withdrew it again as if something threatened to strike him there.

The man now led them into an entrance in the living room which served for going down into the cellar. It opened into a corridor of 1.5 meters in breadth which further led into a 1.4-meter high basement cellar—rare in the region—the same dimensions as the perimeter of the building. Abdul saw that the cellar was not plastered, that it was impossible to stand in there.

“The slave remained seated, crouched down or lay flat on the floor,” Lonlon said.

Abdul shook his head, staring at the mugginess.

“The slaves were stored in these compartments while waiting for clandestine tramps to haul them overseas. The people of Agbodrafo are scared stiff of this place rendered horrible by the drama which took place here.”

“Yeah?” Abdul asked. 

“According to estimates, the building could be dated around 1870; which shows that the clandestine trans-Atlantic slave trade did not completely cease except with the installation of Germans on the coast in 1884 and in Togo probably at the extreme end of the 19^th century.”

Abdul stood still for sometime and found himself transported back to the period of the last quarter of the 17^th century and the end of the 19^th when this human tragedy took place on the Togolese coast.

He saw chained men, women, and children weary from thirst, hunger, flogging, and the long journey by foot from the interior of the country right down to this coast which would soon toll their knell into unending anguish. He heard people in despair hollering, sobbing, and cursing. He felt their pain of banishment. He could smell their grimy, emaciated bodies. He could taste the sweat dripping from their haunted, glistening faces. “Lawd, why did it have to happen?” Abdul heard his voice as a faraway plaintive sound. He turned around on feeling the pressure of a hand insistently on his shoulder. Tears ran down the lean cheeks of the old man and Lonlon too. Abdul broke down and wept.

“I don’t know how to continue this tour,” Lonlon whined, wiping his tears with the back of his hand. “It’s always the same: emotional, battering. This old man is a descendant of a slave woman who could not make the journey when the illegal trade also died.”

Abdul gaped at the man who smiled shyly. Abdul felt a special bond with him.

“The woman was married into a local family like all the other slaves and it was forbidden to refer to them as slaves. However our people say that a matter hidden even in a hole always surfaces.”

“Do they therefore face discrimination?”

“None at all,” Lonlon said categorically. “They’ve the same rights as any other person. They’re so totally integrated that with the exception of very old people, others hardly know they were not one of theirs. As I said yesterday, the excellent slaves were allowed to inherit a part of the property of their ‘masters’ because they have worked for them in the same way as the members of his family. Even at the height of slavery some local people bought or took out slaves—especially beautiful women and girls— from the captives to be shipped outside and they became spouses and members of their families.”

Abdul was not surprised. His visit to northern Ghana showed him how desirable northern women could be. Only the grave mission which took him there prevented him from trying to indulge in pleasure with them. But hasn’t Allah given him one of them already? Feeling warmth from the memory of Zenabu, he began to regain his composure.

Next they went to a shrine where some vestiges of slavery—hot irons for stamping identifications on the slave, neck chains, leg chains, coffles—have been turned into divinities smeared with feathers, blood of sacrificed animals, food, palm oil, and gin.

            “Is there any significance why these objects are used for ancestral worship?”

            “The old man says they contain spirits.”

            “Of the slaves?”

            “Yes, of our departed ancestors.”

            Abdul remembered the baobab tree at the Salaga Slave Cemetery. He knew ancestral worship for a tribe was a form of reverence of their dead people. If these people worshipped the spirits of the slaves supposed to be in the objects of enslavement, then maybe this practice was a form of atonement. Maybe those claiming the slave trade became a normal trade like any other were right. 

            “It was under the reign of King Ekue Agbanon I of Glidji that Queen Victoria sent the war ship Philomel to ask the colonists and the kings to stop the slave trade. Three rods were given to the Ge kings to seal this agreement. They bore the following inscriptions: Offered by the British Government to the chief of … (name of the locality) in token of the agreement of the abolition of the slave trade, signed by him on … (…) January 1852.”

            “That was when the slave trade ended here?”

            “Yes. The first cane was handed over to the Chief of Goumoukopé on 26 January, the second went to the Chief of Agbodrafo on the next day and the third to the King of Glidji on the 28.”  

            The old man led them to his family farm for a purification ceremony for Abdul. With a long stick he broke off twigs of the hyssop tree standing before the farm and fetched the elliptic, waxy leaves with his bare fingers.

“He says the hyssop is planted at the entrance of every house, farm, and shrine to ward off evil spirits and purify those coming in,” Lonlon said as the old man feigned to kick a pig bathed in sludge. Squealing, it dashed under a brush followed by its equally muddy and scared piglets.

The old man fetched water from a well on the farm and poured it into a gourd.

“Well water,” Abdul remarked questioningly.

“The well is our source of washing and drinking water,” Lonlon explained. “It’s found in every house, even in Lome the capital city.”

Eyes tightly shut, the old man emotionally whispered something onto the leaves, plunged them into the water and macerated them until the water turned dark green.”

“He says you must wash your hands in it.”

Abdul did so.

“He says you’re purified and worthy to be back home.”

Abdul felt light. “How much do I owe him?” Abdul asked.

The old man shook his head and smiled toothlessly when Lonlon translated for him.

“He says you’re like his son,” Lonlon said. “He wouldn’t take a penny from his son for such a ceremony, why should he charge you?”

Abdul shook the old man’s frail hand. The calloused palm scalded his.

“He says when they performed a ceremony like this they celebrated with food, drink, song, and dance but there’s nothing here except coconuts.”

“Oh coconuts!” Abdul sighed. “I love them.”

The old man’s eyes brightened and his gums showed when Lonlon gave him the answer. He shouted across the farm and a lad came bounding over, clutching a sharp cutlass. The old man said something and with a thrust the boy planted the cutlass in the soft soil and swarmed effortlessly up one of the tall, dangling coconut trees laden with clusters of fruit and disappeared into the mass of large fan-shaped leaves. Soon coconut fruit he tapped with the palm of his right foot plopped down. The old man waved to him and the boy slid down, expertly whacked off the tops of the coconuts and slashed them. The whitish liquid spilled down his hand.

Abdul guzzled the sugary milk and guttled the soft, white pulpy meat until his stomach began to ache. The old man threw back his head and laughed, showing his toothless gum and a few brown teeth as Abdul rubbed his distended stomach. Then he unwound a copper ring on his gnarled finger and slid it on Abdul’s.

            “He said he’s given you the most precious thing he could’ve given his own son before going to the ancestors.”

            “What would he give his own son then?”

            “He said the ancestors didn’t want him to see any grow,” Lonlon translated and Abdul understood why the old man’s face had fallen when Lonlon put the question to him.

            “None at all?”

            “He had three daughters but they were dziku—they died young.”

            Abdul shook the old man’s hand sympathetically.

            “He says I should tell you his children are gone, there’s no use clinging to the past. But you should take care of the ring.”

            Abdul nodded, hugged the old man and they patted each other’s backs and cried tears of joy. Then he turned away from Abdul and shook hands with Lonon. When they went out the farm enclosed with cactus plants and before turning a corner hidden in tall wilting grasses, Abdul turned round to see the old man staring after them. Abdul waved eagerly. The old man waved back as if to a relative going on a long, uncertain journey.

            “Nice that people like the old man don’t feel the same restlessness as we do,” Abdul said as they walked towards the Aneho-Lome highway.

            “Certainly not. I’m yet to hear that of such people found in localities on the coast which got implicated in the slave trade such as Anloga, Woe, Keta, Vodza, Aflao, Abree, Agbodrafo, Aneho, Xwlagan (Grand-Popo), Glexwe, Offra, Jakin, Ekpe, Seme, Appa, Gbadagri.”

            “Wasn’t it possible that some slaves came from some of these localities?” Abdul wanted to know

            “Sure,” Lonlon affirmed. “For instance, while in principle the coastal people didn’t sell one of theirs, it happened that they parted with some under certain circumstances.”

            “Like?”

“If they were hard-eared or committed certain heinous crimes and offences such as adultery, murder, and abducting a free person.”

            “Those the slave sellers abducted from the hinterland, weren’t they free people?”

            “Sure. But the coastal people entertained no such qualms or other sentiments for people from the slave reservoir regions situated at some hundred kilometres from the coast where the Ewe, Watchi, Aja, Yoruba, and others lived. From the beginning of the slave trade at Allada in 1640 right up to 1820, the Aja were the people exported most. A large proportion of them were deported between 1640 and 1740.”

“A hundred years!” Abdul marvelled.

“Yes. As for the Yoruba, relatively large numbers of them were sold from the second half of the 18^th century. Their numbers increased until the 19^th century when they became the majority group enslaved, especially from 1820.”

Abdul again wondered where the money Africans received from selling so many of theirs went to.

“The third group mainly sold was the eastern Voltaic people, the Bariba and especially the Atakora people. From the 18^th century, the Hausa people joined the group of captives exported, especially at the time of the formation of the caliphate of Sokoto at the beginning of the 19^th century.”

“These damned powerful kingdoms!” Abdul cursed.

“Although the Anlo country supplied a large number of captives from the Krepe region peopled by the Ewes from the west, the best place to obtain captives was the Danish Fort Kongesten at Ada. The slave trade made Mefi, and to a lesser degree coastal localities such as Anloga, Woe, Keta, Aflao, prosperous.”

“I’m sure those are destitute area now.”

“Sure, nothing at all to show for their slave trading past. Further east, Aneho and Xwlagan made captives of the Watchi from the Ge hinterlands and the Aja living along the banks of the Mono River. But the largest number of slaves reached the coast from the north along the Kpessi, Atakpame, Sagada, Togodo, and Mono routes.”

“In Ghana too most of the slaves came from the north.”

“East of the Mono, Glexwe, Jakin, Offra, Ekpe, Gbadagri and later on Xogbonu were the centers most active in the slave trade in the 17^th and 18^th centuries. As usual the captives came from the hinterland peopled by the Aja, Gede, Mahi, Yoruba, and Hausa peoples. When from the second half of the 17^th century the settlement of the Fon on the Agbome plateau led to war with the Gede who were vanquished, they were sold and most of them ended up in Haiti where they became ancestors of Haitians who, not surprisingly, practice voodoo today.”

“Being descendants of voodoo worshippers.”

“More terrible still, the Fon wars of expansion carried out in the 18^th and 19^th centuries supplied them more slaves from their Aja, Mahi, and Yoruba neighbors.”

“Strange how people would go to war just to get captives for Europeans!” Abdul sneered.

“Yes. War was the best means to produce a large number of captives. But they were incited inland, far from the coast. At the coast they weren’t favourable to the slave traders because they brought insecurity to the slave routes and discouraged the traders from venturing on them.”

Abdul nodded.

“Further east, towards the second half of the 18^th century, the Oyo confederacy regularly raided the densely-populated Yoruba country and obtained large numbers of captives which it sent through Agbome-Calavi to its big depot installed at the coast.”

“No doubt population growth stagnated in Africa during those sad times.”

“Yes, other coastal centers contributed to that too. Ekpe, a big depot during the last quarter of the 17^th century, supplied slaves to the other ports at lower prices than could be had at Offra or Glexwe.”

“Therefore it will be encouraged to bring down more captives.”

“Yes. It soon replaced Offra and Glexwe and during the last quarter of the 18^th century became the biggest slave trading center on the Guinea coast exporting 16,000 to 18,000 captives or more a year.”

“That’s roughly 1400 captives a month or 45 a day,” Abdul remarked quietly.

“Enormous, wasn’t it?”

Abdul nodded sadly.

“At the decline of Glexwe, the European slave traders shifted their activities to the neighboring centers of Jakin, Offra, Xogbonu, Ekpe, and Gbadagri where regular supplies of captives were available. Some of them were obtained during periods of famine when owners readily sell their slaves.”

“I guess domestic slaves and those affected to farm work?”

“Exactly. Although Europeans went where slaves were available, it is also true that when a lodge or fort was set up in a locality, a large number of Africans settled around it, creating a Danish, Dutch, English, Portuguese, or French quarter depending on the nationality of the company that built the trading post.”

“The Portuguese, English, and Danish or Dutch areas of Aneho,” Abdul advanced.

“Yes. From the end of the 17^th to the end of the 19^th century, the Ge-Mina country engaged in the capture through war, raiding, abduction and above all (in the 19^th century) the purchase of slaves and their sale to European or Brazilian slave traders, like the rest of pre-colonial Africa. Although unfortunate, it was an aceptable practice in the mentality of the era, as it has been elsewhere, in ancient and medieval Europe, in ‘pre’ as well as post-Colombian America up to 1888 when slavery ended in Brazil, and in traditional Asia, making it appear as an infant sickness or simply as a stage, albeit crazy, in the history of all civilizations. Some ethnic groups accuse the people of Aneho to have bought and sold their ancestors to white people, just as some Diaspora people accuse Africans to have done the same. This is a bad way to read history. But one can also, first and all, begin by denouncing generally all the former infantry or cavalry brigands, thieves and sellers of people, and all the reckless people capable of selling a neighbour against some kilos of bad quality tobacco or some litres of poor quality rum; that would be the best way to lecture everybody, including oneself; one does not judge the past with the values of today.”

“Thank God that crazy period is gone.”

“But it would be better when its effects disappear too,” Lonlon replied as they left the town.

What did it benefit Africans, Abdul couldn’t still help wondering, that they participated in this inconceivable enterprise for centuries?

“Vestiges and testimonies show that the slave trade was really practiced here, even after the abolition in 1848,” Lonlon said when they reached the side of the highway, “for which we have to apologize. History is the best school of moral. It is inasmuch as it doesn’t incite the victorious to be complacent about past glories, nor drive the vanquished to weep unceasingly on the trials and woes brought by the vicissitudes of time. History is such a school in so far as it enables us to create the conditions to improve actual existence in every way and to forge bliss for the future. It is in this context that you should see your visit. I want to assure you that it was nice knowing you,” Lonlon shook hands warmly with Abdul. “Let’s stay in touch.”

            “I’ll forever cherish this meeting,” Abdul replied emotionally, while they embraced tightly and patted each other’s back like relatives separating on a long journey. “I’ll be back.”

            “Please do.”

They thumbed each other with wide grins until Abdul’s taxi disappeared around a foliage-covered bend in the road.

Since he didn’t want to have any stopover in Accra but go directly to Cape Coast and since more than half of the day had already slid away, Abdul decided to spend the night in Lome some thirty kilometres away.

            On his suggestion, and with his mobile phone, Lonlon booked a room for Abdul in an inn kept by an uncle. When Abdul mentioned Lonlon’s uncle’s name on arriving at the inn in the late afternoon, the receptionist raised his eyelids. “There’s no reservation in your name;” he said in laborious English; “besides, there’s no room available.”

            Abdul stood there speechless.

            “May I suggest …”

“Never mind,” Abdul snapped, sprang out, dug out his guide to Togo and skimmed over the hotels section.

“Yeah man,” a young, smiling Togolese man in dreadlocks said and Abdul nearly jumped. “You need a hotel, I take you to a clean one. I also show you unforgettable place to eat cheap. And if you need good home girl, no problem too.” He smiled, showing two golden teeth. An ebony pendant of Africa hung in his neck on a red, yellow, green, black thread.

Abdul considered the proposition. He knew such guides were often more useful than printed ones in which some pieces of information may become outdated before they are released. “Okay for the hotel and the restaurant, but no woman, okay?”

“Okay, my brother,” the Rasta man said, reaching for Abdul’s knapsack. “Rasko will …”

Abdul held on to his bag.

“No problem,” Rasko drawled, folding his spread palms onto his shoulders. “Just to help you, ma-a-a-n.”

The sun was sinking down the horizon and the light curtain of dusk began to fall.

“Some of these inns and motels are used by prostitutes,” Rasko said while they waited for a taxi. “I remember a British tourist I helped last telling me that at an inn he stayed at some of the rooms were for a short while occupied by people who had come for carnal pleasure with the chicks. He suffered the whole night with the incessant sound of feet scraping on the floor, beds squeaking, and people sighing in ecstasy. Impossible to close his eyes. He was obliged to go and complain to the receptionist who was of little help. It was then he realized the place was a prostitutes’ den. In the morning he changed hotels.”

“Why do the hotels engage in that?”

“That’s how they survive. They make more money hiring out rooms for short time use by prostitutes and their clients than for lodging.”

“Are we going to get a taxi?” Abdul asked irritable after some time standing by the side of the dirt road.

“May be difficult,” Rasko said. “Let’s take zemidjan. It’s cheaper too.”

“What’s that?” Abdul had hardly asked when he had the answer.

“’O le yi a!” Rasko shouted and hissed to a motorcycle-taxi. Then another one. “Hôtel Le Retour,” he said.

Abdul clutched the chromed frame of the contoured saddle as the motorcycle zoomed away.

The hotel surrounded by a dense cluster of coconut trees and flowers stood in a calm neighbourhood on the eastern end of avenue du 13 janvier, 350 meters from the sea. The breeze from the Gulf of Guinea swept the place like a giant fan. A coarse concrete path brought them to the sparsely furnished front desk.

After booking, Rasko took Abdul to Dekon on the central portion of avenue du 13 janvier full of crowded bars blaring music from giant loudspeakers and tightly-dressed prostitutes with sensuous, eyes heavily applied with mascara wriggling themselves on the dance floors and chain-smoking cigarettes. The blood pounded in Abdul’s head ogling some twisting their scantily-clad curvaceous bodies. As they sipped beer on the terrace of a relatively quiet bar, street vendors incessantly proposed imitation CDs at a dollar and many other imported items at equally dirt-cheap prices. Abdul continued to shake his head when they thrust the goods into his face until Rasko began to bark at them before they even came near.

“If you want this—” Rasko plastered two fingers to his lips and smiled. “—no problem.”

“Cigarette?” Abdul intentionally asked.

Rasko leaned towards him. “No, kaya,” he whispered conspiratorially, baring his golden teeth and a rotten one.

“I don’t smoke.”

Rasko tittered with embarrassment.

            “Can we eat something now?” Abdul said. “I’m famished.”

            Rasko got to his feet. “Let’s go to Half-Half,” he said.

            “Where is it?”

“At the other end of the boulevard.” He pointed down the street.

“What about here?”

            Rasko shook his head and the dreadlocks twirled about his shoulders and face. “You’d see where I’m taking you to: calm and agréable.”

            Half-Half was a series of wayside eateries on the western edge of the avenue, just after a hairpin that Rasko said was accident prone. Cars lined the waysides of the dual carriageway and a few parked in the arched middle. The smell of roasted chicken pervaded the air. Thick white smoke rose into the air where women turned the brown flesh over glowing charcoal fires. The stale smell of beer hung in the air. Here a Rastafarian plucked an old guitar and imitated Bob Marley; there someone beat a djembe drum and sang in an African language; elsewhere Negro spirituals poured out of the modulated throats of a quartet trying to imitate some Negro group.

            “How you like it?” Rasko said with a proud grin.

            “Looks okay,” Abdul answered. 

            “You see?” Rasko’s smile broadened. “You’ll praise me for the food too.”

            The waitresses haggled for them with smiles and each dragged them towards their tables. Rasko yapped something in a rising tone and they scattered away, tut-tut and muttering and giving him burning looks. Rasko led Abdul and they settled on one of the long benches—full of local people and tourists—before the tables covered with plastic covers.

At the other side of the boulevard a small forest not bathed by the glare of the mercury lights hanging on tall, rail-like metal poles in the middle of the street stretched into the distance where buildings Rasko said were the Togolese branch of the Banque Centrale des Etats de l’Afrique de l’Ouest, BCEAO, and Hôtel du 2 Février rose dozens of stories into the calm night sky. Rasko was pointing out a circular building to the left of the forest he said was Union Togolaise de Banque, UTB, and a shorter one to the right he called CENETI and part of a cube-like one behind it he said was the headquarters of the Communauté Electrique du Bénin, CEB, when a waitress came with a wet rag to wipe the table clean of cup rings and food particles.

They ordered Cocktail de fruits which they sipped while the waitress went to bring the food. First came salade mixte. Abdul thumbed Rasko on taking a forkful of the mixture of salad leaves, boiled eggs, boiled potatoes, macaroni, beet, carrots, tomatoes, onions, and sliced sausages. Rasko twitched on the bench. Then he hunched over the akpan—a light, fermented corn dough meal—and roasted chicken. Abdul relished his riz au gras—rice cooked in a tomato sauce—accompanied by grilled tilapia spread with tomatoes and pepper. After the meal, Abdul and Rasko slowly shovelled Fan yoghurt, listening to Togolese hiphop music blaring from the loudspeakers of a bar nearby.

            “Wow! Jah bless,” Rasko cried as Abdul gave him a good tip when he flagged a motorcycle-taxi for him to go back to his hotel.

            Abdul slept like a baby and was surprised to come down into the lobby at shortly before 6 to find Rasko waiting for him dressed in black jeans, a black T-shirt with a beaming Bob Marley portrait on it and his dreadlocks piled into a cap woven with threads in the Rastafarian colors of red, yellow, green, and black.

“I thought it a duty to lead you across the border since it’s a mafia area,” he announced.

They took a zemidjan to the border.

Since Togo accused Ghana of allowing mercenaries to use its territory to attack it in September 1987, the Ghana-Togo border has remained closed for varying hours in the night but for some time now from 10 pm to 6 am. Abdul found a long queue of people and vehicles. They joined the line too and soon crawled to the immigration area. Rasko helped Abdul to complete the formalities at the Togo side of Kodjoviakope. Then they crossed over into Ghana where they joined another line seriously supervised by Ghanaian immigration officials, and as at the Togo side, with some civilian collaborators some of whom look like bad guys. On the way to the vibrant lorry park Abdul saw a long line of people that Rasko said was mainly of Ghanaian traders flocking into Togo to buy goods. Rasko ignored the entreaties of the touts and directed Abdul to a car. Rasko waited till the Toyota Urvan left before turning away. Rasko couldn’t regret, Abdul thought: despite reluctantly giving out one thousand francs to cross the border without relevant travelling documents, he left much richer. Abdul was grateful too that Rasko had come along. Young men and women tagged them from the border up to the park, some proposing to help them cross the border, others to accomplish customs formalities, another group to carry his luggage, and more others to change the francophone francs CFA into the Ghanaian cedis, and yet more to find him transport. Without Rasko, he didn’t know how he could have handled the pestering.

“Be alert and don’t mind them,” Rasko had warned when the idle youth began to swarm around them and Abdul clutched his pocket where his purse was.