"I am going to kill you."

Here's the Togo story I promised...

Last weekend I made a lone sojourn to Togo. I boarded a state bus and travelled to the border of Ghana and Togo to a town on theGhanaian side called Aflao. Border towns are pretty sketchy and Aflao was no exception. Lots of shady money changers and taxi drivers all looking to ripoff an obruni (white person).

I got through the Ghanaian immigration with very little incident. As I left the office and headed to the border through no-man's land I was approached by a guy claiming he was a Liberian refugee. The guy never left my side even after I got
through the Togo border. He wasn't really the problem... just a little
annoying and distracting. It was the Togolese immigration officer who
gave me a good scare.

So I get to a table for immigration in Togo and get a form from the officer. As I'm filling out the form the Togolese officer says, in nearly perfectEnglish , "I want to kill you."

I respond by nervously smiling thinking that he was joking and I
continue to fill out the form. As I'm finishing up the form he says it
again, "I want to kill you." I ignore it and hand him my form. He takes
it, sets it on his desk, looks up at me and asks "Did you hear me?" I
respond back, "Yes, I heard you. You want to kill me. Why?" He kind of non-chalantly shrugs at me and says, "I'm going to kill you."

After this he looks down at my form, stamps my passport, writes in my passport and asks for my fee for the Togo visa. I hand him the money, he stuffs it in his shirt pocket and proceeds to look over the passports of the next couple of people in line. I ask him if we are finished, "C'est fini?" He doesn't respond. I ask again, "Is that all? Are we finished?" He doesn't respond and continues to ignore me so I
slowly turn and walk away. I look back carefully to see if he's making
any movement or giving any indication that I shouldn't be leaving but
he's completely enveloped in his next couple of customers.

And that is how I came to enter the country of Togo.

The rest of my trip was pretty uneventful comparatively
except for a crazy taxi drive on the way back to the border but that's
a different story. I spent the weekend at La Conscience inAhepe in the
center of the country. I learned a lot about how serious a problem
trafficking is in West Africa and I really want to try to help. There
was really no volunteer work for me to do at the center but it really
sounds like the organization could use help with money. It is my hope
to try to raise some money for La Conscience to help them build a
school on the compound. They need around $35,000 American to build a
school for 350 kids. Please let me know if you would like to help.