Jean in Sokode

We had heard that the president was on a tour of the country, a short, three-day trip that would take him from Lomé, the capital in the south, to Dapaong, the capital of the northernmost Savanes region, though not the northernmost city. My village was on the roadside, and we could have seen him easily from the small boutique where I drank at night with the old farmers, tobacco-stained men in sandals made from old truck tires, carrying around their radios in the dark. We decided, though, to go up to Sokodé, the capital of our Centrale region, thirty-six kilometers to the north. There was a nice bar there along the road, and if we staked out the day there we could eat and drink and most definitely see him.

We left my village early, while the sounds of small brooms sweeping the dirt were still loud in the air. As the driver pulled into Sokodé we could see groups of red-bereted soldiers on the side streets, not directing traffic, but diverting it by their presence. The driver let us off near the market, and we walked up the road to the bar.

The sun was higher now, and the heat of the day established. All my days in Africa have been hot, the state of the heat monotonous, its intricacies describable with only a handful of adjectives. Muggy, dry, or blazing, it is always hot. Only during and for a few hours after heavy rains will it cool down enough to put on a sweater, or zip up a jacket.

The bar ladies were still sweeping out the porch when we got there, but the door was open and the tables set up. Two grills, each made from a half of a fifty-five gallon drum, stood at opposite ends of the bar’s porch. Both grills made the same things, roasted chickens and beef kebabs, but I preferred the meat from the grill on the southern end. The cooks arrived. The older one, who wore lopsided glasses and a dirty wool snow cap of indeterminate original color, established himself in the small enclave between the bar and a phone cabine, to start killing and gutting chickens. The other, a slim, smooth-headed younger man, lit the coals and began slicing the beef into ribbons and skewering it.

We sat down at my normal table in the lower corner near the meat men, and arranged the chairs so we were both sitting against the wall of the bar, watching the road. Across the street the breakfast ladies were scraping the bottoms of their large marmites for the last of the rice and beans they dished out in the mornings. One of the waitresses, a tall, flat-faced woman with her baby wrapped to her back, was finishing off a hunk of fish under the breakfast ladies’ small lean-to. The other waitress, her hair in a kinky ponytail, brought us two beers without being asked, and we began our stay.

We were hardly halfway through our bottles when a man I know, a French expatriate living in the city, rode up on a moto taxi. Jean is a tall and skinny man from the Basque region, with thick, curved glasses, and a lanky shock of greasy, sun-filtered hair. He raised his hand to greet us, and then shouted one of only two English phrases he claims to know, “Oh my God!” He pulled up another plastic chair and sat down with us.

Jean has been living in Togo for twenty years. I go to his house sometimes, in the Lohso neighborhood, and we sit on his porch drinking whiskey while his Togolese wife brings me pictures of them taken in the bar they used to own in Lomé. He was handsome when he was younger, but now, at the age of thirty-six, the African sun has dried and darkened his skin so that he looks eternally as though he’s just gotten out from under a car and has not yet taken a shower.

The waitress brought him a beer, and he plied fifty francs in her hand and sent her to a small stand down the street to buy him cigarettes. It was around nine-thirty now, and the walking vendors were out, trying to sell us watches or screwdrivers or DVDs. It is always a pleasure to watch Jean with the vendors. He has both the arrogant knowledge of an expat that this is not his only home, as well as the experience of someone who has spent twenty years not living in a walled compound with servants and chauffeurs. He terrorizes the vendors with his knowledge of the proper prices, and will barter with a boy until the kid thanks him profusely for his business, apologizing about the initially high price. Jean knows everyone in the city, it seems, and makes fast friends with those he doesn’t.

“So,” he said to us in his rapid French, “what brings you two into the city?” We told him about the president’s journey, and how we wanted simply to get out of my village, and see the convoy.
“Ah,” he said, “he won’t come until late this afternoon, most likely, so you might as well stay the night. Come to my house later, and I’ll cook for you, real French cuisine.”

Jean makes his money by traveling back to France every summer and cooking in a restaurant owned by one of his friends. Each trip he takes ready made pagne outfits and sells them to European tourists as traditional African wear. Despite the fact that most of the cloth in Togo is printed in Denmark and China, it really is the kind of stuff that the Togolese wear on a daily basis. Most non-Africans I know in Togo, no matter how dedicated to their Western couture, have at least one pagne outfit.

We told him we’d love to stay for dinner, and he finished his beer and said he had to go home and tell his wife so she could get to the market before it closed. In honor of the president’s arrival, the market would be shutting down at two-thirty this afternoon. He stood up and made to pay for his beer, but we shouted him down. “Merci,” he said. He held out his hand, and we both shook, and as he was leaving we heard him shout the second of his English phrases, “I go swimming naked on Tuesdays with my cigarette!” before he disappeared up the road.

We stayed at the bar all day, getting up only to go into the back and piss in a hole in the floor. We ordered platefuls of kebab meat, which the meat men mixed with grilled onions and tomatoes, and small mountains of ground red pepper. Vendors came and we politely refused them. Children walked up to beg for change, and we sent them to buy us cookies to earn their money. Around two-thirty, Jean came back, and said that everything was ready for dinner tonight. Along with the food, he’d bought two bottles of whiskey, so that when the sun set and we were full and comfortable, we wouldn’t have to leave his house for anything. The three of us then ordered new beers, and settled in to wait for the president.

By three-thirty, the clusters of red-berets we’d seen earlier were spread out along the road, directing cars and moto taxis into side streets to either find their way home on rock-ridden dirt roads, or to wait until the president’s motorcade had passed. Looking out from the bar, the soldiers formed a line up and down both sides of the street as far as we could see. Most boutiques and bars turned off their music, and people walking around looked continually up the street, hoping to be the first to spot a car.

Finally, around four-fifteen, the first car came. It was an olive green military jeep with a mounted machine gun, packed with soldiers. Two more of these followed, and then the cumbersome motorcycles of the gendarmes led into view a black river of SUVs, windows up and tinted. The president’s limousine sat in the middle. Spectators strained from behind the linked arms of the red-berets, trying to see in through the windows for a glimpse of the president. The three of us, the only white people I could see in that part of the city, sat unconcerned at our table, able to see over the heads of the people from the elevated porch. After the last SUV, there were more gendarmes on motorcycles, and then again three jeeps with mounted machine guns. Ten minutes passed, and the first taxi came down the road. The red-berets found benches in the shade and waited for a transport truck to pick them up. The Togolese shook their heads and continued on.

“Well,” Jean said, “what did they expect?” He lit a cigarette and leaned back against the concrete wall of the bar.
“I heard he threw money from the sunroof in Kamina.”
“Can you imagine your president driving around, throwing five dollar bills into the crowd?” Jean asked.
“No,” I said.
“Exactly,” Jean said. “That is no way to save a country.” He nodded to himself. We finished our beers and got up to leave. The waitress came back with our change. Jean handed her a tip of one hundred francs. “Merci,” she said. He winked at her.
“Oh my God!” he shouted, and we walked up the road.