A Letter about Love

May 11, 2015
Dear M—,
It’s interesting that you ask me about love today. Love has been very much on my mind lately. I’m still trying to figure it out myself—love. I don’t have all the answers, but I can tell you what I do know.
I know that love grows exponentially—the more you love, the more you love, the more you love and on and on. There’s no such concept as people having only so much love to give. My parents taught me that lesson. They had nine children. Every time a child came into the world, they discovered they had even more of their love to give. Similarly, every time I had a new sister or brother, I discovered that my capacity for loving other human beings was infinite. My parents taught me that love is a bottomless well, and that each bucket we dip into the well will fill up, no matter how many times we send it back down again. My parents taught me that lesson, the birth of my children reminded me of that lesson, and every year, my students reinforce the lesson that love has no limits.
(My parents also taught me, when they got divorced when I was 13, that love and relationships are completely separate themes. I mention this, because rumor has it your parents are going through a divorce now, and this is understandably a tough time for you. So much more is involved in starting, maintaining, and nurturing a relationship, whether it be marital, friendship, or even work-related, than mere love, that we will have to save the subject of relationships for another letter.)
Love is the feeling that someone else matters. It’s caring about one’s health, happiness, and success in life. Love is a glow inside of you that makes you happy. Most of all, love is a gift. A gift we give others. When you really love someone else, you give that person the gift of a part of yourself without expecting anything in return. When you ask something in return for your love, it’s no longer a gift, but a weapon you use against that person, against others. Love should not be a power struggle.
Similarly, while one must earn trust, love should not have to be earned. A child, especially, should never have to feel like they should have to do something or achieve something to gain the love of their parents. When I was a child, I would tell my mother I hated her, and she would reply, “I love you.” Now that I’m a mother myself, my son will declare he hates me at times he doesn’t get what he wants. I reply, “I love you.” Because it’s true. I love my children, my sisters, my brothers, my nieces, my nephews, my parents, and my fiancé, even in their worst moments, and even in my own worst moments. Love is a feeling that comes to life and grows, it should be given freely, not with strings attached or stipulations.
Yes, love is a gift we give others, without expecting anything in return, but it’s also a gift we give ourselves. You know when you are mad at someone, or someone has hurt you? How it eats you up inside, like a parasitic worm devouring your heart? Love is the opposite. Love sets you on fire, makes your heart feel like a warm loaf of bread right out of the oven. Loving others, feels as good as hating others feels awful.
I know that there are as many kinds of love as there are people. The love we give to others is always a gift unique for that person. The love I have for my siblings is different for each sibling, for my children is different for each child, and different than the love I have for my fiancé. My children need a love that is limitless, that protects them, that keeps them safe. My siblings need a love that allows them to change, grow, and make mistakes. I love them for who they were, who they are, and who they will be. Their love is less demanding, less omnipresent, than the love between myself and my children. My love for my siblings is like putting savings in a bank that we can cash in on in an emergency. My fiancé needs a love that is patient, a love that can wait, a love that is strong enough, sure enough, to withstand distance and time. It’s a love that is unquestionably loyal. It’s a bird in a house with a door that never closes, coming and going as it pleases – an eagle that can sail away on the wind anytime it wants, but chooses instead to call my heart home. Some people think love is a trap or a cage, see it as limiting one’s freedom. I think loving someone freely is the best freedom there is.
Everyone loves differently. It’s not our love of others that brings us pain, but our expectations for others to love us and the idea that we can shape that gift someone else gives us to fit our own desires. I have a friend I talked to recently who I haven’t seen in ten years. I’m going to visit him this summer. The other night we spent an hour and a half on the phone. When I hung up, my heart was soaring. I realized I love him. I realized he loves me. In my loneliness, I tried to take that love he has for me and shape it into romantic love, to make him want me. But love isn’t like that. When someone gives you a gift, you don’t trade it in for another. Trying to make him love me a certain way is like taking a gold ring and exchanging it in for a lead one. You have to accept the love others offer you and not try to use that love to get something you want, whether that be gifts, attention, or more love. If someone gives you the gift of loving you as a friend, treasure that gift for what it is and not what you wish it was.
Finally, love means accepting another person for who they are, not for who they could be or who we want them to be, but who they are at this very moment. It means loving their imperfections, it means understanding their limitations, and forgiving their weaknesses. Love is not words, but actions; not promises, but deeds. Love can be kind and gentle, love can be crazy and passionate. Love can be reasonable and absolutely insane, but love is never abusive. Abuse is not love. Sex is not love. Love is love, and sometimes love means walking away and letting go. Because love also means accepting yourself for who you are, not for who you could be, or who you want to be, but who you are at this very moment. You have to love yourself first, before you can give that gift to others.
This is not everything there is to say about love, but M—, you asked, and I had to start somewhere.
Sincerely,
Ms. Meg Pierce

Don’t Believe Them

Don’t Believe Them
by Meg Pierce
May 13, 2015

Don’t believe them.
When they lead you to feel
That the best part of you is your pretty face,
Your dark curly hair and coquette lashes.
Don’t believe them.

I’ve heard you question
Ancient so-called wisdoms.
I’ve seen your eyes flash in defiance
Against a doctrine that has tried to put you down,
Make you a lesser citizen.
I’ve watched you refuse to be a sheep,
In a room full of followers.

Child, you don’t have all the answers yet.
You don’t even know how much there is to know.

When I say you need to learn respect
I don’t mean “obey.”
I mean that while you’ve found your voice,
You also need to find your ears
And open up those eyes
To see that we are on the same side.

I’m fighting for you,
Although by all means
You can hold your own in a battle,
Kid, we can’t win this war alone.
I’m up here rooting for you every day,
But you’re your own worst enemy,
For believing some of what they say
For believing the best you have to offer
Is sweet lips and a smile.

Save all that sugar and spice, child.
You’re fire, but you think you’re ice.
You think that they can’t touch you,
But they already have.
You’ve let them define good girl and bad.
You’re a rebel, but you’re hurting yourself.

You seem to think your weapon’s your body,
But girl it’s your brain!
You are righteous and stubborn,
And sometimes insane.
You’re brave as H. Tubman and Ms. Rosa Parks.
But all your heat is just sparks—
Without the right kindle,
Your fire will dwindle.
So feed it.
Feed it and stoke it
With learning and books.
Your brain is your weapon
So forget your looks,
And train it and mold it
And learn how to use it.
So that when it comes time
To shoot off your mouth
You’ll do more than just spout
Self-righteous rot.
For when you waste words
And play with the truth,
You’re wasting your talent,
Defaming yourself.

Pick your battles kid
And make sure they’re worth winning.
So that when you do take aim
Others will listen
And know, you’re not only sane,
But amazingly smart.
You have so much to learn,
This is only a start.

Poetry: When You Are Not With Me

When You Are Not With Me
By Meg Pierce
July 2013

When you are not with me
I hold you close to me
Anchor your memory to my body
Like a hot air balloon full of fire
I clutch onto the invisible ropes
Wrap them like a cloak around me
And refuse to let go.
I want to be there in the basket
Floating in the clouds
But if I take my feet off the ground
I will lose you to the sky.
So I must not fly.
I conjure pictures of you
To act as sand bags
And imagine these invisible ropes are your arms.
The world cannot find me here
Hidden in the shadow of thoughts of you
I cannot see the world from down here
But only the fire of our love
Heating the air, turning cold memories
Into the colorful balloon of our future.

Poetry: Independent Woman

Independent Woman
By Meg Pierce
August 20, 2013

You are an independent woman.
You march to your own drum.
You are your own boss.
You protect your child fiercely.

You are an independent woman.
You depend on no man.
You pay your own way.
You carry your own burden.

Ring goes the telephone.
Hello, where are you?
You’re coming home soon?
I miss you, I love you.

You are an independent woman.
With a quickening heart.
With a smile on your face.
With a song on your lips.

You are an independent woman.
You depend on no man.
You don’t need him, you want him.
You are an independent woman,
An independent woman in love.

Poetry: Home

Home
By Meg Pierce
July 2013

After two years overseas
I’ve come back home.

Like stored clothes pulled from a plastic bin,
I try on old friendships for size,
See how we’ve endured the years.
Some as cozy as my black cotton dress,
Others worn thin by time.

I traverse my favorite haunts
And fall in love all over again.
I rediscover memories around every turn,
Layered like a sweet and sour jawbreaker.
I play the local, knowing all the secrets,
Yet everything is as fresh as desert flowers after the rains.

Home
After two years overseas
I’ve left my home.

My own bed veiled in its net.
My hyperactive dogs that my boyfriend hates.
Roosters crowing at all hours of the night,
The lakes that fill the streets after the rain.
My poker buddies and book club.
My classroom with its picture of Mark Twain
And desks waiting to be filled by my favorite students.

Memories layered like harmattan dust
In my mind.

A continent away I yearn for my home in your arms,
The feel of that face that goes from sandpaper to smooth
As the workweek turns into the weekend.
The feel of my fingers on your scalp as I kiss your full lips.
I crave the fevered debates we have in bed
And miss you wriggling like a puppy
Until I scratch your back.

Home is my son snuggled up against me.
Home is my son’s silly giggle.
Home is your long arms around me.
Home is your teasing laugh.
Home is my heart split and yearning
To be two places at once.

Babies and Voodoo: A Birthing Plan for Togo

When I decided to have my baby in Togo rather than in the U.S. I had this vision of simplicity in my head. No airplanes, no renting, no worrying about school for Orion. I’d go to the clinic, pop out the baby and bring him home. The simple life.

Mwahahaha. And then real life came knocking at the door. I wanted the best gynecologist in West Africa. I have him, only problem is, so does everyone else. Which means that my 2 p.m. appointments turn into 7 p.m., sometimes 9 p.m. visits with the doctor. And if I accidentally make the appointment for a consultation and he needs an ultrasound, I get to repeat the wait a few days later. Ok, I’ve adapted to this, gotten a lot of leisurely reading done in a mosquito-infested 95 degree waiting room. No big deal. Only a few more visits.

Then I start talking to other women who have had the joy of child birth in Togo. There went my visions of packing a pair of clothes and a diaper bag. My packing list for the hospital now includes: extra clothes, sheets, mosquito net and lotion, toilet paper, soap, hand sanitizer, wash clothes, pagne (cloth), gauze for the umbilical cord, pain killers, possibly laxatives, bleach so the nurses can clean the hospital room and a pot or big plastic bag for taking the placenta home. You know, so the voodoo priests don’t get a hold of it.

That’s right. The Togolese have a huge fear of voodoo. Voodoo definitely spurs the imagination. Before coming to Togo, my knowledge of voodoo ran to the horror film images of wannabe teenage witches sticking pins into a voodoo doll. Since then, I’ve talked to the Voodoo priest at the marche and I’ve seen the voodoo gods outside of village homes and the shrines protecting the fields, and I’m a lot less concerned. I wonder how much of local people’s beliefs about voodoo are as made up as our Western beliefs. Voodoo is actually the term referring to the various gods in the animist, polytheist religion. The shrines I’ve seen in the manyoke fields here look very similar to the shrines I saw in the fields of rice in Thailand. A simple wooden structure with offerings for the god to protect the fields. In Togoville the voodoo included a beautiful tree branched into two halves representing two gods that protect the village and some carvings of stumps outside the houses which were the family’s gods protecting the house. Families sacrificed chickens to the gods in exchange for protecting their home.

At the fetish market, the dead animals were used for a variety of different remedies from constipation to impotence and sacrifices of animals were for praying for employment and the like. The fetishes, basically charms, we bought as souvenirs were for safe travels and to protect against poisoning.  No mention of love potions or evil spells.

But don’t tell that to the local Christians. Fear of voodoo runs high. Rumor has it that women fear having someone touch their stomachs for fear they will curse the baby, and that babies must stay at home for a set amount of days to ward off any evil voodoo spells. I’ve heard talk that people steal babies for sacrifices, and have a friend who says that someone tried to take her baby right out of her arms while she was standing on the street.

I thought that Christianity and Islam would have expelled superstitions in followers, but it turns out a belief in heaven and hell, good and evil, angels and demons, leaves the imagination ripe for all sorts of fantastical ideas. Among them that Halloween night is a night when the door between the human world and the spirit world is more open and evil spirits easier to be summoned, or that ugly women can mix up voodoo spells to make an attractive, rich man fall in love with them (because why else would a hot guy be with a less attractive woman?) Along with placentas, objects like used condoms need to be looked after so no one steals a man’s sperm. Blood donations are hard to come by because people worry about doctors selling the donations to voodoo priests out the back door of the hospital, so if one were to have an operation in Togo, you would want to donate blood beforehand.

So my “simple” birthing plan now includes the question of what will become of my placenta and whether I will need to bury it in my yard. Oddly enough, thanks to my cross cultural communications class in college, I was actually not surprised about the yard burying because we had studied the treatment of placentas amongst the Hmong people of Thailand who believe that the soul of the baby stays attached to the placenta and thus they bury the placenta near their homes. I was told that often people bury the baby’s placenta near the family home here in Togo, so even if the parents reside in Lomé they will take the placenta back to their “village.” Someone’s “village” here can mean anything from a 20-house neighborhood of huts in the boonies without electricity to a sprawling town with electricity and urban amenities.

Now, I can’t tell you what my own experience will be like coming up here in a few days, but I do know that my doctor is going to have a lot more questions next time I see him and that whatever my experience is like I’m going to have some stories to tell.

Alternate Plans…

Alternate Plans
By Meg Pierce
January 24, 2013

I missed a party tonight
Only invite I’ve had all month
I missed music and beer
I missed the joking and cheer.

I missed a party tonight
To stay at school and work
To decorate tables red and white
Instead of a party I prepared poetry night.

I missed a party tonight
And cleaned up the study hall
Picked flowers to set the mood
Spent my last 10 mil. on food.

I missed a party tonight
To make a list of students
You then came up on stage and read
Lyrics born from your own head

I missed a party tonight
So I could see you perform
So I could clap and cheer
As you overcame your fear.

I missed a party tonight
And forced you to attend
A night of lyric and rhyme —
I could have changed the time.

I missed a party tonight
And I’d miss it all over again
To hear you holler and shout
As you students tried your voices out

I missed a party tonight
To give you the chance to perform
In front of a crazy crowd
Students, you all deserve to feel proud

I missed a party tonight
But it will be years before
You will ever really know
How much life can be changed by a poetry show.

Summer Poems

Friends like Butterflies

Dedicated to Winnie M., Arthur, Jaison, the Palovs and the many other people who have flown through my life in Lomé.

By Meg Pierce

August 2, 2012

 

They flit into my life,

Friends like butterflies,

Bringing beauty and warmth.

Spreading joy like pollen

from flower to flower.

They flutter into my life,

On wings of optimism,

They dance and dash about,

Tasting living colors.

They flit into my life,

Ephemeral fun so fleeting,

And then they flutter out.

 

 

Summer Days

By Meg Pierce

August 2, 2012

 

You are flying, the sun warming your face

Animated, alive you swoop, looping through the sky,

Energized from the conversation, the closeness, the caffeine.

You speak honestly, mind engaged, heart exposed,

Freedom, friendship singing in your soul.

And then you say good-bye.

The sun begins to sink,

The draft chills you.

You drop

From heaven

Out of the grace of the moment.

The farewell as heavy as feathers falling from melted tar.

You brace for the crash looking for someone to soften the blow.

Will he catch you, fish you from the stormy sea, dry you off and row you to safety?

You know the sun will rise again bringing life and laughter back,

But in the cold shadow of parting you forget the hellos

And count the ghosts

Of summer days

Gone by.

Adventures in Togolese Healthcare

May 27, 2012

Orion had a fever again today. It was the fourth day I had been treating him for fevers, so I knew he most likely had malaria, despite the fact that he’s been taking anti-malaria pills on a weekly basis. Malaria is the most common form of illness here in Togo. 99% of the absences of my students are blamed on malaria.

Malaria is a strange disease; it can be dormant inside the body, but then flare up at different times. So, it’s possible he has had it for many months now. This is not the first time he’s had headache and fever, but before it has always gone away after a day or two. This time he’s been complaining on and off about headaches for two weeks. However, since his headaches seem to be timed with play practice, it has been difficult for me to gauge how sick he is. He will complain of a headache, then minutes later be out kicking around a soccer ball.

It’s also been a hectic week for me. I was gone last weekend on a trip with the kids at school, we’ve spent the week worrying about prom ticket sales, and also planning the sports tournament we had at school yesterday. Additionally, I brought home senior theses to grade this weekend. Meanwhile Orion is in his last two weeks of play practice for the school play. He is playing a saber-tooth tiger and a sailor who gets eaten by the Cyclops in the Odyssey. So to be honest, since his illnesses haven’t totally knocked him out, and have been rather sporadic, I hadn’t really become concerned about it until my “helpful” Mina, mentioned that she’d heard on the radio that some malaria medicine wasn’t good and that people can go to the hospital now to get better malaria medication.

That’s when I counted the days he’d been sick, and realized that I have been a very distracted mother. So when he came down with a fever again the next day, I took him to the hospital. We went to the hospital near my house which was donated by the People’s Republic of China to Togo. We found out when we were there that it is a state-run hospital. The first thing we did was sign in and pay 1,500 cfa to get a health booklet to keep Orion’s medical information. They spelled his name wrong on the booklet and also counted his age wrong.

Then they sent us to an office that was empty, so we waited outside for the doctor. A man came up in scrubs who we presume to be some sort of nurse, though it was really hard to say since all he did was weigh Orion, then look at me and ask for a thermometer. That’s right, apparently here in Togo, one needs to bring one’s own thermometer to the hospital. So we got a thermometer from the pharmacy, one of the old mercury ones and took Orion’s temperature with that. He was normal again, since I’d given him an adult does of Ibuprofen, the only fever reducer I had available, back at the house. Normal in Celsius, by the way, is about 36 or 37 degrees.

After that we still had to wait for the doctor. I was with my boyfriend, an Algerian, and his partner, a Moroccan. They acted as my French to French translators. My boyfriend doesn’t speak much English, but he understands my French, and knows how to talk to me in a slow simple French designed for language learners and non-verbal babies. So, this is how we communicate. He talks to the people in French, gets the information and then translates it into simple easy-to-understand French for me. When I want to speak French to the doctor or administrators, I speak to him in my broken French, and he explains in proper French what I was really trying to say, so that they understand.

The fact that we had to wait for the doctor to come was very upsetting to my Algerian boyfriend who says that in Algerian state hospitals, no one ever has to wait, and in private hospitals the wait is only two or three minutes. His Moroccan partner said it was the same in Morocco, and that when he had an operation, he stayed in the hospital for 28 days and only paid about $30. Amazing. I explained how in an American hospital we often wait up to an hour in the emergency room unless there’s an imminent threat to one’s life.

When the doctor came we entered his office which consisted of a desk with three chairs, an examination table, and a corroding sink with no water. We explained why we were there, and he asked whether Orion was vomiting (no) or coughing (a little), listened to him with his stethoscope, and gently pressed the side of Orion’s abdomen with his fingers, and asked Orion if it was painful (yes.). He confirmed the malaria suspicions and sent us to the lab to get the malaria test. We were in his office for less than 5 minutes.

The confusing part about the lab was that first we had to pay for the test downstairs, but for some reason, no one was there to take the money or something, so we went upstairs to the lab and found no one there. Someone in a nearby room sent us back down again, and we came back up with the male “nurse” or technician or helper (?) who had asked us for the thermometer. The lab consisted of a small refrigerator, a small microscope, what looked like a slide reader and a bunch of dirty looking slides. I was very nervous about what they were going to be pricking my child with, but the nurse pulled out a clean, covered mini needle out of a pack and a clean slide, so I felt ok about that. He cleaned Orion’s finger with alcohol, pricked Orion’s finger and wiped his blood on the slide, and gave him a cotton ball to press on the blood. Apparently, the hospital doesn’t have bandaids either. Then he took a small glass tube, which I believe he got from the refrigerator, to rub the blood around on the slide and told us to come back in 40 minutes for the results.

We went and got pizza across the street, because I could not handle the pacing of my very tired Algerian boyfriend, who walked around in circles like the agitated leopards do in the San Diego Zoo. Also, Orion no longer having a fever was bouncing around like a kid excited to have an audience and not looking even the slightest bit piqued.

After eating, we returned to the hospital and found out Orion indeed had malaria. We entered the doctor’s office again where he sat with three other people, which made me feel very uncomfortable for invading these people’s privacy, and stood while he wrote out a prescription which consisted of three injections, one each day for three days, medicine for reducing his fever if necessary, medicine to be taken the day after the last injection and another medicine to be taken until it ran out, but which I’m not actually sure when he is supposed to begin it. So, I may have to return to ask.

The shot, which was to be administered right away, was not actually available at the hospital. So my boyfriend went to the pharmacy and bought the medicine as well as the needles and syringes for administering the shot. He returned, and we went to a different floor to find an actual nurse to give Orion the shot. Orion was not excited about this and did not want to even enter the room. I told him he had to have the shot so he didn’t end up having to stay the night in the hospital, and finally convinced him to sit on my lap for the shot. Unfortunately, the shot was supposed to go in his thigh or his butt, not his arm, and this unexpectedness freaked him out again and he started crying and kicking and screaming, so three of us held him while the nurse gave him a shot in his thigh. Frankly, I didn’t want him getting a shot anywhere near his spine, especially not in that state. Holding him made him really angry, and he yelled at everyone in French to “Laissez Moi!” which means “Leave Me!” When we let go of him, he tried to hit the others, he was so upset. So it was a rather heart-wrenching experience and he wouldn’t let me hug him or hold his hand all the way home.

One of the hospital workers, seeing him crying and so mad at us, started laughing at him and teasing him, which did not help matters and of course hurt his feelings. Orion insisted on dramatically limping his way to the car without my help and not letting me carry him, because he didn’t want people calling him a baby. We took the other two needles still in their packages and the medicine home with us so that tomorrow the school nurse, who is also a friend, can administer the shots in what I’m hoping will be a friendlier, less terrifying location for Orion.

So that was my adventure in Togolese hospitals, and I can’t say that it helped me get past my fear of Togolese doctors and hospitals at all. I definitely could not have navigated the situation alone, so I was very grateful for the moral support.

Orion, We’re not in Cali Anymore

May 26, 2012

When I was looking at countries to teach in, one of the qualifications I sought was that I work in a democratic nation. According to the CIA World Factbook, at the time Togo had been a democracy for three years. I realized it was a new democracy, but still thought it a democracy. Over the last few months, the stories I’ve heard and my experience have taught me to view the country as more of a fake democracy.

Which makes sense if you consider the fact that the current president is the previous president’s son, and the election was much disputed.

Since I’ve been here I’ve become accustomed to the little incidents of corruption. Often the police pull over cars and demand they pay for such and such little offense. Whether or not you are actually breaking a law, they charge you money to let you go. This has advantages in that if you are not law-abiding like in the case of my Canadian colleague who hasn’t bothered to register his motorcycle, because then you just pay a fee. Any money paid goes directly into the police officer’s pocket. Actually, come to think of it, except for the time at night when we’ve gotten pulled over, they have always cited an offense like too many people in the front seat or talking on a cell phone while driving. Which is interesting, because for months I never saw a motorcycle stop for a red light, and the taxis and vans stuff three times as many people into a vehicle as they have seats, so it’s hard to tell what laws actually exist.

At the post office, when I pick up my packages the customs price varies. At first I didn’t pay anything, but then one day I went and the lady wanted 5,000 cfa per box, the equivalent of $10. After talking to my boss, I negotiated it down to 10,000 cfa instead of the 15,000 cfa she was asking. The next time I went for the same type of books in the same type of boxes, she asked me to pay “what I did last time.” I told her I didn’t want to and gave her my spiel about being a poor teacher who can’t afford her prices. She let me go for free. Corruption works both ways, sometimes you are pissed off when you feel the person in charge is taking you for a ride, but then when they let you off the hook, you are so excited, and you get the hell out of there before they change their minds.

I have been in Togo long enough to know how things work, but sometimes I just get in an ornery mood. Today was one of those days. Orion and I were going home on a moto with a random zemijan driver. We were going through an intersection and the driver got stuck in the middle of traffic and got waved over by a policeman. The police, I found out later, were out in swarms, because the opposition party had organized a march.

Last time that I was aware of the opposition really protesting, other than just riding around in brightly colored t-shirts on their motorcycles, was on Togo’s Independence Day when the beach road was strewn with smashed concrete blocks and tree branches, and the windows of the Ethiopian Air building near the Palm Beach Hotel were smashed during an opposition protest. That same day we had been driving near the center of the city when we came across a recently abandoned roadway with debris and patches of yellow smoke rising from it. We drove around a corner and saw a police van, and next to it, a crowd of some police uniforms and some other people around a man lying on the ground.

Anyhow, today, the policeman pulled over the moto driver, possibly because he got stuck in the middle of traffic, but really I had no idea why. Instead of just demanding he give him money as the police here usually do, the policeman demanded the key from the guy, which he didn’t want to give, and then drove my driver’s motorcycle across the street where there were several motos and drivers apparently waiting. I was really annoyed at how the police just took the guy’s key and got on his moto, so I took out the camera I had been using to take pictures of the student’s basketball tournament and snapped a photo of the policeman. Apparently this is illegal in Togo. The policeman got very upset. I was going to walk away, but I hadn’t paid the zemijan driver yet, and since he was in a pickle, I hated to leave him.

I don’t know what got into me, but the policeman was yelling at me to give him my camera and show him the photo. The zemijan driver told me to show it to the officer and delete it. But at first I refused. I was feeling argumentative, I guess. So after some time of being stubborn and asking if this was not a free country in French and him getting mad, I finally showed him the photo and deleted it. But I had made him pretty angry, so he demanded I walk over to the other police officers and told them that I took his picture and he was quite upset. He wanted my camera, but I didn’t want him to mess it up since clearly he knows nothing about cameras and doesn’t speak English and doesn’t know what buttons to press, and every time someone borrows my camera it comes back to me broken. But the other officer spoke some English, and I let him take my camera, and tried to show him I deleted the pictures, but he didn’t get it and he didn’t even know how to turn off the camera. He called his boss, and threatened to take me into the police station, and said the chief was on his way. Or he said he did rather. I’m not entirely certain since after that he asked a guy to get him some phone credit so he could make a phone call to his boss, who he had just said he’d been talking to. Apparently he even had to borrow someone else’s phone just to make the call. I suspect he may have been faking the whole first conversation since the boss never showed up and they never took me to the station as they said they would.

When he told me I had to go to the station, I just said ok and acted unfazed. I think it probably helped that all the police officers looked to be about 22. The officers demanded to know why I took the photo and I explained that I thought it was interesting, because in my country policeman don’t go riding other people’s motorcycles. They asked what policemen do in my country and I said they write tickets, the person goes to court in front of a judge and if the judge thinks they did something “not good” (I don’t know how to say “wrong” in French) then they pay money for the ticket. They conferred with the boss by phone and amongst themselves. Meanwhile I explained to Orion that Togo is crazy and that I was in trouble for taking the officer’s photograph, which is illegal here, but not in the U.S.

Then the guy with my camera asked for my identification card. I handed him my passport, and he asked me my job. I told him I was a teacher and he wanted to know where it was written on my passport, which it isn’t, so I just showed him my Visas. He wanted to know if I was a journalist, I guess. So then he gave my camera to the guy whose photo I took, and since he didn’t know how to work it, I scrolled through all the hundreds of pictures I’d taken that day of the basketball and soccer tournaments, plus my trip to Kpalime, Mt. Agou and Tchevie, so he could see that his picture was not on it. I made light of it, showed them pictures of me playing basketball and all the students so they would understand how perfectly harmless I am.

Then they asked me again what I had intended to do with the photo. Was I going to tell my boss about the police in Togo or what? I smiled at them and asked, “You know Facebook?” They nodded. “I was going to post it on Facebook.” They laughed, except the guy whose photo I had taken, who cursed me for being an idiot girl, I presume. They shook their heads and realized, I was just a foolish American girl. Then, they told me if I want to take pictures of military, I should just marry a policeman. The guy whose photo I had snapped was apparently single. If I really wanted pictures of the police they said, I could come to the headquarters and meet their boss and take a picture of all the officers. “Ok,” I said. They laughed and shook their heads and told me to take another moto and go. Apparently, no one told them that the revolution in Tahrir Square was organized on Facebook.

So, my dear friends, today I learned that here in Togo, there is definitely no freedom of the press, despite the government’s claim that this is a democracy. One wonders how long this fake democracy will last.